Expectations
If You Were a Cat
One cat comes for sleep
warmth between the sheets and me
lying like a stone on my legs
or between my breasts.
The other runs when I come near
teasingly out of reach and looking
over a shoulder; can't catch me.
These are ways
you would be done with
finding it easiest now
to leap from my embrace
to sit glaring or indifferent
to stalk the streets under the moon
and raise your voice
crying "Freedom!" with the other cats.
Gone for days, longer each time
until eventually I set your bowl out
in vain and slowly stop
calling for you at night.
Birthday
by Arlene Ang
At 45, I'd like to believe in love
again--and maybe more.
Love, as in he'd never forget a birthday,
or think it too much a waste of time
looking for gifts. And maybe
he'd remember how it was to kiss me,
offer to wash my back.
And maybe, just maybe--
though I know I'm stretching
things too far--
he'd spend the night with me
instead of banging girls in internet chats.
At 45, I blow out the candles on the dinner table.
I still like to believe in wishes coming true.
Then he comes home, glimpses the frosted cake
and growls, "For Chrissake's, grow up!"
To Rick, What I've Been Meaning to Say
by Mary D. Sanford
It is not up to me to punish--that is god's detail
no KP duty here--
we loll around on furlough, waiting to salute.
It's not up to me to mend your broken heart
10,000 prayer petitions
and the world is still the same.
Bitterness aside--I am okay with it
and okay with your death--frozen, yes,
numbed dumb against the mindless burn,
I'm swallowed by regret, a Jonah sitting nauseous in the whale,
impaled.
I wake from dreams
and stumble with your name
regretful, yes, at what was then and what
remained to come
a blighted bud, a fist smashed tight against
the knot
and no amount of watering
will modify the outcome, all the same.
You might have given us a chance--we tried and tried some more.
What scared you--that we'd get too close?
that we would see your face beneath the mask
and somehow judge you wrong?
What did you want--our lives to stop, beat chests, and then,
we throw ourselves against the tracks
and hope to get you back?
I have no words
to make this go away,
too many words I have for other things--
a glib response in classrooms where I'm queen--
these words don't work--the world is still the same,
and we survivors
flail against the rope,
our recompense each other,
our memory our hope.
Expectations
by Andrea Paul
Enviable
Xenophile who
Ponders life
Enriched by
Cultural
Travels
Always learning
Tasting
Inviting experiences
Open to the unknown
Necessary for the
Seeker in us all
I Breathe You Out
by Chris Patterson
Letting go,
the fog of longing
clouding up the
reflective moments
only we have known.
With the soft cloth of
memory, I polish our joy.
Happiness shining brightly
as it is put away in love's
velvet lined box.
These are not for everyday use.
I breathe you in.
A scent not so domestic,
it would only be noticed
when it's gone.
Like a wave of jasmine,
it sends me reeling to
spring evenings past.
The nature of this flower
cannot be guided,
gently or otherwise
into a year round bloom.
I hold you in my breath.
At that connection of
incidental touch,
electrified desire, sending
jolts to my heart and hands.
Familiar are the paths
across your body.
Not worn.
Or taken
without thought by
everyday travels.
The detail of each curve
sharpens my tongue until
my exclamations drip
with deep sincerity.
Finding Poetry
by Elizabeth Wawrzyniak
It is true that a rock cannot be poetry,
it is older than the words themselves,
and much more solid; a rock cannot
mean other than it is. But perhaps there,
in the East with the slowly rising sun,
is a poem, hidden between the tiny
darting specks of light, filtering over
the horizon, rustling through the treetops
like the most silent of morning winds.
Yet the sun, too, is older than the words.
When the rock, newly formed was thrust up,
still hot, from its molten birth out of the
earthen crust, even then the sun shone;
the first light cast upon the ragged
surface was the sun's own blinding ray.
Still, the poem is not found in the sun rising,
But is carried to us on those first rays of light.
Every morning the rays are new, unique.
Yesterday's light, perhaps it was a bit more
yellow, and maybe tomorrow will be a tad
more red. But today, this day, the light is new,
never seen. We are witnessing its first breath,
first steps into the world that it will power.
And yet, the rock. It can still never be a poem,
but surely poetry is found in the way it
reflects the sunlight, how it forms shadows
and the way the shadows appear on its
rough surface. This too is new; never before
has the light shone exactly as it is shining now.
Time Frame
How I would love to possess
time and all its glory.
To see through its smallest details,
to read it like a story.
To own it for everyone to see
that it is the apple of my eye.
I would put its picture in a frame
so it could not pass me by.
Frozen, I would stare at it
have it by my side, night and day.
No force of life or law of nature
could make it slip away.
You Forget
by Adam Jeffries Schwartz
The stranger is naked.
So are you.
You forget that you just met
(hands touched on the subway);
forget that you know
nothing about him
and will learn
even less.
You will leave nothing
behind
but a trace, an ache.
Or maybe that's
what started
the whole
thing?
You forget.