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We wait for your attack

Too many men in the onrushing tide

For our guns to drive them back

We keep firing, they keep falling

Blind to why they die

Youth, in death, is silent

Stripped of all its human pride

The limit of pain approaches

The men can take no more

They wait and wait and wait to see

An end come to their war

But ends and means are many

When glory lights a shore

They wait and wait and wait and die

And in the end will bleed no more.

by Steve Boyd

Haikus by Mark

Plastic bag in a

treetop rattles in the wind.

Later, it was gone.

another plastic

bag in the treetop tonight,

contrasting the clouds.

no bag tonight, no

wind either, just looking at

branches, no bag though.

By Mark Maglio

Wine

His tongue was thick with wine and so his words all seemed to mesh

They asked him if he’d had enough, he shrugged and said, “I guesh.”

The floor was stained with wine and all the good things he had heaved

He asked them to let him alone so he might be relieved

And as he let his bladder empty on the sodden earth

He hiccupped in disgusting glee and licked his lips with mirth

His eyes swung towards the pitcher almost drained of potent wine

And on all fours he crawled to it and mouthed in lust, “You’re mine.”

By Leeshi Feldman

Tinted Windows

Main is breached

and it’s begun. I kayak here

I kayak there

all to see a seal

watch me. paddle in the blowholes’ direction

porpoise, the catamaran

is truly curious. rubber ducky

jet stream wake the biologist

tells a microphone

everyone likes

free ride. paychecks and chuckles.

lobster buoy. clam digger. will ever

I know

the fascination in the tub

my pink skin I’ve learned facts

and don’t remember

my pink skin. breath

wind-stolen

our big boat skims dark

rolling swells

and finds the sleek mammals

leaping. such complex language

they do the same thing in zoos.

by Jared Schickling

Birthday Poem for Sister

as a kid I’d watch you sleep

back turned to me, I faced you to watch you

as you slept.

then morning’s observing the way you

circled your eye with a thin black pencil

deliberately, never really picturing myself

at that age.

the age of liners, that age of lines.

Late nights you would come home smellin

like medicines and knives.

Blue uniform for the right of a student

of human life.

Fast-forward.

white jacket. tassel. watching you shake hands

take hands, check pulses, hold hands,

arm in arm, exchange rings,

picturing you cross a threshold

to a home

sleeping with your eyes turned

up.

warm florida morning coming

up. like blake’s sunflower

counting the steps of the sun

aspiring

where you wish to go.

and watching you get there

is the most beautiful ideal

a kid could ask for.

by Marina Blitshteyn