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by Mary Sarsfield

3 in the afternoon my eyelids lift

From sweet slumber and strange dreams of my skin

My blood was liquid light flowing beneath that pale surface.

You showed up drunk

Words pushed out of your diaphragm like hiccups

All those secrets you pushed deep down inside of you

And tried to bury like corpses in the depths of your misery-soul.

I gave you a bed.

It sealed you shut like an envelope.

You crawled blindly into that void.

Grey light

Streams in from the window

Reminds me that we are all floating in and out of waiting

For that big sleep, that soft

swift

end.

For Corso

by Mary Sarsfield

There’s a big moon i

am thinking

of you

with well-worn

shoes and poetry

and eyes like

black caves as you

pour wine into my

glass and crawl into

my clean warm sheets

and hold my

face in your

hands saying

“le tue

rotture gustano

del moonshine”

Run On

by Andrew Eckert

Doityourself labels lined an unopened

box of idon’tknow

what

could be safer (these days) than doing

it yourself since trust in all others has

run away terrified, buried in bedrock

shielded by

crust

lined the bowl of some meal that

was elegantly just-add-hot-water-and-stirred

prepared in furious perfection

before a well written show became

the life i preferred

to

not be so secret and small

paling in comparison

to those big JFKs whose fame

is as large and as mean as their

fall

—is the season, i’m telling you folks—

for dead

men and women, wherever they play

i hope that they smile with thoughts Okee-

dokee

(you may blow the candles, as long as

the digits confirm it’s your birthday)

&

this auditorium makes me a

hypocrite

applauding for the brains

of some doityourself nitwit.

Clouds swallow sunshine.

Kids pile leaves.