The Woods of Lose Memory

Matthew Nerber

The tenant below taps

On the ceiling,

A broomstick’s sound is dull and fixed.

He complains to me

As the paint keeps peeling,

My life is a game

Of pick up sticks.

Over and over and over

It goes,

But all I hear is the

Muffled set.

Vagrant and hollow

And verbose prose,

The hall’s

Still dark without regret.

The wind is wild and

Sharp and straight,

The trees are

Lousy company.

Patiently for you I wait,

Here in the woods of

Lost memory.

And the menagerie

Of forgotten youth,

Is filled with things

That you’ve collected.

A bowler cap.

A dragon’s tooth.

To be their keeper:

I’ve been elected.

But the door is closed;

A quarantine.

The room is sealed from

High to low.

No matter, no fret

My thoughts convene.

There’s no sense leaving

With no place to go.

Youth!

Joe Stevens

I was made lazy in the springtime of youth:

I was tarred by love’s blackening brush

and made lonely early.

Before, however,

I was happy

to enjoy each sad day

and sadly pass time away unnoticed.

But I was made lazy in the springtime of youth;

uncoiled on teachers’ tables

and examined by schoolgirls

in reddish dresses,

(or green skirts?)

as a specimen of time

or testament to mortality and age.

To imagine them now! breastless and bonneted in time

-and I’m grown up!

You freckled, featureless memories,

destitute and foreign.

Before which,

I was happy

to enjoy each sad day

and sadly pass time away-

unnoticed.

Complete Satisfaction

Christopher Fecio

A bed in an empty room.

A single

slanted ray

of light

hits

the floor,

just steps away from the ruffled sheet.

One slipper on the illuminated strip.

The other upside down across the room.

Emptiness.

Why does it feel so crowded?

Why can’t I find a way out?

Why are there so many questions?

I want to empty my head of these thoughts.

A. knock. on. the. wall,

tells me I’m alive,

but it doesn’t give me an exit.

“I’ve just entered into something.”

Something strange.

Something overwhelming.

Something beautiful.

“The world is my negative,

and I will burn it,

and I will dodge it,

and I will turn it into art.

And then I will become alive.”