Over

was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?

was it over when Custer slaughtered the Japanese?

meet me at the hot tub with your bottles of beer

and we’ll toast the farces that make up 

our mutually falsified history

meet me where Gengis Kahn plundered the Hoover Dam

let’s make love where Alexander the Great tortured the Incas

but missed Macchu Picchu

By Dan Ames

When I Press a Stone

               

it un-relents and un-relents--
stone understudying stone
for so long now, it knows
the slightest gesture—breath—
has the perfect pitch and intonation
curled up like a fist in its hand.

By Jenn Blair

SKIRTS

I go into the city, I don’t

go into the city and when I get back

from not going, I don’t know I went.

Such is the nature of the urban landscape.

 

I drive through the countryside,

I walk through the countryside

and when I eventually stop both,

I enjoy my flat tire.

By Charles Springer

FEMA GALLERY

what’s left

of the houses is

 

in children’s

crayon drawings

 

on brittle construction

paper still

 

buttoned down

by magnets

 

to unhinged refriger-

ator doors   

By Charles Springer

 

The Walls

They can’t help

but creak at night

as if a silverfish

just scurried across

and they shivered.

By Michael Keshigian