with the Romanian gypsy woman

whose waist length black hair

and black lustered eyes

mesmerizes my attention.

I breathe backward.

She, of the white flowing blouse,

which can barely contain

her ample breast girth

and the silk black skirt

all wrinkled and

dirt ridden at the bottom,

directs me to cleanse all

all elements of envy

from my stained spirit.

As she pours the jet black tea,

her emancipated eyes sparkle.

R. Gerry Fabian

(Lovely Bird image provided by Christopher J Ananias)

Talking with a dead friend he informed me,

“You know. . . I never thought it would happen

the way it did. All of a sudden I couldn’t shit straight

and there was nothing they could do about it.

Even so, I kept thinking that they could right up

to the end. You can’t imagine how much I suffered—

suffered like I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy!”

“I understand!” I responded sympathetically,

wondering how it will be for me, given that

we just never know how life can turn on us

when we least expect it…

Jeffrey Zable

(Image of Ivy Green Cemetery, Charleston District, Bremerton, WA)

As I cross the river on foot

a tower disgorges a cataract

of sun streaming down its windows.

This elaboration suggests hands

of a bronze clock striking noon,

but it’s only a skyscraper full

of dogged suits and ties straining

against tottering stocks and bonds

while looking forward to lunch.

I used to work on an upper floor

but grounded myself deliberately.

You stuck with the program and earned

a retirement in comforting pastels.

All day you shop for the perfect

handbag to tote the shrunken heads

of your lifetime of small enemies.

All night you listen to jazz greats

lilting saxophones into the sky.

I street-walk the city and sigh

the sighs of seismic old age while

you brush past in taxis, grinning

as they consume their fossil fuel.

I suspect from your silent pallor

that you’re thinking about the art

in museums that your patronage

props against the dissolution

that will announce itself like cymbals

striking a lone but fatal note.

William Doreski

(Image plucked from the files of The Drifter)

no use

saying don’t

she climbs

the chair wobbles

but it is hers

the kitchen hers

the cabinet

also hers

as she reaches

for the dust-covered box –

getting down requires

all of her coordination

is a slow shake of bones

but none of my help –

on the table

she opens that box

with deliberation

reveals postcards creased letters

a photograph a medal or two –

no use saying

the past is past

it is hers not mine

and she is 83 still reaching –

and her base may tremble

but it also holds

John Grey

(Image of a future box if local slumlord gets its way)

— thanks to Joan Jobe Smith’s Moonglow Á Go-Go

Past tomorrow’s polling station and chili dog stand, this piss-poor perky protagonist, once a Sistine good girl Dorothy from next door made shitty living laboring over manual typewriters, flees her mean ex-old man who owes allegiance to Long Beach Hells Angels.

After dude broke both of my eardrums with chain-linked fists, passing stevedoreson the wharf, I wink at a Kansas sailor holding white linen crotch with humungous right hand while his other jabs an abscessed left thigh with a syringe size of Michelangelo’s javelin.

Thereafter slinking into some random transgressive but transformative titty bar named David’s, beneath banks of brilliant blacklight beacons, I try to metamorph into one belly-button sequined raw sixteen-year-old sexpot wearing soon to be beer-rotted ruby red shoes.

Gerard Sarnat

(Image is of “Puck”–a Hank fan in Bremerton, WA)

after he gave me the key

and had shaken my hand

he had run through the way

the electricity worked, the few

kitchen fittings. apparently he’d had

another offer from a young

polish couple. this was really,

he told me, a room for a man on his own.

I closed the door, locked it

and pushed the bed into the corner.

the place it had been

was distinct on the carpet

as a barrier and an open

manhole hatch. the table was plywood

and wood-effect plastic

and smelled strongly of antiseptic dusters.

the kitchenette was more

or less clean with some frost

in the fridge. I took time

to gather filters, flaking

like pills of asbestos,

from the previous tenant’s cigarettes

which the landlord had missed.

they had crawled between the carpet

and the tile of the bathroom.

into the divots where the castors

of the bed took his weight.

DS Maolalai

(Image provided by Dale Williams Barrigar)

In the new textbook, it read:

The males sing more loudly,

but the songs of the females are more complex

which made the girls in the class giggle

Infuriated, the teacher

slammed his hand on the desk

silencing everyone

and embarrassing the boys

then one boy in the back

began to laugh

deliberately, mockingly

and though the teacher bellowed so loud

his eyes nearly popped out of his face

more boys started laughing

and all the girls were grinning

and maybe

that is how

things change

Patricia Russo

(Image of a Box Pigeon flock in the Charleston district of Bremerton, WA. This “team” has been intact for over fifty generations; which is a whole lot of Box Pigeons)

Brunch For One

I press my lips

to your cold

coffee mug,

hazelnut creamer

won’t mask

your smoky-sweet

breath, flooding

my lungs

Erin Jamieson

(Image of Sir Andy Hisster, a devout bruncher)