New Poems • Barbara Archer • After the Fall • Daniel Arenson • Youth • Elizabeth Barrette • Countrycide • Helena Bell • I Asked What it Looked Like • Catherine E. Bollinger • Blood Sucker • Alric Bolt • Dangle • Jennifer Burton • Ragged • Orson Scott Card • Fires • Belly • Don't You Remember the End of the World? • Carol M. Carpenter • Reunion Sunday • Penny Denice Cobb • Caterpillar, Flying • Michael Collings • For Grace Isabella • Pomegranates • 'Possum • The House We Owned • Julia DeLong • Behold the handmaiden • The Orphic Guide • Shards • Rose Drew • For Rose • Lee Evans • Vitreous Floaters • Jimmy nil Fishhawk • Night Blessing • Sonnet for Leaves Shaking Light • David Flynn • Summers Were Warm Back Then • Michaela A. Gabriel • November Rules of Conduct • Lara Gose • Visiting Grandma • Laura Lawlor Hewitt • Matter of Madness • Juleigh Howard-Hobson • Coming Upon A Stone Circle at Sunset • Joseph Josephides • The Window • Abel Keogh • The End of the World • Catherine Knutsson • The Soft Fall of Snow • Eric Lehman • The Hall of Cats • Fred Longworth • Downtown San Diego, 1953 • Robin Merrill • Ferris Rhubarb • Jaime Lee Moyer • Minstrel • Lawrence Nielsen • Not Puccini but Dvorak • Adrienne J. Odasso • The Damage Done • One if by Land • Not Eden • G. M. Palmer • The Penguin and the Clam • Elijah and the Antelope • For the Unborn Dead • Palm Sunday • The Rest • Geoff Peterson • The Ballad of Moses • Eva poon • She Doesn't Know • Jason Kelly Richards • Mother Nature's Facilities • Charles Ries • Jack • Scott M. Roberts • Joogled by Broogles • Song of the Rivelaunt • Pie Fight on the Way To Hell • Train Window Prophet • Adam Z. Robinson • Photograph: A family gathering • Bride & Groom • Johnny Rocket • Angels, Gramma, and Questions • Marsheila Marcy Rockwell • Chrissy at the Grave of P.S. 103 • R. Allen Shoaf • The Father Gives His Boy a Knife • The Boy in Chains • My Father's Church • Cate Snyder • More Nonsense • Mary Sutton-Paul • Shoes • Cory Swainston • The Oath of the Horatii • Justin Taylor • Hallandale • If you weren't now with man... • I was lying when I said I didn't love you • Literary Conceit • Madelia Tower • Fall of Light • Ann Walters • He Speaks Stars • Oregon Morning • In Dreams He Purrs • A Night in Zion • Christopher Way • Fort Myers, Florida • Spring Nerve Sheath • Zach West • Witching Hour • Emily Whitby • Untitled, For Now • Unsent Letter 7 • James R. Whitley • The Goddess of the Hustle

I saw you once...and last,
As I wrapped you in white
And lay you beside your toys...
Teddy Bear, Bunny, Locket,
Recording of your father's
Voice that you had never heard.

I saw you then...counted
Toes and fingers, saw the tip
Of a tiny nose, as much
Intuited as saw eyelids in
Sleep. Not much more...
The hygromas (ugly word,
Uglier in life than in the
Read) and the hydrops
Blanketed all else in their
Insatiable greed to
Absorb fluids, tissues.

Still, I saw you...in the arc
Of nose, the slit of
Eyelids, the curve of
Spine against the sheet
The hospital had wrapped
You in. And it sufficed.

You remain part of my son
And of his love
And of his parents
And of hers throughout
Long links and chains
Of genes and cells
And Spirit throughout
Time.

Birds have plucked ripe pomegranates
hollow,

split/pricked ruby-leather
shells,

pried ruby-blooded seeds
loose

from flesh-tint membranous
moorings

and swallowed-cocked heads back,
throats

quivering ... and pomegranates
hang-

empty Death-Star hulls-from upper
limbs.

Twice this morning 'possums
straddled double yellow lines.
Conical masks pointed asphaltward
where twining pavement sliced
thick chapparal.

Twice crushed hindquarters
signaled death -- naked banded
tailed curled blood and guts and gore
straddled double yellow lines.

Twice blood-slick-red cars
urged forward, pressed, pushed
straddled double yellow lines
swerved and rocked on tires
overblown black and richly stained.

in the first house we owned we
painted plastered nakedness
rainbowed semigloss

shadeless bulbs cast black pterosaurs
out of heaven
onto semigloss plastered nakedness

night smelled odd
parents' murmurs in distant
rooms wrapped
stiff scent of paint
in familiarity

in bedrooms we would own we
rolled pillows next to naked
walls huddled in blankets on naked
floors and in Montana
midnight
dreamed

auroras spackled stilldamp paint
through panes innocent of drapes
naked
to the night
naked to murmurs and strange smells
filtered through
the first house we owned.