GHAZALS

The dumpling you may eat in a dream
are warm and tasty, but still a dream.

Annihilation angel, his embrace forever
devoted to dust, arose in a dream.

For a castle, it’s not so bad a castle
where they almost died of love – it was a dream.

The real mailman races across town to deliver
another of your letters – bahalom – in a dream.

Press to your face, Ruth, that yellow sweater,
his chaos ray of sun, and wake from your dream.

Pale men in black overcoats seek others in the crowd
for afternoon prayers, and worship in a crowd.

Ladies chat and wave – PEACE NOW -
while looking for handsome strangers in the crowd.

Children of privilege are collection coins
in buckets for victims, begging through the crowd.

Ten thousand, straining to hear the distant oration -
ten thousand opinions in the crowd.

You are there too, Ruth, holding a white flag
with a blue star, you are lost and found in this crowd.

NORTH
Andrew MacArthur

Like a truant bird returned to North,
your naked face is turned toward North.

In many sparrows you'll weigh your worth,
passing above from South to North.

In time you'll know how pleasures drown.
An icy stream flows down from North.

You'll find that pain s not far from pleasure:
Tight longitudes must measure North.

So Andrew s Northern Lights must fall;
his compass needle pull toward North.

PAPER
Andrew MacArthur

He opens with a snap, the paper.
His deadly pointer taps the paper.

Each village, town, city or harbor
is captured with a slap on paper.

He lists the wounded, missing and dead.
In War, the lost are mapped on paper.

Like boys who play with sticks and brooms
and homemade Tricorn caps of paper,

We fashion versions out of words
and lose the truth that's trapped in paper.

CYCLE
Andrew MacArthur

In Spring, the cyclists surround your town:
This is a pattern found in towns.

The patter of spokes, a tire's hiss:
These sounds are common now in town.

If stars approach, their light will miss.
Dark rains have soaked the grounds in town.

No stars, no moons, no suns exist:
A pleasing mist beclouds your town.

I ride your names around. I kiss.
This is my pattern in some towns.

LIVING WATERS
Erin Thomas

Roaring voice of nature sings in the crashing waves,
Full might of her heart expressed through the dashing waves.

Despite their all encompassing thunder of din,
What wonderful peace is wrought by the clashing waves!

Nature's essence reified as living waters,
Her spirit flows in the sanative plashing waves.

Unparalleled in all the lands upon the earth,
Beauty unbridled forth leaps in foam flashing waves.

Ageless bound in dance with the encircling moon,
So rise and fall in succession the smashing waves.

What, of all viable forces, could inspire more
Than the sheer power and grace of the pashing waves?

Steadily shaped through the endless courses of time,
Ever reformed are the shores by great lashing waves.

Often, alone, has Zahhar stood watching in awe
Terrible wonder and life of the thrashing waves.

ROAD
Erin Thomas

Ever there spanned the long wending road;
Stretching aloft a life mending road.

Expanses unknown stirred mighty goad,
Spurring ventures along trending road.

Drifting alone with great mental load
Lost on vastness of peace lending road.

Changing lands made for phasing abode
Beneath shifting skies of sending road.

Hopes found new form through steady erode
Of useless views from strength spending road.

Mid moving seasons wandering strode
Zahhar in learning on tending road.

EXPLOITATIONS
Erin Thomas

The masses, forever by greed exploited,
Like the blind follow on and cede, exploited.

At turns, each and all, formal texts are revised,
And made to pay, starved students read, exploited.

Allusions to high fulfillment advertised,
For vapors the unwitting bleed, exploited.

Despite advances, wondrous, in medicine,
The impoverished die in their need, exploited.

Deep within their hearts an ageless blame instilled,
The oppressed of soul live their creed, exploited.

Sadly seduced by a deeply wicked charm,
On deadly smoke the enslaved feed, exploited.

Lands rich in resource swayed by greater powers,
In hopeless vain their peoples plead, exploited.

Wishing he had strength to change humanity,
Zahhar would see not one more deed exploited.

        A grueling week.  One hundred or more degrees on the paper machine floor.  Hours spent waiting for one inspection.  Ache of feet in leather workboots.  Sweat-drenched clothes.  And now home.

        With a heart as big as the world, our dog greets me at the driveway before my children do.  In his high-pitched whine, a thousand tomes of re-acquaintance.  I always kneel down to level our heads as he plants his long-eared muzzle into the curve of my left shoulder, and then waits patiently for me to complete with my arm the circle of arrival.  In two minutes' time he's told me all he knows, which is more than I've gained from a week-long social contract.

        Our children each have friends over and there is joy in all the added, clamorous youth in the house.  My wife does her artwork as summer light bathes the room in blue-smoke shadows, breezes lifting the paper on which she works.  Words of catching up.

        Wandering in the kitchen, I notice a can of cashews on the counter.  On the side panel, their exotic origins are dully listed: Brazil, Vietnam, India, Indonesia.  Images rush in like the sudden flood of a heart's misstep, all vicarious the trilling of strange tongues, scent of ancient flexing cities, the colors of doorways, roads flanked with shimmering lines of palms.

        Eating a handful, a suddenly richer taste.  What luxury! these things we take so completely for granted, food from distant places, rarities that once divided publicus from imperium, spread out upon a noble Roman's table.

        Evening wind brings a refreshing coolness and I stand with eyes closed, listening as it builds, crests and falls among the young leaves of the old poplar beside our house. Pan's flute: the god we invented to remind us from time to time that we're not born with shoes.

                        a cashew: to think
                        that within its moon-curved shape
                        are the suns and skies
                        of all those infinite worlds
                        that begin with this street

Excerpt from HER ALONE
(a journal kept as my daughter sojourns three months alone
 in the high Sierra Mountains)
Jane Reichhold

Saturday 7/6/02
Today, as I follow Heidi's path across the map, I see she crosses the San Joaquin River to enter the Ansel Adams Wilderness. How young our country is to be giving large patches of landscape the name of someone who has lived in my lifetime. I even know people who knew Ansel Adams well - Mary and Jim Alinders worked for him and were friends with him in his last years. And yet great mountains and deep valleys bear the name (and refuse to name the bears) from this photographer. Will Heidi's camera know the connections through which it is being carried? Are there spirits in these lands that have been colored by a human existence? Only she can find out for me and she goes there alone. I have to trust what she has learned in her lifetime, what she has learned beyond my small influence, and trust that if she is not adequately prepared, she will get a second chance.

HAIKU SEQUENCE 

    For Eunice Baumann Nelson
    INDIAN ISLAND, OLD TOWN MAINE
    Barbara Robidoux 

               Last of her kind
               wild orchid blooming
               in winter.

               Raven hair gone white
               memory flown away
               the loon cries on the river.

               We laugh at ourselves
               eating fresh strawberry pie
               with plastic forks.

               Chain smoking
               "Indians don't die of lung cancer"
               tobacco is sacred.

               "Tell me when she leaves"
               I make her daughter promise
               and I will sing her home.

SOLO RENGA

AMONG RUINS
Miriam Sagan 

Mushroom rocks,
alkaline washed soil -
far mesa

playing twenty questions
on the empty highway

Bible Church -
Health Center -
in Navajo

one sign sells:
lottery tickets, fireworks

sad young couple
caressing
by a truck

my daughter's stuffed animals
on the motel bed

gray sculpted badlands
black crow -
unrelenting blue

I don't get up to see
balloons float above the lake

white jimson flower -
in the ruined wall, green line
of river stones

granary
opening into
empty granary

keyhole shaped kiva
full of grass

the ant people
underfoot of
tourists

blue tail of the lizard
flicks into shadow

my only child
on the top of
the ferris wheel

thorn through my sneaker
draws blood

Peruvian flute
among tamarisk trees
swollen river

Shiprock monolith
sailing on desert

power plant smoke -
jetplane leaves a trail -
smudged sky

my hair so long
I have to hold it
out of the way

making love to you
on the unfamiliar bed

picnicking
among ruins
again

little city of stone
sleeps

swallows -
round towers without tops
in the cliff's alcove

a vision of the past
across yellow mustard fields

what I gave -
what I took -
and this...

snow-capped peaks
plum blossoms in the valley

the old couple
plots their route on the map
held between them

golden carp
in the geothermal pool

mineral
stalagmite rising
from the hot spring

Japanese tourists
snap us instead

little apricot
tree completely covered
in green fruit

black cat regards us
as if we had never gone

white guinea pig
baby nurses
its brown mother

empty mailbox -
flag down -

asleep on the couch
dreaming of ladders
into the earth

how beautiful the mountains
look in the rear view mirror.

SIJO

Guitar music makes me weep, exquisite strings give me away.
I'm cast as tides upon far-flung shores into places, stolen...
Stolen again, this gypsy heart once danced to notes like these.

lover's moon
though untouchable
in my eyes

COMING HOME
Victor Gendrano

I've traveled many highways
rugged, winding and worn-out hills

climbed steep mountains and distant vales
crossed the seas in turmoil and peace;

now my journey is almost done
home awaits for final rest

SOLDIER'S WIFE
Victor Gendrano

She fingers absent-mindedly
her diamond wedding ring

as she listens to their love song
in the autumn afternoon.

Has it been that long already
that he was sent to the front?

TANKA

        passionate bees
        stroking the thistle flower
            it is enough
            now to imagine
            your return

        resting
        in the sunshine
        beneath the cottonwoods
        feeling the play
        of shadows on my face

        high mountain meadow
        red-winged blackbirds
        call, flutter, mate
            you and I once
            walked in a spring park

        in today's mail
        there was another rejection
            she phones
            and tells me
            she needs to talk

                                               David Bachelor 

TANKA
Debra Woolard Bender 

Deep night sleeps
not, but wraps, softly
around places
black, between our limbs,
the fragrance of jasmine.

Growing up
with A-bomb ceiling
in my bedroom,
I dreamt of falling stars
at the end of the world.

This taper burns
down to a tallow pool,
melting away,
I open my hand, released
to a curl of smoke.

a few leaves left
on the tree
and me here unable to live
with or without
the love I so desperately sought

for ten years
we've come to this lake
for vacation-
in the camera this year
your smile a little less

in protest
the dog sleeps off
it's pillow on the hard floor,
what shall I do
to signal all that bothers me?

out of view
I read autumn poems
while my wife talks to a friend
their light laughter
lifts me from the page

I keep it ambiguous
knowing full well
a defined reason
for feeling down
can be dismissed

this long parade
of selves
morphing day by  day,
the comfort of cats
so many through the years

it was the way
she snapped at me,
caught looking in the trash,
our trash, my God
at our house

without knowing why
this Sunday morning
I feel like being alone
under a big top tent
with nothing there to see...

the price to fly
perhaps there
in the birds beak,
such tiny morsels
all day long

hugging
perhaps too long
but not long enough
to remember
her name

~*~

morning glories
enliven the view along
the road to work
everyday this old wish
to pick some for my office

plastic daisies
on the coffee table hold
a bee for some time
I can't teach it the way
to my garden's blossoms

a dark trail
lined by lily blossoms
and no moon
it's safe to trust the flowers
to guide one's way

                                 Rosa Clement 

in the soft clear sky
the shrub leaves
seem to be outlined -
a seagull disappears
on the horizon

with opened wings
the sparrows bathe
in hot sand -
my old schoolmaster says
that rain is approaching

for the first time
reading the manuscripts
of a great poet -
should I believe the trembling ink
or the verses full of hope?

                                            Coman Sonia Cristina

scientists say the blend
of all lights in the universe
is cosmic green
here at Joe's Deli my daughter
holds out a dollar

as dinner guests we
are too polite to mention
invisible sand
clings to leaves in these mouthfuls
chafing our conversation

 flock of turkey hens
            gathers in morning on hill
            gold uterine gourds
            cluster on kitchen table
            where women sip tea and talk

                                                  Sandra L. Graff 

pa said to ma
excuse Momi from house chores
she has a brain
now in second childhood
I still flunk housecleaning

                                                 Momi Kam Holifield

TOWER OF MIRRORS
Elizabeth Howard 

               in the tower of mirrors
               the sun paints rainbows
               prisms of iridescence -
               reality transformed
               by a trick of light

               alone in the forest
               a twig snaps in the shadows -
               eyes follow me,
               my heart pounding
               from this breathless pace

               through beveled glass
               many reflections -
               arms laden with gay baskets
               lucent acres of gauze
               gathered about me

               cooling by the pond
               this humid evening -
               a flash of lightning
               conceals fireflies,
               reveals the heron

               deep snow in the curve
               rising mist hides ditches,
               the creek down below -
               the car skids
               me praying to a veil of white

               shining in the creek path
               what I think a copper penny,
               a good luck piece,
               a snail traveling
               trillium to trillium

               yellow bulbs flashing
               in the dewy grass;
               when they fly away
               I perceive goldfinches -
               these old weak eyes

               granddaughter's house
               a catalpa flowering
               a bobwhite calling -
               dazzled, I see myself
               a child on grandma's porch

~*~

winter day
in a shabby room
scribble scribble
not believing
a word of it

stretching a wing
to the morning light
pet bird wakes up
I lean close, my face
convex upon his iris

beach at sunset
surf purple and cream
by a driftwood blaze
lone clarinetist
plays Amazing Grace

                                    Ruth Holzer

                our photographs
                of mountain wildflowers
                six months later
                they bring us such pleasure
                as the north wind blows

                infant once so ill
                smiles at her with sparkling eyes
                all of two now
                he delights in fast music
                and hitting fly balls

                a day filled
                with writing poems . . . revising
                such a treat
                to pick up the phone
                and hear your voice again

                washed in
                with the incoming tide
                a child's shoe
                was it lost while making sandcastles?
                or lost when she went out too far?

                this year, again,
                those on our Christmas list
                who have passed on
                for everyone crossed off
                an added sorrow

                                                           Jean Jorgensen

OBSERVATIONS FROM A SAILBOAT
Kirsty Karkow

the rote
of ocean swells
endlessly
I listen, listen
to the pounding surf

overboard
flotsam and jetsam
empty shells
from a bowl of beach peas
collected for our dinner

I swam
in turquoise water
last night
the sound of lapping waves
coloured all my dreams

a sea duck
swims between the pilings
it penetrates
dark weedy spaces
hidden from my world

the boat shifts
uneasily at anchor
my watch
windy blueblack clouds
and bolts of lightning

~*~

passing your building
     I glance to see
     if you're out
     in the garden swing
     empty again today

gone our wedding gift
     of the Japanese tea set -
     I ponder my ex
     over the rim
     of a chipped blue mug

this scented candle
     I've kept
     for a special occasion
     shall I light it now
     for this ordinary day?

jumping into
     a pick-up truck
     the girl
     with the swinging pony tail
     revs up spring

our memory
     suddenly sharp
     and fresh
     ink leaking
     all over my hands

my son
     singing songs from Oliver!
     as we walk
     through the long grass
     before the rain

                                   Angela Leuck

A SINGLE KEY
Thelma Mariano

it mocks me
on this tranquil night
a half moon
that's unabashedly yellow
somehow whole, yet incomplete

a single key
fits into a single lock
on my door
no matter how I turn it
the only one home is me

my yearning
on a quiet summer's day
in the chugging sounds
of a small yacht as it
pulls away from the quay

by now wary
of new beginnings
I watch how
a single star flickers
in the blackness of sky

oh -
for some clarity in my life!
in the haze
from far-off forest fires
a pale outline of the sun

will my life
always feel this unsettled?
a flurry of pink
peony petals scattered
on the morning breeze

~*~

this spring moon
illumines your attraction
so intense
every line of your face
traced by my hand

a loud frog
outside my window
keeps calling
is there no answer
is he lonely too

little did I realize
that it would be the last time
when we said goodbye
now the trees are bare
and home seems so far away

your birthday
here flowers are in bloom
still I wonder
are they in bloom there
or is it just another year

squirrels search
the grass in preparation
against winter
my son drops a penny
into his piggy bank

                            Keith McMahen

FLY ME TO MANY LANDS
Carol Purington 

Hospital walls were white
    mine bloom crazy-quilt bright
    patterned
        with photographs of where I live
        postcards of where I dream

The story of Jonah -
    narrow my bed in the belly
        of this iron lung
    yet wide enough for the dreams
any child would chase

My childhood room
    four-square but with a fifth corner
    no one ever saw -
        a crimson carpet waited there
        to fly me to many lands

Heidi in black-and-white:
    Shirley Temple with golden curls,
    Clara dark, like me,
        only she left her wheelchair
        on a mountain

Even in the dream
marveling at the way
        my body floats -
I who cannot move
swim free of gravity

Garden party -
    taking home golden daylilies
        and the words
            tossed my way by another guest:
            "I'd rather die than be like her"

This sky I call mine
weathered by wandering clouds
    no monsoons
        but enough of rain and rainbows
        to fill all the words I know

~*~

dawn
shares its pink
with a winding path -
i am on a train
going to my hometown

listening to a song
in a language
unfamiliar to me,
i only know that
it is sad

                                     K  Ramesh 

ACCUMULATING REDOLENCE
one night
     you emptied the sea
     trees standing by
     still know you

was this an early knot
vocalic in its twist
      the bud reddening
        against her blush
thorns barely dissolved

the opening gesture
     a sprinter at rest
     paring
     shoulder blades'
     isosceles triangles

bats     the moon husked
     its weight may impel
      white out of balance
            out of traversing
          light on balconies

          the edge
recalled in curtains
         the fewest occasion
          possibly scheduled
                     shadow-shy
                     side by side
snake come pour
       your question marks
       into loose sand
       fleeing
       traces of her and mine

metastasized contour
the fiber optics of a city
              humming
zero                         one
in a lake of messengers
mouths don't shut   open

                                                  Werner Reichhold

~*~

wind-blown sand
I awaken to gulls
gliding
and pretend they're dreaming me
above my head

pines grow cones
swallows feed young
I sway
with the waving branches
as this poem arrives

two gray whales
near shore with their baby
its spout smaller
   a pregnant couple follows
   on the bluff above

                                         David Rice 

Coffee, a bagel
At Downtown Sub -
Spring days like this
I know
You're really dead

winter nests
revealed on bare branches
as if your heart
were what? - waiting
for something to return

                            Miriam Sagan 

NO  MOIST  SECRETS
Ram Krishna Singh

Layers of dust thicken
on the mirror water makes
the smuts prominent:
I wipe and wipe and yet
the stains stay like sin

When I have no home
I seek refuge in the cage
of your heart and close
my eyes to see with your nipples
the tree that cared to save from sun

In the forest of your hair
my finger searches
the little pearl of blood
that stirs the hidden waters
and contains my restlessness

Crazy these people
don't know how to go down
with the swirl and up
with the whirl but play
in the raging water

The lips in her eyes
and long hours in the mouth-
no moist secrets
between us to reveal:
now our backs to each other

All her predictions
could come true had I paid her
the fees for writing
psychic reflections on dreams
I failed to realize in life

Wrinkles on the skin
remind me of time's passage
year by year traveled
long distances renewing
spirit and waving goodbye

Feeling  the difference
between a tin house and
a weather proof tent:
on the Yamuna's bank
Kumbh deluge to wash sins

With black and white marks
and nest of ants on its skin
the tree grows taller
shining through the geometry
of sun, moon and halogen

My voice
brown like autumn
crushed in noises I can't
understand days pass in colors
buried

Before the foamy
water could sting her vulva
a jellyfish passed
through the crotch making her shy -
the sea whispered a new song

footnotes:

KUMBH: Hindus assemble on the banks of the Yamuna in Allahabd every six and 12 years for a holy dip in the river, seeking release from their sins. The last Kumbh festival  at the end of 2000 was the century's biggest, in which many foreigners also participated. They stayed in the weather-proof tents while the natives had to stay in tin tents. Over ten million people took a bath in the river.

SUMMER IN THE COUNTRYSIDE
Aya Yuhki 

watching
a small stream at the intake
of seeding fields
running down
murmuring and sparking

in rice fields
not a figure seen
under the sun
perfect silence reigns
over the green surface

sunshine
effusing in early summer
a bus goes
along the river bank
like a beetle

thicket of green reeds
standing straight
above turbid water
at the curve
of an inlet

in bed
at dawn
I slap at a mosquito
buzzing about my cheek
powerlessly

fog drifting
from dark cedars
on summer mountains
tonight
I really hate my timidity

PARENTHETIC
Debra Woolard Bender 

End of a respiratory flu:
a night of coughing fits
and I didn't take
the cherry flavored syrup.

Past fifty last year,
now every cough
sounds like mother's.

(Mom's memory,
past seventy years thinking,
is better than mine
: could be the mile-high
Denver, Colorado air...
I live at sea-level.)

Planting celosia,
her elegantly curved thumbs
my short, straight thumbs.

F laze ‘n f licker, sord a temptonitious
p lace dans ton regard
cadeaux you’s eating cross the eye lake

stance shut spake loop gut
shed head
strut soup lake’s cut pants

lout itch gut nap steam
loop soup
dream slapped hut ditch cloud

waiting for a bus
a chinese neighbor speaks
to me in chinese

you can keep talking forever
we’re finally leaving:
are we there yet?

ok, dawn’s over!
the day’s now truly begun:
the sun’s… above the bus!

is it sunday or monday?
people commuting as we speak

the hoses off his head
before this car
inside
the market: Elvis

talk show, graveyard shift.
that guy who’d vowed suicide…
calls back one more time

women pose on the hood
of a stranding white nova

the boss comes to rescue
the guy who came to rescue
the guy who couldn’t

noah notices: women
went topless at the hotsprings

hearing them    not hearing them

birds calling     the river rapids

iridescent blue
baby dragonflies
perch / hover / perch
around blades of pampas plumes
grown-ups zoom all around the shore

big round gray stone
on an oblong gray boulder
sunning itself

even a tiny pebble
hosts barnacles & moss

fly lands on my wrist
reads, flies off as the page…turns

all  slides into a black void
but our candle-lit faces

SOME OF THE TALL GRASS
Sheila Murphy

some of the tall grass grows

she watches her C drive be

defragged, a near-full moon,

still shadows very quiet traffic

evening mass pale as these hills

more gray space filling space

I gave advice today

a form of blood and guess

near midnight this green tea

has steeped enough

tonight when I held the door open

some of the light fused

with the temperature

we said goodnight, the C drive

still in fragments, gradually

diminishing under her gaze

REQUISITE SEAMS
Sheila Murphy

Thatch voices its approximation to protect the house

as an intended voice

Shards of enclosure mean the lack of an enclosure

Look toward sequined sky eliciting the givens,

various.

Across are layers of evidence become the small

intended sky redeeming its dark screen.

Impressions house the gloss where too few curfews have

been listed on a warden's resume

one thinks to have ingratiated citizens.

Who's listening to the cue cards sing on point

to confer with in avoidance of confusion

fused with depth to limit some surpassive entity

still strung alongside vacuum qua vacuum

bracketed and summed and torqued within the confines

of confinement.

Does it matter what to visit where?

Who mentions the squeals informally having mirrored butterflies? Sensations themselves accumulate toward sky No better than unguarded moments beaming their momentum. When collective inter-mention vaults over a comma then the sentence is fulfilled.

The sentence is approximate.

The syllables occur in fine obliquity

at rest within a formulating context

that bespeaks informal confidence.

SCHWA
Sheila Murphy

one selected gravity

in place (what else)

of rising

never to be heard

from again

HOMILY
Sheila Murphy

arrogance is pretty fat

it lags behind the 200-day moving average

squinting through the short end

of the telescope at something

that resembles arrogance the noun

placed next to arrogance the platinum

recording that still skips

afterimages retain water you know

versus air that you do not

one of your children insists on breathing

in your previously hoarded atmosphere

it's tough to be resilient because

everyone takes advantage plus

you stretch yourself like someone who insists

on talking duties as though they lived

on one big plate

that loft where one breastfeeds

narcissistic emblems one pretends

exhibits an unselfishness

but it is not that

it is the unfettered lust

for mirror

after mirror after mirror