The Pendulum
By Yurgis Baltrushaitis

When the dumb darkness most heavily clings,
Rhythmic and ruthless my pendulum swings.
Rustily creaking or whining dismay,
Urging each tarrying moment away.

Longing, it seems, for the days that are fled,
Down ancient stairways resounds someones tread.
Heavy the footfall on flagstones unlit,
Lower and lower and down to the pit.

Praying, it seems, for a long-vanished shore,
Dumbly...
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Saying Your Names
by Richard Siken

Chemical names, bird names, names of fire
and flight and snow, baby names, paint names,
delicate names like bones in the body,
Rumplestiltskin names that are always changing,
names that no ones ever able to figure out.
Names of spells and names of hexes, names
cursed quietly under the breath, or called out
loudly to fill the yard, calling...
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I Could Be a Poet
by Taylor Mali

I think I could be a poet because I like to wear a lot of black.
And I can think of incongruous images like a Marxist with a trust fund.
A Porsche pulling a U-Haul, a lobsterman in Birkenstocks sipping a cappuccino,
with his pinkie pointing toward the sky.
I have studied the poets who sing song...
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Radiant ranks of seraphim
Stir the air about our bed.
With their windy wings and dim
Our hot cheeks are comforted.

Low the circling seraphs bend,
And we tremble and rejoice
At hosannas that ascend,
Winged with their unearthly voice.

Cloudy luminous faces hover,
And the wing-swept candles wane.
And our fiery breasts they cover
As with hidden holy rain.

-Radiant Ranks of Seraphim By...
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Pinocchia

...instead of my nose
it was my boobs that grew.

But I hid my womanhood
until it hued like paint

on snow, dripped
from my ears you pierced
to make a girl out of me, curls
in my hair like Goldilocks,
lock-jaw dumb about my donkey ears,
blind as a cat to my ugly duckling,
but I sprouted my swans...

...and when my boobs...
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I seek for rhythmic whisperings
Where noises bandy
For life I listen wistfully
In footless banter.

I cast wide nets and tentative
In lakes of sorrow.
I go toward final tenderness
By pathways sordid.

I look for dewdrops glistering
In falsehoods gardens.
I save truths globules glistening,
From dust-heaps garnered.

I fain would fathom fortitude
Through years of wormwood
And pierce the mortal fortalice,
Yet...
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Below the sultry storm that seemed to lower,
An alien force, again I heard the call
Of my mysterious mate: the prisoned power
Of old dreams flared and flickered in its fall.

And with a cry of horror and of dolor
As of an eagle in an iron vise
My spirit shook its cage in quivering choler,
And tore the net, and issued to the...
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The Amphora

In a gay jar upon his shoulder
The slave morosely carries wine.
His road is rough with bog and boulder,
And in the sky no starlights shine.
Into the dark with stabbing glances
He peers, his careful steps are slow,
Lest on his breast as he advances
The staining wine should overflow.

I bear my amphora of sorrow,
Long brimming with the wine...
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When, clinging to your lidded coffin,
I saw you, love, on your last journey go,
No sobs my maddened heart could soften,
And I seemed dead, like you, below.
Yours was the grave men see so often:
Your small frame fitted snugly, so;
With leaden stupor blinded, I beheld it
Vanish, I heard the clods soft blow.
My coffin was not thusbut spacious,
And gay...
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With freedoms seed the desert sowing,
I walked before the morning star;
From pure and guiltless fingers throwing
Where slavish plows had left a scar
The fecund seed, the procreator;
Oh vain and sad disseminator,
I learned then what lost labors are.
Graze if you will, you peaceful nations,
Who never rouse at honors horn!
Should flocks heed freedoms invocations?
Their part is to be...
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