You're Doing It Wrong, by Brad Liening

Two Poems by Stephen Mead

Going Under

 

It won't be so bad you know.

Perhaps a nice light rain, almost warm,

the droplets enough hush

to keep focus centered, no sliding

off of calm. Of course

motion is a must, to simply keep walking, one step,

then the next, every breath well-

placed to avoid surrendering

will and blacking out.

This bed of liquid asks at least

for deliberation, nothing else

really, a few strategically de­posited stones

and shoes left

as markers just outside the

tide's reach. Also,

song is essential, some music

either hummed or imagined to fill ears, senses,

so the nostrils, mouth, lungs

remain stationed in a sphere

of cognizant preparation,

the rationale of fingers,

limbs dancing submerged.

 

 

Facing Disappointment

 

Rarely easy money:

nerves entangled,

catgut on cobblestone,

birds pecking:

a lovely sight.

 

Melt, melt back

to the empty air space of fervor.

Now first visions accept defeat.

 

Who can resist it, this almost bag

lady in her backwards blouse, costume pearls,

hair barely combed, rescued, if you want to call it that,

by her dead husband's pension,

all the lost change of some posh 1950s gentlemen's room

in an historic Iowan hotel.

 

Her features tell the story.

Ours' too, chin up, eyes hot, blinked clear,

defying break down.

Stephen Mead

Apparition Poem #1180, by Adam Fieled

I went with her on
a daytrip inside her
head; there were kids’
toys, storybooks, red
monsters, fire trucks,
silver streaks, stairs,
rooms everywhere, it
was a funhouse, but
in each mirror she
looked different, and
I couldn’t see myself—

Adam Fieled

Four Poems by Mark Young

Taxonomy

 

It is the

animal entire

though taken apart

it might not

seem so. An-

alysis is a

handy tool

but draws

the breath

from. Leaving

shavings in

the long grass,

bleached bones,

the meat dis-

carded since

it otherwise

hides the frame.

 

 

The Ladies of the Afternoon

 

It is a different time

of day; & so the term —

though similar — de-

scribes a totally different

coterie. The ladies of

the afternoon, all

members of the same

choir, sit in their long

 

dresses in the drawing-

room listening to

one of their number

play Pathétique on

the new piano. A deli-

cate applause follows.

 

 

Later

 

The root here is "dote;"

which, based on an older

version of Adobe's now-

defunct Flash Player, means

"to show affection." That's

an empirical overview —

further analysis, whose

political purpose is

to imagine the kind of

interruption & disturbance

Taylor Swift & James Taylor

singing, say, Falling in Love

with Love on a prime-

time variety TV show

might do to the economy,

reveals a series of

corrections. How we

look now is not how

we have always traveled.

 

 

 

Galapagos

 

Thunder somewhere. Again

the moths. Light bends in a

severe curve to show me

where I've been, not where

I'm going. Star Trek re-runs

taping upstairs, L. in Mel-

bourne, the cat having to be

shown the meat in her bowl

 

before she starts eating it once

more. Like me she's growing

old, too foolish to come in out

of the heat, out of a humidity so

thick my cigarette smoke needs

claws to fight its way through.