This makeup covered her once pale blue eyes
and dampened her once bright and blond hair
as she embraced Jake’s best friend.
Jake was like a sheet of iron and his lead legs

walked by her and his idealism was
a yellow smiley face pin covered with two drops
of blood, and her memory was a moldy
picture that he couldn’t destroy. He sat down

and realized that closure was a runaway
umbrella caught in a tornado,
but he stayed seated and ignored her; a train
on its track, and a paper bowl in the sun.

Luke Skoza is a Senior English Major at SIUC. He was the winner of the 2009 Academy of American Poets Undergraduate Prize.

I think; therefore, I make cohere.
This is the Fifth Avenue
of knowing:
the control park.

Light, although it moves
in part like a sea,
does not go around corners.

Everything is violated, here.
In this picture is a lake
and a garden, a walk,
for example,
that were here
before you were born.

The lake is no more.
Yet we can see it. Here.
Where is here?
What is the law?

We are moored,
not to our bodies,
but to the boathouse
by a trick of space:
a living continuum of light.

The lady’s parasol
tips a circle in the sunlight
only for a second:
she’s looking at you.

Ultimately,
This is a window,
a black hole

punched open on the void
through which we look
to see old stars.

It is not difficult
to look up
at the lost light
of the novae, the pulsars,
midnight,
and, in a ballet,
stand on the toe
of the slipper and turn,

then to look
at these creatures
at noon,
looking back at us:

       they are lost clocks,
       music boxes,
       who keep time
       by not moving,
       by falling in place
       in their orbit.

It is illusion,
a magic:

       the molecules of the silver
       on the paper are alive,
       moving to sustain the view
       under your gaze,

       molecules that were once themselves,
       light.

It is all relative.
So, look closely; we are all together;
we will meet our dead fathers
alive somewhere again
on Fifth Avenue, in the park;

for now, we must settle
for this:

      I will be gone soon,
      to talk, to think,
      but you will know me;
      we will meet again,

out there
among the other lost creatures
found in the changing waves
of that dry sea….
                         (applause)

Robert Blake Truscott has had work appeared in over 40 journals in 20 states and several anthologies, including The Virginia Quarterly Review, Nimrod, The Mississippi Review, Sou’wester, The Greenfield Review, The California Quarterly, and The Literary Review. More recently, his work appeared in the anthology In The West of Ireland, and in The Hampden-Sydney Review Anthology, among others. Mr. Truscott is published in a number of educational texts published by the Research Education Association, and he was the poetry editor for more than a decade with Stone Country before that journal ceased publication. He is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars and currently teaches writing as a distance learning instructor and as an instructional designer for Colorado Technical University, and Regis University. Mr. Truscott was the Assistant Director and Writing Specialist for The Douglass/Cook College writing Center at Rutgers University for seven years, and was a Senior Communications Consultant for SWG Consulting in New York City for 15 years. He is currently married and lives in Colorado in the shadow of Pikes Peak.

Michael Leong is the author of two books of poetry e.s.p. (Silenced Press, 2009) and Cutting Time with a Knife (Black Square Editions / The Brooklyn Rail, forthcoming) and two chapbooks The Great Archivist’s / Cloudy Quotient (Beard of Bees Press, 2010) and Midnight’s Marsupium (Forks, Knives and Spoons Press, forthcoming). His translation of the Chilean poet Estela Lamat I, the Worst of All was published by BlazeVOX [books] in 2009. He lives in New York City and blogs at michaelleong.wordpress.com and bigother.com.

Michael Leong is the author of two books of poetry e.s.p. (Silenced Press, 2009) and Cutting Time with a Knife (Black Square Editions / The Brooklyn Rail, forthcoming) and two chapbooks The Great Archivist’s / Cloudy Quotient (Beard of Bees Press, 2010) and Midnight’s Marsupium (Forks, Knives and Spoons Press, forthcoming). His translation of the Chilean poet Estela Lamat I, the Worst of All was published by BlazeVOX [books] in 2009. He lives in New York City and blogs at michaelleong.wordpress.com and bigother.com.

Michael Leong is the author of two books of poetry e.s.p. (Silenced Press, 2009) and Cutting Time with a Knife (Black Square Editions / The Brooklyn Rail, forthcoming) and two chapbooks The Great Archivist’s / Cloudy Quotient (Beard of Bees Press, 2010) and Midnight’s Marsupium (Forks, Knives and Spoons Press, forthcoming). His translation of the Chilean poet Estela Lamat I, the Worst of All was published by BlazeVOX [books] in 2009. He lives in New York City and blogs at michaelleong.wordpress.com and bigother.com.

Born in Timisoara, Romania in 1974, Gene Tanta immigrated to Chicago in 1984 with family at the age of 10. He earned his M.F.A. from the Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop and his Ph.D. from UW-Milwaukee in creative writing with a literary specialization in twentieth-century American literature; European avant-garde; and in films, essays, and poems of protest. He translates contemporary Romanian poetry. His publications include: EPOCH, Ploughshares, Circumference Magazine, Exquisite Corpse, Watchword, Columbia Poetry Review, The Laurel Review and two collaborative poems with his late mentor Reginald Shepherd anthologized in Saints of Hysteria: A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry. Looking ahead, he will chair a panel at the 2010 AWP titled, Immigrant Poetry: Aesthetics of Displacement.

I have looked into Emily Post and come away with the following example of an apology: “My gardener has just told me that our chickens got into your flower beds. I hope they have not done a great deal of damage.” I hope it suffices. Let me add that traditionally, I have considered self-control the appropriate and reasonable accessory: every careerwoman should have some. But lately I have been carrying out experiments to test my hypothesis: the journals all encourage it. So here: try it yourself. Take a slice of fresh multigrain bread. Wait by the toaster and smell the hot deaths of falling crumbs until your slice is golden brown. Catch the moment in its pop-up when it hangs in the air, that millisecond of hover. Lavish it with butter left to soften on the counter. The cream soothes clustering holes – be careful not to drip. Now pick it up, place it just inside your teeth. Hold it there gentle as a hunting dog with a duck. Walk around your house, toast suspended. Pick up some laundry. Polish a baseboard. See how long it takes before your jaws crunch of their own accord, little spurts of grateful acid rushing to meet your tongue.

Jaime Warburton (MFA, Sarah Lawrence) teaches in the Writing Department of Ithaca College, where many people bring their dogs to work. Jaime has a cat, though, and leaves her at home. Her writing has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Sotto Voce, The Broome Review, Storyscape, and The Collagist; she is the author of the poetry collection Note That They Cannot Live Happily (Split Oak Press).

Somewhere between satellites and cells; I is heard.
          Beyond that of preceding decades; Modern Man
has made his mark. Who groans,
          and sighs, and snarls, and cries;
Who baffles in perplexity when infringed.
          Yet all jargon is foreign to I (Xenophobics need not apply)
A language without fair democracy shall not survive.
          Darwin dances in his grave.
This is pure noise.
          This is static.
This is mantra:
          Dare not to believe in self;
thyself will become an allegory,
          a fictitious rhyme,
a lullaby or a twinkle of oblivion.
          The truth is there are no truths.
The truth is like a network of Wikipedia edits.
          And there are no truths better than fiction.
Perhaps we all become the misfortunes of our thoughts;
          the dilemmas of trying to be something we’re not.
The privileges of being someone we want.
          Yet desire of the deluded mind has the power
To create at will,
          To destroy at will.
To subjugate a demented world.
          Or to sleep fallow in its pig hole.
This is modern man’s great burden.
          It is the overbearing sense of self worth.
It is the pinnacle of the giant ego.
          It is what sinks ships, crumbles towers, and sends the youth to war.
Too much weight will hinder the mortal flower.
          This is what fosters civilizations to rise and fall;
Walls go tumbling like a maladroit donkey.
          How do we not honor an ounce of empathy?
We, the people, deserted decency and replaced it with occupancy.
          We, the people, have become our possessions.
There’s nothing worse than becoming things; Objects shall not be the subject.
          Thus spoke from learn’d experience.
It is the most terrifying of occurrences.
          O’ I shall wait for the coming day.
In time to listen to the Om of the written verse (whispering universe).
          A vision between two camera lenses; a reel for the third eye.
                    All possibilities expanding balloon sized and evenly spread.

We, the seekers of information, have drawn poor conclusions.
          The only fact about existence is knowing we will one day be forgotten.
To know we exist eternally is preposterous,
          Poppycock to some degree of standards.
Yet we are alive; breathing and pulsating, vibrating and shimmering
          at every hour of every day of our lives.
And to this, I cordially invite,
          A common cry to the almighty breeders of plight:
We are not your grotesque preoccupation.
          we are not your self imagined indignation.
We shall be the provokers of millenniums to come.
          We are the study guides to your damn nation!
Strife has brewed a cynic and it’s far too late to panic.
          The day wanes on with the clicking of a clock.
Generations askew as my lineage recedes in the rear view.
          A panoply of puffy white clouds in the sky grown dim.
Why? O’ Why does the poet spear drama?
          And Why? O’ Why do bleak nights spur moments;
Of tragedy – where the world seems dark and lonesome?
          With the screeching of animals in the night.
Scared and waiting for their sudden bane.
          It’s the inevitability of each organism; Death is an orgasm.
And then birth- familiar to my linguistic origin. The orange peel.
          I am your sun. I am your fire. I am your rage.
Who sleeps in poverty with a stupefied droll of keen dreams.
          All amounting to a mountain till
A morning dew glosses the window pane. The sun is up and curious.
          Have I witnessed the age of information, bamboozled,
over stimulated, and in need of catharsis?
          Yes.
And let me tell you this,
          to say we are not impending on the fringe of our existence
is to deny the earth’s burps and hiccups
          and denial is a block in a city of avenues.

                                                                 Shall we proceed?

Thomas DeJosia is the author of Reel Life.

Nevertheless he refuses
to surrender to color, plotting
his escape with the help of blind critics
who know routes underground
past retrospectives of impressionists
posted on the shoreline,
their gray checks scanning the sea.

Condemned to a life on the run,
he perceives every shape a potential informant
and hides between the lines,
walking softly in canvas shoes, aware
readymade police are set to storm
on the shakiest hint of an installation,
armed with the stiffened hairs of sable brushes
and a spray of turpentine.

J. R. Salling is an antiquarian bookseller in Columbus, Ohio, specializing in early modern science, magic and medicine. His writings have appeared in many on-line and print publications, including Ars Medica, Dark Horizons, Pindeldyboz, Hobart, NOÖ Journal, Opium Magazine, elimae, Thieves Jargon, and Mad Hatters’ Review.

I was not planning for God to look like this.
Sometimes he was wrapped in many thick layers
of heavy wool sweaters and blankets, his furry

face protruding as though it rose from within
the volcanic core of a mountain. People say
they tried to give him things, wanted to do

anything they could for him. But he had
no use for money, gifts, flattery, publicity.
His sayings were few: “Feed people. Love.”

Rabbis and mullahs might very well be displeased
at the lack of detail contained in his short list
of two commandments. He chanted the name

of Rama with short, explosive, abrasive bursts.
Sometimes he appeared clean-shaven and freshly
washed. Other times random splotches of red

and white paint covered his head, and his mouth
cracked open with a messy smile and a wide tongue.
They say he wanted our liberation, nothing more.

He never wrote a book, never pushed to publish.
There were few ceremonies, no ostentation,
no self-consciousness. He could swallow a bottle

of acid and not feel the slightest effect.
He never advertised. The world came to him.
There were no sex scandals, no corruption charges.

Businessmen and politicians sought his counsel,
although he never sought the limelight. His students
were all more famous than he ever wanted to be.

One bit of practical advise he gave: “If you loan
money to a saint, don’t expect to get it back.”
He fed millions of people, but asked for nothing.

A word of warning for those that approached him:
“You can leave me. I won’t leave you. Once I
catch hold of you. I don’t let go.” If only

my mothers had felt the same. If only my lovers
had told me this. On cold nights I picture him
and am embarrassed at all my truthless knowledge.

Mel C. Thompson is a product of the San Francisco open mic scene and was first published in their underground zine “Bullhorn” in 1990. In the 90s his poetry was also published in such magazines as The Chiron Review, The Bay Area Guardian, Wordwrights and The Haight Ashbury Literary Review. He featured extensively in such venues as the Paradise Lounge, Café Babar and the Chameleon Club. Currently he is anthologized in Beatitude Golden Anniversary Issue, 1959-2009, The Best of The Texas Poetry Calendar and Poets From Hell (New American Underground Poetry). In 2008-2010 he has been published frequently online at such sites as “nthposition.com,” “sunkenlines.com” and “languageandculture.net,” and also appeared in print in The World Poets Journal (China), Jackknife Express (Canada) and Over The Transom (San Francisco). He has been recently featured at The Berkeley Poetry Festival, The San Francisco Beat Museum, The Frank Bette Center For The Arts and the San Francisco Park Branch Library. Publication is pending in The California Quarterly.