Submitted by Clayton Medeiros on May 20, 2014
Riding the train from Washington, D.C.
to New York City, childhood memories
rise from the spring woods. No leaves
hide the bright green skunk cabbage
emerging from bedraggled winter leftovers.
Memory rustles boyish searches for
frontier adventures in Connecticut woods.
East coast houses rush by interspersed
with nascent green fields. Soon, the city’s
factories, warehouses, brackish creeks,
rows and rows of junked cars, freight
trains parked in long useless lines,
wait their turn for one more long haul,
run down tenements bereft of possibility.
Manhattan’s sky line in the distance.
Submitted by Clayton Medeiros on April 26, 2014
As time went on its circular way,
I stopped telling the story. Initially,
listeners became enamored, yet,
were soon lost in my convolutions,
hesitations, moments of ineptitude,
recaps, mythic reconsiderations,
about something I saw just once,
long ago, before I could show them
or anyone else. You had to be there.
Who am I to rustle up data to argue
one way or the other? But I know
what I saw, what happened. I am
condemned to serve as witness,
since no one else was there.
Submitted by Clayton Medeiros on April 13, 2014
Brahma lying on the lotus blinks
Ah, another universe
Brahma lying on the lotus blinks
Ah, another universe
Brahma lying on the lotus blinks
Ah, another universe
Submitted by Benjamin Gorman on April 12, 2014
While I read,
one hand,
looking for something to do,
busies its fingers on my forehead.
Fingers are curious, restless,
always testing, exploring.
They caress subtleties of skin
probe a landscape of bone beneath:
ridges of polished stone clothed in snug wrappings.
Here are form and façade,
structure and veneer.
Ape brains abuzz,
we are curious too—
but fear sets limits:
skeletons dismay us,
ours carefully buried
in flesh that captivates and enthralls us.
We mistrust their hidden engineering
erector set beneath pretty dressing;
we doubt the bones’ intentions,
cringe at their mechanical demands,
worry at their subterranean pains.
Our usual curiosity stops
at deeply buried things—
sub-cellar foundations,
dark-shrouded mysteries
and the ponderous
roots of things.
Submitted by Clayton Medeiros on March 31, 2014
A man of reassuring bulk
filled the bar room door,
hesitated would not be
the right word. He was
a force unto himself,
waiting for a right moment
to do whatever was next in
his day now that it was
coming to an end in
the North End Tavern where
names are irrelevant,
where size does matter.
where drinks are bought,
shared with a friendly crowd.
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