Marianne Milton

Dull in Duplicate

One, my naked self; the other, guaranteed in green ink the dour bank stamped here. Signature shadowed signature, and I was giving it all away; still they wanted proof that the I who signed yesterday unadorned by evidence was me. I was : rhymed, dull in duplicate, lost. At night, though, some other flourished in dream-pun.

Don 't spill your guts. And a kitten, tom at the belly with its lovable intestines swagged outside and mew ling, pawed at her wound-bigger-than-a-word-could-convey, and I watched, in a paralysis only Blake could care to illustrate, as she hurt herself with touch. Watched as any touch would torture her. Watched until finally she was led away.

Protect yourself from being mauled. A bam of a house with more doors than windows, then more windows than doors, was open at every entrance to drunks wandering. I barred the way with warnings shriller by the shriek, raised metal bedsteads on their short sides to allow humans to pass but not the white bear prowling. No one attended. Then the terrors of a woman mauled, and calm descended. On me. She would live. The others scattered. I tore the house up at its green roots.

Simon Perchik

And though it has no eyes it thrives inside my shadow - an invisible full-time mourner

step by step in the lining - that's the deal, it eats and I am calmed, my coat

kept warm by a parasite fed on slow climbing turns and marble - you can't hear its footsteps

flocking overhead the way stars are huddled and the overwhelming cold takes root in these gravestones

shoulder to shoulder -it's easy to get lost going down alone

while this microscopic worm clings by the mouthful as if it were saying the words.

You're never sure though the pages fit- it's a small stove used to walls that have no pictures

-it doesn't have to remember anymore why sparks take such a hold and little by little in secret

the way the sunlight shields the Earth from night after night the floor that never really warms

- you keep adding flames as if this old newspaper would still yellow become leaves again and slowly

an invisible bird climbing immense till there's no light left to breathe only the stars, tighter and tighter

circling the sun to silence it -each evening alone, hands held out you set fire an endless sorrow

and the plume already dry shedding its darkness on the ground for later and your shadow.

Ned Cannon

Flish II