more rapidly
than does the sun linger
at the horizon
Were there anything forbidden
what could she be to dreams?
No,
unlike the tradition of sunset,
she never to bend
‘cept o’er lilac bushes
complimenting their scent with hers.

Cindra Halm

Jen Hanel

Poppy

Great farce,
This false nativity
Absent Christ –

That girl
Up the street,
Shrouded -
A Vaudeville Virgin,
Trapped in the limbs
Of charlatan magi
Bearing gifts,
The stillborn…

Her eyes wet mush,
Her feet half cremated;
They should finish her off -
She'd take up less space
In that cup she's holding.

Copyright © by Jen Hanel

Don Moss

Davidson's* 8^th Psalm

Assurance that all of life was billeted
To Earth shines around the wrist in gold.
Its chains, running to posts below the curve,
As well as prove the story we are told.

I was raised to bow to the truth of that
And, less, feel the stomach ache of science.
"What if I was born in Bombay?" my tenth-year
Mind had reasoned and has mumbled since.

Such reason deduced I’d be pure “Bombain,”
Hugged and whipped by Beings with many arms,
So where’s the relativity in that,
Fearing its goodness, consuming its charm?

I read that one bacterium on Mars
May sort all deities with Monday’s trash,
Mono-Gods stood in gods of methane gas,
Golden calves melted into coins for cash.

I hate how I can't say what I don't believe,
A friend quaked.
         So why covet just to lack,
         And isn't that number five of the Big Ten?
Seven...and...ten- neighbor's wife in the rack.

        So it is, and she is co-creator-
But what is found in one Adam Germ?
What is prophesied of non-crossing lines?
How completely these questions I have learned

Answer out in refractive paraphrase
About a god who does not go away,
Yet is cast to play the silent vagrant,
Quick shots, stereotyped, health in decay.

Now, decay, it seems, is not quick enough:
A federal judge orders that the ten
Laws- be removed, despite protestation,
Charging their presence the greater sin.

What confident Jehovah needs to prove
A thing more or leave a forwarding address?
The greatest test He gives is His absence,
Leaving us to spin out proofs without rest.

But my Greek mind must have been sleeping,
My neck sore from searching between the stars.
Hadn't Aristotle said Form dwells in things
And the sky, both as far and close as Mars?

*Donald H. Davidson, 1917-2003, American Philosopher

Jessica Schneider

Interiors
*Dorothy Wordsworth

The Barberry Tree where Rain gathers white
moss, evening walks
under Orion. William is too old to wander
morning’s recall
in perfect poise. I remember

my Brother in the Wood. Those days
neglect to follow
the Garden, unseen birds-
dimensions of Hawthorn
Hedges, black and pointed. A Moon overhangs

cypress and thrush. Distant,
it saddens the peas, now beaten
down, and the Garden overrun
with weeds. Was this all for Memory?
Once, we were

Hollies lost among the Green
semi-circles, places we walked as children, tottering
Summers that spin
daisies upon the turf.
Songs of the Lark, we have outgrown them. Winter lifts

you and I, as windowlight
crosses Dover. What needs you to be,
pressed strawberry
flower, Stars under the plum-
coloured ark? Freshness murmurs under your Sky.

A thousand shrouds-
still it plies the eye
with morning. How pleasing
in spring, wishing

earth, even if one falls
to the feet with some heaviness
at work, the deft loveliness
can only outlast

the ever-made move
on it: crawling
scents over another,
corollas carrying a girl

and her harp, the feather
dusted fennel
and seed, dandelions
beneath the rotten peach-

these things, the quiet
reach of reeds, a marvel
at the sentry, a heart’s pinch
within an arrested frame.

Name them: over-
esteemed, airs blue
as bonnet’s bells, the alternate
oblong leaves held together,

meant for every assorted weather.

Copyright © by Jessica Schneider

Return to OO