It’s all madness. It has to end,
he kept repeating,
all along pressing me into the sand
that afternoon in Cabo,
drinking rain in between his words.
I will never forget you . . .
You’re in my bones . . .
in the very marrow, he continued,
a lazy hand cupping my left breast.
But I can’t leave her. You understand.
I looked up at him with swollen eyes.
He kissed my eyelids.
We made the moon howl, didn’t we? he sighed,
feeling powerful,
then whispered,

You know I will always love you.
I hugged him tightly
then emptied out all my love for him
with one quick thrust of my knee
in his groin.
He howled like never before.
And I will always hear your cry, I said,
rolling him off me for the last time.

Maria Ercilla was born in Havana. She has a B.A. in English and M.A. in Education from UCLA. Her stories and poetry have appeared in Calyx, Puerto del Sol, Amelia, and other journals. Her awards include The International Hemingway Poetry Award and the Allen Tate Memorial Award. Her work recently appeared in So Luminous the Wildflowers, an anthology of poetry by California writers. She is presently at work on her third novel, The Year of the Bad Boy. Ms. Ercilla lives in Los Angeles, California with her son and daughter.

He was never one
for talking much.

For affection
he’d offer
a joke or two.

Then the stroke. Bro
ken sentence chunks unglued syn
tax poured from him
some
times laughing and I
smiling with his smile
some
times crying, and well…

Now empty of words.

I wish him
power of syntax
reconstructed

lithe words to
reinvent his life to speak
to his wife “love”

to boggle grandkids
with boy tales
unleashing brash verbs
upon Hutchinson, Kansas.

Then to play with words:
swing them and slide them
to monkey around bar
ring nothing
and slowly
uncover
his poetry

father
who’d read only
the paper
before.

Michael O’Brien has been writing and publishing his poetry for forty years. His poetry has been widely published, most recently in a college text book, California: Dreams and Realities, Vol. IV (Bedord/St. Martins).

The day my father told me I was bad,
he stopped taking pictures of me.
I knew that not even Jesus
in all of his goodness
could save me.

For years, each night
I prayed to god,
each night I dreamed
my father raised his knife
against me.

He also taught my brothers,
to walk looking down,
but they searched for treasure:
crumpled dollar bills,
broken watches,
empty bottles we would redeem
at the grocery store
for a nickel.

I took each step
gingerly, watching
for the ground to come up
and meet me. I was looking
for salvation, head bowed,
trying to lay up
my treasures in heaven,
trying to believe
in my feet.

Each Sunday,
I watched the other girls
white shoes
running, heads held high,
feet flying out
behind them,
trusting Jesus
to catch them
if they should fall.

Kris McHaddad is a first grade teacher in the Leona Valley whose poetry has been published widely.

Disclosure hangs in the air, thick as the humidity.
Everyone smokes, everyone lies, everyone carries
that little ice ball in the crook of the stomach.
Over a cluttered suburban horizon, marriages
implode in small showers
of vacuum-tube mercury.
The dial dulls, falls silent. Resurges. Spews static.

Over these shabby rehab lawns
squirrels loll, not yet fat,
as summer withers down.
Why should they care?
The nutmeats in their caches aren’t talking.

Robbie Gamble is a nurse practitioner who works with the homeless, helping them gain
access to health care. His poetry has been published in Poesy, Edgz, The Christian Science Monitor, Ibbetson St., and Nerve Cowboy.

Well, yes,
I was found
to be swelling
the ranks of this nation
of petty addicts. We wandered
the landscape, our blinkers askew.
There were thresholds everywhere,
and we scuffed them all
with our little cloven angel feet.
Eventually, we learned not
to ruminate on justice, but to stand
back and watch the skies,
and then we began to discover untended parcels
left on our morning subway commutes. Sometimes
we even ignored the security warnings,
and opened them. Of course, we continued
to hoist up daily on callused knees,
anointing each other with spit and sacred mud,
floundering in our ever-widening vision.

Robbie Gamble is a nurse practitioner who works with the homeless, helping them gain
access to health care. His poetry has been published in Poesy, Edgz, The Christian Science Monitor, Ibbetson St., and Nerve Cowboy

I sit, age five, legs crossed, sprite-like, in my sisters’ hand-me-down,
bodice, puffed sleeves revived by satin ribbon.
On the cover of my prayer book, the drape of Jesus’ garment shields
two innocents like grace.

Years later, my sister, chubby-cheeked, kneels
in ruffled white nylon, her eyes already old.
Why didn’t we pass the thrice-blessed dress on to her?
In my giddiness in the May twilight did I forget its fragility,
as I hid under a parked Ford to avoid a ring-a-leavio dungeon?
Did we forget her? Too young, she knows a stranger’s smile false
and a black-veiled nun cruel.

On a screen, Christ floats, fingering the bread of life.
Like a Fourth of July sparkler, He flickers
behind her head.

Liz Dolan is a wife, mother, grandmother, and retired English teacher.  She is most proud of the alternative school she ran in the Bronx. She has seven grandchildren who live on the next block. Liz has published poems, memoir and short stories in New Delta Review, Nidus, Rattle, Pedestal, Ginbender, Mudlark and other journals. She has received many grants from the Delaware Division of the Arts and is currently implementing a grant by organizing a traveling poetry exhibit throughout southern Delaware.

After crawling to the bathroom
and watching red rice
splatter
then chicken
then the flushing
hoping

no one notices.

I remember second grade
informing the class everything
Chuck ate for breakfast.  Particle
by  particle, identifying lunch,
supper, breakfast. Up Chuck Chuck.

So damn funny, I spent one more day
in the hallway listening outside
the room, Then the principal’s
heels clicking, wanting to know
what I did this time.

Did it matter?

My daughter and I are spending the night with friends,
and I am the guest from Hell
hoping they hear nothing.
The husband sees me race to the bathroom
short coat pulled over naked body.
He must know what is going on,
and coming up.

Their fancy Bombay gin.
His rotisserie chicken.

Later I wake to a doctor
pressing hands on my liver,
glaring, saying “You need to give
your liver a rest.”

Just like that, I knew everyone heard,
remembering my own father crouched above the can,
drunken accidents, endless visits to jail,
paychecks purchasing endless drinks
but not one box of food,
heads shaking when I announce my stomach hurts
before crawling into bed, avoiding
the floating Scrabble tiles.

Rest.
Rest.
The liver needs a rest.

Diane Payne lives in a dry town in the Delta.  Her poems have been published in Circle, Maverick, Snow Monkey, Hip Mama, Literary Mama, Story House Quarterly, The Concrete Wolf, and numerous other magazines.