WHEN SHE LEAVES AT DAWN

by John Grey
  

 It's dawn.
 Either people leave
 or petals open
 but seldom  both.
 At least,
 I've just the luxury
 of my eyes
 and a garden full of  color
 precludes a car
 rolling down the driveway,
 a hand waving 
 in  reverse,
 It's dawn
 from the tip of the light
 to the last of the  shadow.
 Sleep knows it,
 cowers beneath the bed sheets.
 Coffee is  aware,
 pours itself into cups.
 But a beauty outdoors
 has no say in  
 a beauty indoors.
 Petals behave in
 accordance with the sun.
 But  which of them
 is Christine.
 And I am not the sun
 apparently.

den of thieves

by Christopher Mulrooney

it is trans-shipped mostly elsewhere

all this loot piled high in careless margins

with a red check mark on the manifest

signifying all told whither it was to go

annulled re-routed and stiffly all this merchandise simply gives up

throws up its hands bargains for the basement

in another town another chain store

with a feeling air of detachment

in the service shop and in the bazaars

they roll up in the carpet merchants from Zanzibar and sell them in Zozobra

 Bio: Christopher Mulrooney has written poems and translations in Dead Horse Review, Sawbuck, Pinstripe Fedora and Marginalia, criticism in Elimae, Parameter and The Film Journal, and a volume of poetry called notebook and sheaves.

So awe fulled the birthing
             of God's presence, new cauled

             in humble manger's destiny,

The base and apex of
             a starred cave's presents
             of all future festivals

Yet abandoned, forsaken to

             the crowned world's nails,

             every man's cursedness;

Farthest reach of faith

             this Apocalypso dancer

             crosses the Cosmos,

Morning us night-less;

             he compassions Earth
             ever peopling Heaven,

Emptying the pitiless bottom

             zeroing Apollyon 

             into ever's Now

Beloved one, Yeshua

             child of the  masses
             point man for us all.