RELAPSE
by John Grey
Late spring cold, everything’s confusion.
Flowers find themselves on the wrong stage.
Bewildered animals wish that they
could take their sperm back.
Trees sprouting new leaves,
shudder at the death of the old ones.
Robins dart frantically back and forth
across the hard lawn,
cut off from their worms
like they’re children under ice.
I stare quizzically at the calendar
on behalf of all migrating birds,
creatures out of hibernation.
Your hug that should be about sweaty passion
is wood-stove thick and close.
“I love you,” you whisper.
Granted, the winter would never say that.
Bio: John Grey has been published recently in the Georgetown Review, The Pinch, South Carolina Review and The Pedestal. with work upcoming in Alimentum and Big Muddy.
Tyre ~830 BCE
by Ryan Holden
an ecstatic clearing of debris
brush the birds & the olives away
not marble but the albinism
of limestone & breath-choked
what of the purpose of beauty
the chisel & hammer
an invocation of kindness
craft the uncreated woman
—homunculus
flesh exposed by patience &
sweep the white pebbles under
the shade of small grasses & dying trees
a name a breath a tongue
an elbow a breast a stone
Bio: Ryan Holden is a graduate student in Creative Writing at Arizona State University. He has poems forthcoming in Leaf Garden Press, Up the Staircase, and Country Dog Review. He received an Honorable Mention for The Katharine C. Turner Prize of The Academy of American Poets in 2009. He has received a fellowship to teach at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China for the summer of 2010.