I wish death were a man in a black cloak. / At least than I’d have some company.

The High Sierra hangs / suspended between the wing / and the sunken edge / of the caldera.

by E.T. Parker John the Baptist stands on the corner / of First and Shaw sporting / a pink cape and inline skates. / He holds a simple white sign: JESUS.

by Nels Hanson By night the owl attacks the crow, / day the crow the sleeping owl, ego / and shadow, shadow and ego, forever, / as long as there are owls and crows.

When the synagogue told me / we’d be going to the duck pond to / cast away our sins / I thought, that’s not fair to the ducks.

That time after the Golden Hour / when the sky glows one slow chalk streak, / the horizon like flesh / pressed to a lightbulb, / I said, come with me.

I don’t even know how you got published. / Of all writers in the world, you’re the worst.

by Ken Massicotte I wasn’t frightened by damnation, preferred / Merry Company in a Pergola, / Jan Steen’s tavern maid with the cider pot

all my dreams / cost more than / whatever money / i ever had in my / life

How do you feel / when driving past / the penitentiary on a winter night

God may have created / the universe and all therein / But he never made any money off it

Fish fall from the sky / in silvery hooks / on a subduction shore / where boats beat at dusk with hunting

by Jack D. Harvey Yes, that is me / on my pet pony / only two and a half years old.

When the beam snapped, / the rope that clung to my life slipped. / The roof caved in as / I saw the floorboards part, / revealing the Cuyahoga gushing below.

When my first wife and I / were new to each other, / we moved into a cinderblock apartment