As Men and Women Go

They make a perfect couple

yet there is something strange

in this repose,

in the aftermath of love,

in the apple of her cheek,

in the muscle of his throat:

there it goes

slithering.

Kathleen Kenny works as a creative writing tutor at the Centre for Lifelong Learning, Sunderland University. She has four published collections of poetry, the latest being Firesprung (Red Squirrel Press, 2008).

SLEEP RITUALS

Tonight, like most nights, she goes to bed first, and he stays up to test the machine, standing where the light is good and no one can see him from the street. He pops off the lid using gentle thumb pressure. Inside, heating coils glow like the ribs of a starving dog, God rolls dice that have no spots, a mare with a burning mane screams in terror. He bends at the waist for a closer look. After a moment’s argument with himself, he plunges his hand into the smoke. It feels cold, and a spider-web of scaffolding begins to rise around the dark castle of a line of mad kings. He weeps as if it were his own heart he was dismantling. Soon he’ll be tired enough to sleep, and when she awakes before the alarm, the dawn will be full of birdsong and the birdsong, as sometimes happens, full of primitive grief.

Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of four poetry chapbooks, Death of the Frog Prince (2004) and Heartland (2007) from FootHills Publishing, Strangers & Angels (2007) from Scintillating Publications, and the forthcoming The News at 11 from Right Hand Pointing.

Med Students (M2’s)

Girls sitting, chatting

nasty words flowing in

streams of gossip intertwining

with acid-base reactions

and hypertension.

Such smart girls with

such dirty mouths.

Absurd in the moment. This is

medical school’s greatest

achievement.

Mary Rice earned a BA in sociology from University of Missouri, and is currently pursuing a JD from the same institution. She currently spends her days writing memos and outlines waiting for graduation day.

Introduction to Poetry                

by Billy Collins

is just one of many “Poems about Poetry” at the Academy of American Poets site.

Night Lights

I know so many artists and poets, too

who can’t sleep at night

I thought I might go out

at three a.m.

and ride my bike around town

knocking on doors

where the lights are on

and ask how their work

is coming along.

Elizabeth Crockett writes poetry, short fiction, and haiku. She has been published this year in RKVRY online literary journal, Ascent Aspirations, and Roadrunner Haiku Journal. She has a diploma in Addiction Education, as well as certificates in Counseling Studies and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages.

Poems about Mothers

From poets.org

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5868

SONG FOR RECESSIONARY TIMES

The days pass in shaving my beard

and then growing it back,

but notwithstanding the tall buildings,

it’s spring by the calendar

and lewd as the hot, blue tongue

of an acetylene torch.

Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of four poetry chapbooks, Death of the Frog Prince (2004) and Heartland (2007) from FootHills Publishing, Strangers & Angels (2007) from Scintillating Publications, and the forthcoming The News at 11 from Right Hand Pointing.

Insomnia

Do searchlights 

sweep

the night sky

to illuminate 

the stars,

or are there

flying felons

loose tonight?

Some of Kevin Paul Miller’s recent work has appeared in Mastodon Dentist, Lunarosity, and Words Words Words.

From the Academy of American Poets:

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20045

Reunion

titian streamers hang listlessly

in heavy air, the signs of summer

reappear.  crumbling pickets

start to droop.  until next may,

they hide indoors – turning gray,

like thinning hairs on towering men

who return en masse to trod these steps

Born in Fort Worth, Texas, Joanna Friedman is currently a graduate student in English literature at the University of Oxford, specializing in Renaissance drama.