labor issue

it writhed in the stainless steel basin
that and deep aquamarine rubber
were the first colors ever seen

its core was a vertical windmill
that spun with the vagaries of
gaze regard media touch action

like any wheel, finally redundant
yet carrying on because of physics
yet in control of the money presses

Today's dog walk

I went to an emergency website for dough that doesn't rise
There were a number of interventions
but no admonishment for panic

Apparently there's a sinkhole in the bottom of the gut
n' when it's raw from taking want and glut
it starts to pump its own philosophy

Today's dog walk

A crow fought perhaps with himself
One set of wings and needles of the bough
Bouncing and of course squawking

He looks like the dog who lives there.
Well, he isn't.
He's handsome! Or she is.

Cold sun, a parkway middle of the tulip
stand had exploded sawdust added
perhaps explaining the power outage.

Today's dog walk

Whiter snow than has ever been seen before
brushed on grass that's already deep green, not mowed

Looking up, vultures still enjoying their advantage
above whose house circling, we get closer faster

than just our own click; it's that they too are edging
toward us. Contrast the anxious red swelling waxy

buds on the grey branches against the pale sky
and fifteen or so carnivorous brothers and sisters

Today's dog walk

Was it a crouching child...
then a mini stegosaurus
turned toward a neighbor's
back tree and proceeded
straight up the trunk at pace

Another neighbor's tree
is home to vultures who
seem to feel relevant now
and ignore threats from
us our pets vehicles they

circle and repopulate
beam in on all that's weak
gently bobbing sleep
from the strongest pine
can see who's in pain

Today's dog walk

today's dog walk yielded
neighbors voices set up
chords and sounded edgy
overall, but the words
under my radar, perhaps
not M'Lady's, those are
utterances at focused
determined desperation
within rooms self-talk
moderate to low volume.

and yes sure lower levels
of hostility and or spleen
which one's grateful for
not sustainable and only
the views of hundreds of
millions of elastic tape
cinch it and now you can
every home a vector not
goat tied to a stump for
and they'll keep winning.

Flack

These are real hours of the day
They're not stolen hours
Except that they're stolen from myself

Staying up late as if no one can see
Or imagine my non-participation as
they sleep

I've stolen these hours for safety and
reflection, a safe space for flights of
fancy and abandon

Not like the halogen lamp towering
dark above the settee, alien in a
mid-century nostalgia motif

I can wander the home like Nixon or
Ray Miland, experiencing life as
it is

While you rise early and clean yet
clean again, and tip-toe across the
dark like it's some foreign enemy

It only takes me minutes to say what
I have to say to the day
and a minute tomorrow, sure, for the flack



Jackie Lush

Beautiful thing

It was a beautiful thing to get to know black men, black-as-black men who took me in.
But did I get the reputation, among them, that I was a type of white-and-into-them men.

How can you not love black men when you are standing in their den and they're alright
and relaxed with you there, showing their delight that you're a special theirs-with-them

I receive the red rice and beans, up until the sleeping part of the crib, where there are
coal-red blankets twisted, instead of a proper bed, silky bare mattress, authority, agency

There never was a more generous give-and-take relationship as there in those rooms,
above a business, removed from patrimony between the government cheese shipments



Ja-taym, pour Hoolie

Dragged behind me from 1980

rage
foul moth
fossilized dance communication
two chords
self-regard as
sick, damned and therefore
exempt as the dead
terror of nuclear
Montgomery Ward striped jersey
photos
standing next to a wrecked car
brave young
poseur
counter-whatever
smash
anything in the dark
beacon invert
letters and cards
black
disdain
comfort
cash
hungry trail
chain of gossamer
some of the men
relics of others



by Santorabo