Ore-clusters in the lad’s hands
glow under the fluvial sun
as he scatters their uneven
facets within the mesh perforated
like a tulle veil sieving
the lad’s momentum.

An old doctor, his bald head reflecting the lights above, rushed to a patient’s side, eyes quickly surveying her state. The flesh of her whole body was charred except for her face, which remained pristine and pale, the skin soft and shining in the fluorescent light. The charcoal skin crinkled in on itself, burns going deep through her body. He could see the shine of white bone deep beneath the layers.
“Third degree burns,” he announced to the room full of ER staff. Their group made eight in total: two surgeons, four nurses, an anesthesiologist, and Dr. Coolidge.
“Heart rate?” he shouted out as a mousy looking nurse pressed a stethoscope against the victim’s chest.
“140!” she called.
“Breathing?”
“Irregular!”
Cold washed over Dr. Coolidge. He snapped his finger, grabbing the attention of the two closest nurses. “You two,” he demanded loudly, “go get Nurse Ó Súilleabháin in here! Now!”

Bill Atkinson was a natural-born athlete, having lettered in four sports at Monsignor Bonner High School – football, baseball, tennis, and basketball. Everyone thought he would emulate his older brother Al as a professional sportsman and have a thriving career in the sport of his choice. In fact, many said that of the two brothers, Bill was the more gifted athlete since he was more disciplined and that was saying something since Al was a professional football player who would go on to win the 1969 Super Bowl as a linebacker with the New York Jets.

In the flaming foliage of words:
brilliant colors and undergrowth,
the hedges and briers,
the gorse, the furze of it,
the scratch and tear of it,
the brief flowering amid thorns

The garish signage along the road offended him the most. Driving out of his leafy suburb, all Joseph Ward saw was a scrawny forest of concrete and metal stalks holding glaring billboards, miles of cable, and faded plastic light boxes. If there had been another route into the office, he would be driving it.

Jack Dobbs realized he was an idiot on the 29th of May, at 12:43pm while playing basketball. The color of the sky was blue, the sun was shining with yellow hues galore, and a woman nearby was singing to her baby. The grass at the green park beckoned to him, and it struck him, with some mild worry and constipation in his stomach, that he was dumb.
All of his life, Jack had felt smart: his teachers in high school read him Kant and praised his ability to decipher philosophy. His math teacher said he could solve a derivative at the speed of light.

I walk along hollow road,
rabid raccoons to the west
in delirium tremens one dies at
our barn door
twitching and grimacing,
black bears starve to the south
on age-old migratory trails
ravage neighbors’ kitchens

He declares he will fly
with such certainty
I do not believe
he is being metaphorical.

Who am I to say perhaps,
maybe? Isn’t shaping possibilities
why I am sitting in this office?

I wish I had antlers.
They’d stop the small talk.
Nothing too fancy, maybe 30 pounds,
four or five points per side.
Every spring they’d grow,
soft and velvety.
I’d rub them against
the sides of buildings and lamposts.

One last trip
on the New Lots Line
that trundles up
from its tunnel

just as the Brooklyn neighborhoods
turn to Brownsville,
turn to near ruin.
The train takes the 90 degree

Centre Stage
The leader
Hooked on your every pluck, every strum, every bow,
Blocked out the rest of the symphony
Enthralled by you completely,
The thoughtfulness moves me

Sing, muse, where immortal tides embrace,
As Thetis leads her son beyond the mortal race;
No plea to Zeus, the ancient pact of gods holds sure,
In their sacred kinship ages pass but hearts endure.

As a missionary living in Shanghai, my father never imagined his daughter in show business. My mother, on the other hand, aspired for me to become a glamorous movie star once we returned to the states.
“I’ll not have my daughter as a show pony,” Daddy huffed. “It’s not dignified.”

I grip my fishing rod, stand on the edge of the railroad trestle and look at the water fifteen feet below. The wind and an incoming tide jerk the Umpqua River into choppy crests. I take a step forward, my chest tightens and I start to sway.
When my older brother Dave said I could tag along with him this morning, I couldn’t dig the worms fast enough. I pictured casting from the bank behind the sawmill, not walking out on the railroad trestle, a bridge with ties, tracks and no deck.

Ever since Ariel visited the archway on the road, she had become completely different, like a woman possessed by a new spirit, and Massimo was grateful for it. He had intuited how precious that space she possessed after her mother died…

There was a time in my distant past when disco ruled the dance clubs and American radio airwaves. I was raised on rock ‘n roll and folk music.
Disco: this heavy-handed beat and sometimes simplistic (or without) lyrics defined my night life for a number of years. Even with an arguably impressive collection of 12-inch singles, music that played in New York City clubs nearly 50 years ago, now stands solely as a reminder of part of my early city history: an era dead and buried.

Jesse hadn’t been home in fourteen years. He left the night Pat died and hadn’t spoken to his younger brother since. That is until about three weeks ago when Aaron called and asked him to visit. He even bought his ticket.

Marvin came back home from school looking troubled.
“What’s up, man?” Claudia said.
“Hm, I don’t know,” he said, “I just don’t know what the point of everything is.”
Claudia didn’t expect that. Ten-year old Marvin sounded like a nihilist. Wasn’t it a bit too early for that?

Jacob Shigomitsu rubbed a shoulder blade against a rough-barked ʻōhiʻa tree as he worked the kinks out of a lariat and contemplated what to do with his mule. The mule swiveled its enormous furry ears toward Jake and stared back from between the rusty bars of the small pipe-panel corral.
It certainly wasn’t your average mud-gray, slab-sided, undersized Hawaiian scrub mule.

Where have you gone, my dear Ada, apple of my eye, mother of my child, keeper of my love?
Tonight, I returned home to inhuman stillness and silence. When I unlocked the front door and stepped inside, I immediately noticed the house was missing your quiet presence, absent your soulful essence.