|
A HERO PACKS HEAT
by Milton P. Ehrlich Increasingly forgetful, my friend can't remember who he is or where he is as he gets lost in heroic reveries. He's convinced he has a gun, but it's just his extended forefinger and upright thumb. Whenever he passes a bank, he practices pointing his gun at a smiling guard at the door who thinks he's just saying, "Hi!" A Korean War veteran, he thinks he held back the Chinese at the Yalu River, allowing his company to retreat while he manned a Browning .50 caliber machine gun, like the hero in his favorite movie: "Guadalcanal Diary." When it grows dark on late afternoons, he points his gun at his head, pulls the trigger and swears he can see light shining through the hole. |
WADI SHAB by Baxter Jackson |
|
SEINE
by Jason Dean Arnold He coaxes fire, shapes it in small gestures as meditation as medicine. Misremembered fiction we must search alone for the miraculous portraits of infinite space. There is so much blood in & around us, I'm unable to convince myself of dreaming & I know now the river will hold me the river will hold me the river will hold me in place long enough to see me clearly. |
DESERT BLOOM by Sophia Ewing |
|
LITTLE DESERT FLOWER
by Michael Lee Johnson Out of this poem grows a little desert flower. it is blue sorrow it waits for your return. You escape so you must from me refuge, folded, wrapped in cool spring rain leaves— avoiding July, August heat. South wind hellfire burns memories within you, branded I tattoo you, leave my mark, in rose barren fields fueled with burned and desert stubble. Yet I wait here, a loyal believer throat raw in thirst. I wrest thunder gods gathering ritual-prayer rain. It is lonely here grit, tears rub my eyes without relief. Yet I catch myself loafing away in the wind waiting fate to whisper those tiny messages writer of this storm welded wings, I go unnoticed but the burned eyes of red-tailed hawk pinch of hope, sheltered by the doves. I tip a toast to quench your thirst, one shot of Tequila my little, purple, desert flower. |
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
home | Table of Contents | archive