NOTHING THAT CAN PROTECT
      Julie L. Mazza
      (About Poetry Forum)

I have to do this.
I have to remember to smile through sweat
and caffeine; to
keep my legs crossed
on the days I wear a skirt.

This is what I’ve never told.
The story of undocumented virginity;
edited emotion; checked boxes along
the right side of the page.

Being bare,
I can sleep inside that rich smell.
Sea foam and red tide emerge to conceive clay mounds.
Every pull I spray myself with
the ocean’s salted perfume.
Tendencies of wanting to be with you always
in the hours and swells to come.

You came to me.
my apartment 9 am.
You must have smelled me through the door
I guess
I should not have worn that skirt.

There is nothing that can protect.
Nothing.

WEEDING HIS PATCH
      Marge Merrill
      (SplashHall Poetry)

He had a pauper’s funeral
county-paid space
near the mass grave
of floral tributes.

Natty and well-liked
back in the day,
he was knifed in his driveway.
Steel-toed boots
shattered orbits
spit teeth

a bullet pierced lung--

He should have struck his tent
wandered with the exodus--
(California, Carolina)

people who loved
his pacific kitchen table
where dense minds might
grasp tall words and imaginings

beyond grain elevators,
coke ovens,
Chevrolet.

Change, he resisted
still weeding his patch
preaching sunrise
amid decay

and wolves
who marked their territory.

NEWSPAPER MULCH
      Stephen Bunch
      (Poets.org)

One summer I kept the watergrass down
with nerve gas in Afghanistan,
CIA assassins in Nicaragua,
Hooker Chemicals in Love Canal.

I spread climbing interest rates
in the onion rows.
The pope’s trip to Africa
protected the eggplants.

Large, well-placed rocks held
old election results against the wind,
blocking the bindweed
before it could entwine the melons.

I spread hostages on the ground,
the Klan’s murders and Kissinger’s lies.
The spew of St. Helen’s and riots in Miami
kept the chokegrass out of the squash.

As things got worse, my garden prospered.

Now, years later, I have stopped planting,
and newspapers accumulate in every room.
Stacks that started in corners and against blank walls
soon will climb over the windows, crowd the doors,

and I’ll wait in the dark till my hair stops growing
and my eyesight dims and I no longer hear
the thud of the morning’s news
as it lands on the porch of another day.

SPIRAL
      Paul Boone
      (The Maelstrom)

Stretched out upon warm silver sands, I trace
the outlines of an ammonite: long dead
these dreams of when my fingers touched your face,

an image that my mind cannot erase.
I constantly re-run the things we said,
stretched out upon warm silver sands. I trace

each moment back, and try to find the place
where smiles grew faint, and tears began to shred
these dreams of when my fingers touched… Your face

distraught, you spurned my offer of embrace,
and left. I’ve been alone now since you fled,
stretched out upon warm silver sands. I trace

your footsteps as you ran away, a race
to try and clear such pictures from your head:
these dreams of when my fingers touched your face.

I must accept my fate with all due grace,
forget the past, and just move on. Instead,
stretched out upon warm silver sands, I trace
these dreams of when my fingers touched your face.

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