THE CRUMBS YOU SCATTER

I’ve tasted the flesh of your need,
this hunger that yawns between us
in watchful waiting hours.

Sustenance seeded in the crumbs you scatter
as if I were some flitting flying thing
perched and expectant,

pecking the shadow of your footsteps,
for bits of bread,
a careless scrap of your regard.

But why complain?
You toss them generously,
such an expert flick of the wrist.

Acceptance knows
the heart is a table where you dine alone,
and love is a dish served cold.

Deb Ouellet

IN YOUR EYES

The sky resembled something
different last night

like something with something
else behind it

like looking at a snowglobe
in summer

*

I left the house to remove
myself from the scene

to re-enact that which made
me happy earlier

alone, I did that thing
again:

I covered a dark patch on my face
with cream

*

No matter how long I stayed
outside

my name followed me
like a secret

but no one was there
to tell

Tim J. Brennan (68degrees)

THE BACK OF BEYOND

I live in the back
of beyond.
It is a cemetery
for the dead and poor
where they attend classes
that teach them that nothing
now can ever come to any good.
Another professor sternly admonishes
us for not doing more with our lives.
He has been dead for a long time.
Someone in the other life stapled one
of his hands to his forehead for refusing
to salute the King. Just looking at him
would leave a chill in the body if we had one.
The new recruits are led away to their little
deaths and are told not to think of any misery
for there is nothing that is not here, there or is.

T. Obatala (trkyounger)