no.10 (Bance Gossler)

Too many shields have come between our minutes
like Jim Kirk punching through Chekhov's screen.
Spock and Bones all bent up against some burnt planet.

Gene let his cloak off, he rode his ride until the ride rode out.
They say, archetype, and we laugh. We watch and watch.
Uhura's earpiece, her legs, her perfectness on the bridge.

no. 9 (Steve Kirsch)

The white pyramid beacons our way across the river's path
where at some end of some cold vein, we will shuck corn
and let apples cool in the eddy. Walking is not the same
when it is required. Patience grabs at every branch.

When the summer ended, I saw all the years twirled up
in a pumpkin roll - all the minutes in a fist like a burr.
Coming to the end of another warm tongue and lipping
our way to the mouth of a new cold breath is worth it.

I don't remember the tracks in the snow, or the hawk
falling from the plum sun, just the echo if its wings
carving sense into a senseless sky and the the fir points
dipping upward into the cup of endless grey.

no. 8 (Todd Abrams)

I drop the cork and leave the line running
against a birch branch; misinformed
about the day's light, my last worm hanging
from the lip of the river
where if anything makes sense
I will pull a cold fish
from forest's vein and bring it to life
in a cast iron pan.
Drake's and an egg, the rest of the bottle,
the last of the June bugs smacking the screen.
An outboard motor somewhere in the distance
reminding us that even a red sun
is not a stop sign, on the Au Sable.

no. 7 (Michael Waite)

He wakes up and means to cook an egg but the eggs are gone
or they have been moved somewhere during the night.
He decides to take the dog for a walk, but the dog is gone
and there is only a leash next to the bowl on the floor.
The phone rings and he answers it, but at the other end
is the sound of backhoe tearing up the ground somewhere.
In the evening, he sits on the recliner, opens a beer
and prepares to watch a television show but the shows
have no people in them. They are just scenes of empty
rooms and occasional breeze on a curtain. He gets up,
pours his beer in the sink and makes his way to the
table where he will wonder if the last twenty years ever happened.

no. 6 (Peter Markus)

But I could not concentrate on the earth while I made my way down the page

and the cracks beneath me seemed to fill with the weight of an old man's heart.

Jack Gilbert pens his way into a woman, out of her, and across state lines.

The end finds me sitting across from a blond girl in a small row-boat

wishing I'd learned how to row forward. This chapter of my life

was heaped into a pile and burned along with the times of being in love.

Look at the boats she kept saying, pushing the piece of yellow
from her face. A sun went up and down while she did this piece-pushing
and all I could smell was popcorn popping. It smelled like a car accident.

The boats glide like leaves on the river, like slivers of moonlit river-water
or the light that comes from between the pieces of her hair that string
from her small head. She must have been the girl in the book,

the one about the girl living and dying in eleven years, but all in one day.
That's all the time it took to read the book and it was all the time in the world.
I'll never know what it's like to be a gull landing on the city's face.

no. 5 (Danielle Damen)

Something happens when you mix beans and consume them.
A pathogen occurs. A light shines from the hole, and the warm
air passes like a fire through the valley. It has been weeks like this
and we're hunched over the sink in repose. Who can sing past
his own shadow and into the green mountainsides of  youth?

It escalates with each encroaching bite, each bean like a memory
of the country's oscillating democracy. The wind between the lips
of the lying politico. I am worried for my country. I am full of
the helium of balloons sailing higher and higher until constellations
come crashing down from the purple; the lion, the scorpion, the pan.

no. 4 (Danielle Damen)

He wore the tiger suit on the road as the cars passed
by in the November wind. Dandelion seeds did not know
what to do with him, so they, too, passed by.

The jaundiced moon was full of regret the night
he decided to put his life in the hands of a costume
and run about the street like a sagebrush.

Ennio Morricone could not score the scene;
the cops slowly making their way up the hill
to see the orange and black man lying still

on the pavement while all the stupid people
of the city cull their need for laughter
with the bluing glow-box in the corner.