RELAPSE

 by John Grey

Late spring cold, everything’s confusion.

Flowers find themselves on the wrong stage.

Bewildered animals wish that they

could take their sperm back.

Trees sprouting new leaves,

shudder at the death of the old ones.

Robins dart frantically back and forth

across the hard lawn,

cut off from their worms

like they’re children under ice.

I stare quizzically at the calendar

on behalf of all migrating birds,

creatures out of hibernation.

Your hug that should be about sweaty passion

is wood-stove thick and close.

“I love you,” you whisper.

Granted, the winter would never say that.

Bio: John Grey has been published recently in the Georgetown Review, The Pinch,  South Carolina Review and The Pedestal. with work upcoming in Alimentum and Big Muddy.

Tyre ~830 BCE

  by Ryan Holden

                        an ecstatic clearing of debris

brush the birds & the olives away

                        not marble but the albinism

of limestone & breath-choked

                        what of the purpose of beauty

the chisel & hammer

                        an invocation of kindness

craft the uncreated woman

                        —homunculus

flesh exposed by patience &

                        sweep the white pebbles under

the shade of small grasses & dying trees

                        a name a breath a tongue

an elbow a breast a stone

Bio: Ryan Holden is a graduate student in Creative Writing at Arizona State University. He has poems forthcoming in Leaf Garden Press, Up the Staircase, and Country Dog Review. He received an Honorable Mention for The Katharine C. Turner Prize of The Academy of American Poets in 2009. He has received a fellowship to teach at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China for the summer of 2010.