New Poems • Evan Abla • The Canning of Apple Butter • Barbara Archer • After the Fall • Daniel Arenson • Youth • Elizabeth Barrette • Countrycide • Helena Bell • I Asked What it Looked Like • Catherine E. Bollinger • Blood Sucker • Alric Bolt • Dangle • Jennifer Burton • Ragged • Orson Scott Card • Letters • Fires • Belly • Don't You Remember the End of the World? • Carol M. Carpenter • Reunion Sunday • Susan Clemons • My Husband, You Are Home • Penny Denice Cobb • Caterpillar, Flying • Michael Collings • For Grace Isabella • Pomegranates • 'Possum • The House We Owned • Maryann Corbett • Hand • Nora Delaney • Louey of the Beet Field • Learning • Julia DeLong • Behold the handmaiden • The Orphic Guide • Shards • Rose Drew • A celebration of my ignorance • For Rose • Lee Evans • Vitreous Floaters • Jimmy nil Fishhawk • Night Blessing • Sonnet for Leaves Shaking Light • David Flynn • Summers Were Warm Back Then • Michaela A. Gabriel • Seven Things to Consider When Complaining About the Weather • November Rules of Conduct • Lara Gose • Visiting Grandma • Carol Lynn Grellas • Eight in the Morning • Laura Lawlor Hewitt • Matter of Madness • Juleigh Howard-Hobson • Staffordshire Farm, Abandoned • Coming Upon A Stone Circle at Sunset • Joseph Josephides • The Window • Abel Keogh • The End of the World • Clare Kirwan • The Airport Run • Solar Campus • Catherine Knutsson • The Soft Fall of Snow • Eric Lehman • The Hall of Cats • Thomas Lesh • Leaves • Scarabs • Fred Longworth • Downtown San Diego, 1953 • Robin Merrill • Ferris Rhubarb • Jaime Lee Moyer • Minstrel • Nicole Nicholson • They Tell Me That You Had Cherokee Blood • Lawrence Nielsen • Not Puccini but Dvorak • Adrienne J. Odasso • The Damage Done • One if by Land • Not Eden • G. M. Palmer • The Penguin and the Clam • Elijah and the Antelope • For the Unborn Dead • Palm Sunday • The Rest • Geoff Peterson • The Ballad of Moses • Eva poon • She Doesn't Know • Jason Kelly Richards • Mother Nature's Facilities • Charles Ries • Jack • Scott M. Roberts • Joogled by Broogles • Song of the Rivelaunt • Pie Fight on the Way To Hell • Train Window Prophet • Adam Z. Robinson • Photograph: A family gathering • Bride & Groom • Johnny Rocket • Angels, Gramma, and Questions • Marsheila Marcy Rockwell • Chrissy at the Grave of P.S. 103 • R. Allen Shoaf • The Father Gives His Boy a Knife • The Boy in Chains • My Father's Church • Cate Snyder • More Nonsense • Mary Sutton-Paul • Shoes • Cory Swainston • The Oath of the Horatii • Justin Taylor • Hallandale • If you weren't now with man... • I was lying when I said I didn't love you • Literary Conceit • Madelia Tower • Fall of Light • Ann Walters • He Speaks Stars • Oregon Morning • In Dreams He Purrs • A Night in Zion • Christopher Way • Fort Myers, Florida • Spring Nerve Sheath • Zach West • Witching Hour • Emily Whitby • Untitled, For Now • Unsent Letter 7 • Gail White • Emily Dickinson on a Guggenheim • James R. Whitley • Sonoran Desert, 1998 • Notes on the Predator-Prey Relationship • Adrift • What Lies Before You Might Not Be Your Future • The Goddess of the Hustle

If I allow my eyes to unfocus just so
in the bluing light I can remake you.

You are weeping, next to me in bed.
We face each other,
mouths soft and silent.
Looking into your eyes as we lie
together is like peering through
the branches of a silver maple
just as the light fails.

All the fist weight of day recedes, leaving room for night to seep
into the air like a bruise.
Light is an overbearing lover,
but when he sleeps dream-forms wake,
protean, changling demons
of a thousand faces chanting
every constellation of night song:
etcetera, mad cricketing,
slow dirge-airs rising and falling, long unbroken brush strokes.

In this moment the walls of the world
wane thin a delicate as rice paper,
and if your eyes do not fail
with the light you can see shades
behind that creasing veil:
clutch   unfurl   wait.