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Meg Day

          leave the light on. We tried this once
in a dream, bare calves mud-flung

          from quick sprint out of sudden
downpour, linoleum slick with our

          drip & sheen, tugging wet denim
down to our knees, then our knees

          to the floor. On what ripe fruit
we fed, peeled & sunk at the tongue,

          each husk hollowed clean. Daylight
on a night-bloom is rare indeed

          & I needn’t dream to try to outrun
my own weather. Of all the good

          rooms I’ve left, my body is the one
you prefer. You’ve never asked to see

          in order to believe our symmetry
lacks only echo: one for one until

          I’m undone by what I can’t confirm
except by feel. And who would argue

          with these hands—should they spend
their inborn bent endowing every favor

          you could dream—so long as you keep
your chin upturned in ecstasy & those two

          good eyes sealed? I wanted you
to know me only in relief—& so be

          relieved of all the risks of reciprocity.
But now I find our currents intertwined

          & even my gale no strips down its
only consonant: we agree. I want you

          to take your time. You can take mine, too
if you let me be the one to close my eyes.

Michael Lavers

There, where I always stop
and splash with river water
before the last push to the top,

I saw, flecked with the canopy’s
cracked shade, a flash
of jade, a swoop and freeze

of kingfisher—moving though still—
land on a branch,
until the weird roach in its bill

squirmed out and fell;
whereat, this filigree of air,
faster than I can tell,

but full of nonchalance—
as if more difficulty
is what mastery wants—

swooped languorously
down, three dusk-green vortexes
lingering briefly

like tattoos on air,
then paused under the bug,
as if with years to spare,

recaught it, let its wings’ shears
counterslice around, or rather
locked the notches of their gears

into the world, then wheeled
back up to the applause
of leaves, and there—concealed,

and reconciled, it seemed,
to flesh—enjoyed its meal.
Its wet head steamed.

I breathed. It left its stoop,
and though I hadn’t seen
its wingtip, in that swoop,

licking the river’s brim,
I saw now, as it flew,
bright feather-drip, dim

circles in the stream below,
ellipses where a mirror-world
shivered in afterglow.

Richard Hoffman

A cabbage butterfly on white clematis?
Monarch on a windblown tiger lily?
You have to look closely. Some creatures
take great pains not to be seen, eons
of effort, changes you would not believe.
Now crisp leaves curl around clay pots
on the sill: a face could fist and tears come
thinking of all we missed or misunderstood.
We have exchanged so much of ourselves
for so long it could be we’ve disappeared
into each other. I’m not sure where to look
sometimes, or if you can see me. All I know
is I don’t want to be a memory just yet.
Can we see each other as we are? Or
only as we were? Do we still have wings?

Jacob Boyd

What was country music? Country was what
Is now a college course called Doing
Nothing. No tests. Three credits and the truth.
All presence. An all-in cultural corrective.
No phones or earbuds. Just disconnect.

Another part of what it was was
Work, which is what I’m doing here
In the company van—wheeling past
Homes like super-sized Happy Meals:
Bringing this artisan bread to the exurbs.

So many root-like roads in my head, routes
I have by rote. If I were a plant,
You’d think I need repotting. But not
With this map on the dash. There is now no
Going a good long ways on the wrong path.

We’ve lost much more than needed losing
In the folds of these sheepless pastures.
Listen to me. I’m just an old chunk of coal,
Like Billy Joe. I’m gonna grow and glow
‘Til I’m so blue, pure, and perfect,

All the backroads where the country was
Before we lose the stars will lead
To this shoulder, just me, looking out at cows,
Shining like Taurus and the Pleiades. I’ll be
The twang in the silence that follows.

Jacob Boyd

She ran the goddam gamut, goddammit. Shit
She said. Fuck. Shit and fuck and you can’t even
Guess what. Up from the bench, pacing, not done yet.

Nothing above her but a granite eagle, spread eagle
Stone remnant of a real bird in a real war
Who screamed what some called encouragement but people

Like us know was fear, fear at the end of a tether.
Abusive, cathartic, dysphemistic, emphatic, idiomatic:
She put it to all its uses and more. On the bird’s feathered

Head the South laid a bounty. Laid. Head. Her fury
Subsides like a dying geyser. A blue gray haze
Blankets the courthouse yard and the river—

Passing—passes a fathomless span of damage.
To hope she leaves and doesn’t come back is to fail
The titty in entity, the savage in salvage, the rage.

The goddam feral shit she slung was real.
Like an eagle laid up in the rain, passing midnight
Above the last egg left to steal.