The Nest

Since you left,
this apartment got smaller.
Like you packed away
the space you existed in,
and carried it off with you.
A whole world by your side,
in a purse.
What you left

are echoes of questions
drifting in a fog,
hoping you’ll return to rescue them.

Just like me.
I don’t feel like a mother bird,
after her baby has flown.
I feel like the nest.
Abandoned, up on a branch,
watching birds flying by,
knowing that none of them are coming here.
None of them are mine, any more.

 

Dazzler

Dazzler is a British-American poet living in Arizona and Washington State. Having survived corporate and Academic lives, he now spends his days dedicated to poetry, family, and black labs.

The Interrogations

After Margot Canaday’s The Straight State

 

1

 

At Ellis Island

they found the immigrant’s body

indeterminate.

 

Protuberant breasts;

also a small, atrophied penis,

testicle undescended.

 

“Now,” the interrogators asked, “back home,

“did you sleep in the room with your brothers

or the room with your sisters?”

 

I always slept alone.

 

 

2

 

The interrogators stamped the folder:

UNDESIRABLE.

They sent for the father,

who made the crossing.

 

Meanwhile, this determination was

reached: “He is male.”

They shaved the head,

gave the immigrant

ratty trousers, cinched with string.

 

The father arrived

and did not recognize

her, stranded before him

awaiting either official

entry or deportation.

 

“If you took him home,”

they asked the old man,

“how would you treat him?”

 

As I always have.

 

 

3

 

They

undid the string

and let the ratty trousers fall.

They showed the man the small,

atrophied penis, the undescended

testicle.  And asked him to explain.

 

(Their mouths glowed like incinerators.)

 

It is true,

she becomes a man for a day or two

each month, when the moon is full.

 

They asked, “How could you tell?”

 

At those times, there is always deep sorrow in her eyes.

 

 

Justin Vicari

 

Opening Day in Denver

Dissolving through the throngs on LoDo streets.

Beer soaked smiles and purple clothed melee.

Bars brimming full with possibility.

First Rockies home game only minutes away.

 

The golden bubbly flowing from the taps.

Anticipation in the on deck circle.

Optimism cheering from the stands.

At the plate the hopes of all the people.

 

And on the mound our cynicism fades.

The windup for the season has begun.

Is our fate to be despair or victory?

We’re tied for first but yet to score a run.

 

Each day is opening day- we start anew.

Our destiny depends on what we do.

 

Mike Coste

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