Carol Smallwood

Second Thoughts

On the entrance door:
"Thank you for coming. Try our website."

People holding exit door for you
when you're entering.

Brian Beatty

Wild Geese in the West

          Birds know all about the blues.

That’s why they never stop
mid-air to consider
what they’re doing there.

          They would truly drop
          like ducks diving to the bottom
          of a river of whiskey, never to come up.

How little I know is what I think about
out on this porch
plucking at a banjo I can barely play sober

           and a dog that mopes at me
          whether I've been drinking or not

Ada Ludenow

Apples

I.

They are apple children, which means they are so ruddy, cute and perfect that you can bite out pieces from their faces and they do not die.

But their crisp white flesh does turn brown after a while and then attracts flies, much like ours.

In cool dry places, they age and become wrinkled little grandmothers and grandfathers.

Just before the Sun has conquered the sky, they join hands and perform mass suicide in iron pots.

Their butterflesh is spread on fresh bread in memory of the last Fall and the hopes another may come.



II.

The worst trail was the black and crooked hole you used to bore out of me. Bits of hair, and filth, mold, the mites, the barm. I saw it all, and I felt the air you let inside. The air ate me up fastest, leaving me cored and rotten. Without a core, how would I bear seeds and begin a new tree?