Submitted by Benjamin Gorman on February 26, 2012
From a small distance
it seems a lighted dolls' house
segmented
compartmentalized
walls arbitrate function
bed-room
"this room is for sleeping"
dining-room
"this room is for eating"
it's like a game
the animated dolls inside
move from one space to another
changing purpose with place
acquiring meaning through location
"I am in the living-room"
the roof holding the walls together
the walls holding the dolls inside
the dolls holding themselves
and sometimes each other
Submitted by Clayton Medeiros on February 25, 2012
Beyond the bay at the very edge of the world
Snow nestles against Vancouver Island
Under a gray capped sky
Where white seems unlikely
And sometimes impossible
But there seems no hope of spring time
As I dig holes for the primroses
So recently on the dining room table
Now in need of a garden spot
For their impressionist splendor
A muted palet for this day's
Late winter damp ground
Alive with night crawlers
Busily making summer soil
For patient day lilies
Like the slant sunlight
At the end of the afternoon
Submitted by Benjamin Gorman on February 25, 2012
Back to the boards tonight
to heft a character like a costume
like a winter coat
an armor
and a costume too
something he would wear
move about in spaces that are his
or where he went, anyway
according to someone else
neither of us knows
who pulls strings from afar and ago
gives us both purpose for a night
Submitted by Neil McKay on February 25, 2012
I shouldn't even be writing this to you.
I don't want to give you the impression
That I have bought into the anthropomorphic
vision of white beard and long flowing robes
or white robe and long flowing beards
that our simplistic culture hangs on you.
I do not believe you are all knowing
Not the way I understand knowing
Nor do I believe in your benevolence
Toward me specifically, nor my family,
nor my species even.
Remember how I mocked you in all those other poems?
How I said you didn't exist in that poem about my socks?
How I took you to task for destroying the earth by flood?
How I compared you unflatteringly to my rich uncle?
No, of course you don't.
You are not human and you don't have a human memory
If you have knowledge at all, it's something I can't comprehend
And vice versa.
I'll give you this much: you are the way
The truth and the light.
It's just that you're not some guy saying,
"I am the way, the truth and the light"
I do believe you are in control
But I don't believe you are controlling
There is a path and we are on it
And it will continue for a long while
We will stray from the path
We will loop back and lose our way
We may follow others down the path
Some of those others will veer off
Some will walk backward
But the path is there
The path is you
The path is always there
And I will follow
Submitted by Jennifer Dixey on February 24, 2012
to write
is to dream
on paper
transform
life thought
into life lived
if only through
words. the way
the hot water
felt, running through
your hands as you washed
the dishes for the last
time that washing the dishes
would seem like an ordinary activity.
the way the moon looked,
gigantic and implacable,
that morning when you
woke up at five, opened your eyes to
enormous picture windows that
were not your own,
stared at its full white glory
over Puget Sound.
the sound of the dog's nails
on the kitchen floor
of the apartment
you used to live in,
the one in the building
as cobwebbed as Miss Havisham's
living room, the one
with scandalous photos
from another century
hidden inside its walls
and an all-day drunk
downstairs. you know,
the kind of thing you
remember -
even when it didn't
really happen
to you
at all.
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