Submitted by Neil McKay on January 11, 2012
Sometimes the moon stays out all night.
Sleeps in and then rises late again the next night
Drives in to town from his home on the east side
After the kitchens have closed
And the bands have started their first sets
Hangs out on the street with the smokers
Too cool to go in and listen
Too lonely to go home
He makes jokes at the expense of hipsters
And stoners
Both too self absorbed to notice
His acidic put downs, laced in jealousy
He flirts with the girls who
came with his friends
But as the night goes on
His chances of going home with someone diminish
Until, at 3 am, he stands under a streetlight
Alone, save for that one girl
The one he was not all that into
The one who didn't really get his witty remarks
Who thought he was being mean
Who had a chance to go home
With Jupiter
But for some reason stayed
Until her last chance
To deny the loneliness for a night
revolved around the Moon
And the look in her eyes
Tells the Moon that his last chance
Is standing in front of him
And as they ride together
To her home on the west side,
He wonders what it would be like
To get up and go to work every morning
Like the sun.
Submitted by Benjamin Gorman on January 11, 2012
Remodeled long ago,
house with bones forgotten,
the window in the walls
opens onto darkness.
Did whimsy stake this claim—
glass-eyed helpless victim?
A wall on either side
obviates this portal:
no looking out from in;
peeping Toms are thwarted.
No songbird’s music heard,
no defenestration.
The strangest thing in this:
open is the window,
as though to catch a breeze
never, never coming.
Now trapped between the walls
darkness, only darkness.
Submitted by Jennifer Dixey on January 10, 2012
walking fast over invisible
white snow drifts is harder than
you might imagine
harder even than walking
at an even pace
through piles of invisible
red broken fall dry leaves
harder even than
walking oh so slowly
on invisible deep, soft, grey
beach sand
which is not as hard as walking
barefoot on sharp invisible pebbles
that remind you
you are not walking at all
only dreaming you are walking
fast over invisible
white snow
Submitted by Benjamin Gorman on January 10, 2012
Today's poem already happened to you:
the scrap of paper that pirouetted past you
as you walked back from the grocery
or the feeling you got
from the look in the young woman's face
at the crosswalk as you stopped at a light
(eyes dark, a glistening tear in one corner)
or finding the secret window,
now hidden within the wall of the house expansion
but left open, as though to draw in
a breeze from a phantom summer.
Don't worry. It's not too late.
They're happening all around you.
You should catch them fresh
and jot them down
because some of them need
fertile ground right away
or they'll never take root.
Just breathe in deeply. Exhale, relax.
And look this time.
Submitted by Neil McKay on January 9, 2012
The full moon this morning
Was large in front of me
Once the clouds parted
Framed in the windshield
Of my northbound Honda
Perhaps not the sturdiest of spaceships
But very fuel efficient
For a few moments,
I was an astronaut
Steering a direct course to the lunar surface
At 70 miles an hour
It would take me 142 days to arrive
Longer if I take the Ferndale exit.
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