a shot rang out in the Memphis sky


Robert Shetterly, MLK

The Sound
-- by kim addonizio

Marc says the suffering that we don't see
still makes a sort of sound -- a subtle, soft
noise, nothing like the cries of screams that we
might think of -- more the slight scrape of a hat doffed
by a quiet man, ignored as he stands back
to let a lovely woman pass, her dress
just brushing his coat. Or else it's like a crack
in an old foundation, slowly widening, the stress
and slippage going on unnoticed by
the family upstairs, the daughter leaving
for a date, her mother's resigned sigh
when she sees her. It's like the heaving
of a stone into a lake, before it drops.
It's shy, it's barely there. It never stops.


Spirit
-- by Gregory Corso

Spirit
is Life
It flows thru
the death of me
endlessly
like a river
unafraid
of becoming
the sea


Current Events
-- by Jim Harrison

I'm a brownish American who wonders
if civilization can be glued together with blood.
The written word is no longer understood.
We've had dogs longer than governments.
Millions of us must travel to Washington
and not talk but bark like dogs.
We must practice our barking and in unison
raise a mighty bark. The sun turns amber
and they're opening the well-oiled gates of hell.


History
-- by Robert Lowell

History has to live with what was here,
clutching and close to fumbling all we had--
it is so dull and gruesome how we die,
unlike writing, life never finishes.
Abel was finished; death is not remote,
a flash-in-the-pan electrifies the skeptic,
his cows crowding like skulls against high-voltage wire,
his baby crying all night like a new machine.
As in our Bibles, white-faced, predatory,
the beautiful, mist-drunken hunter's moon ascends--
a child could give it a face: two holes, two holes,
my eyes, my mouth, between them a skull's no-nose--
O there's a terrifying innocence in my face
drenched with the silver salvage of the mornfrost.