I break horses
I don't tend to them


Alyssa Dennis, This Way, 2006


Worldslinger
- by Klipschutz

1.
Language

That’s how it is in English
Mistress rhymes with distress
(Ain’t that the truth)
But the stress is turned around
(You’re telling me)
Black dress falls right off
The tongue
Wife rhymes with knife
(That was low)
Turned around stress
Can bite you in the ass
And throw off your rhythm
For life

2.
Common Values

Asparagus pisses me off, and I think you know what I mean

3.
A Rising Tide

The bipartisan ship in D.C.
Is changing its name
From the BGS Housing Bubble
To the USS Bailout
Bon voyage!
A luxury liner too big to fail!
We know how this flick ends
With a glacier of debt
Waiting patiently
Pathetic fallacy or no
DiCaprio and Winslet
Are both on board
Love will find a way


Mangled Moment of Modern Art
-- by Noah Falck

The sidewalk hurts.
The moon is just beginning
and I think of her as an unheard song.

Her upturned lips
run skid marks across my cheek
as we lie down like two welcome mats.

There are storms inside every kiss
that would make any weatherman nervous.
And through paper walls

brothers and sisters listen with furrowed brows
to the kind of lovemaking that inspires foreign films,
more giving and taking than Halloween.


Retirement
-- by Robert L. Penick

You're 65 years old and you sit in your back yard,
drinking light beer and listening to Brahms on the radio.
The wind make the Japonica bush and your
remaining hair dance like seaweed in a riptide.

They took everything from you at the factory:
Hair, teeth, testosterone.
They took nearly everything.

The sky isn't as impossibly blue
as it was 50 years ago, but it will do.
Geese honk overhead, heading back north.

The sun makes you feel like
a successful clay pot.