sometimes I get so sad
sometimes you just make me mad


Kelly Towles, These Days Are Better, 2004

Advice to Young Poets
-- by Martin Espada

Never pretend
to be a unicorn
by sticking a plunger on your head


Lament for Richard Brautigan
-- by Klipschutz

Of a Monday afternoon, on Sutter St.
I made my stand, sitting down
to Rosie’s Nachos, instead, because.

While I was stuffing my face,
cell phone conveyance devices
passed practically nonstop,
on foot and rubber tires,
some with dogs.

One-way streets are rivers too,
it has been said. In the spirit
of the moment, I will
not disagree.


The World War Speaks
--by Sandra Beasley

When I was born, two incisors
had already come through the gum.
They gave me a silver bell to chew on,
brought me home in a wicker basket,
and kept me by the stove's coal heat.
Every morning my mother boiled
a huge vat of mustard greens,
steam drifting over to my crib and
after a few hours, souring into a gas.
I breathed it all in. I began to walk
so they fitted me with braces.
I began to run, so they fitted me
with books: Mars, hydrogen, Mongolia.
I learned to dig a deeper kind of ditch.
I learned to start a fire in three minutes.
I learned to sharpen a pencil into
a bayonet. Sometimes at night
I'd sneak into the house of our neighbors,
into the hall outside their bedroom,
and watch as they moved over each
other like slow, moonlit fish.
Sometimes my mother would comb
my father's hair with her fingertips,
but that was it. They wanted an only
child: the child to end all children.