Dane Cervine | January 31, 2008
.
.
.
.
.
At breakfast, my nine year-old son says there are perfect versions
of things beyond earth, like a circle, like us. I ask if he learned this
at school, but he replies no. I was just thinking about it. Like Plato,
I say, you’ve stumbled upon the world of Ideals—and he nods,
continues eating his cereal. The morning more perfect, [...]
Alex Galper | January 29, 2008
In the Hell of the endless Brooklyn night on the crossroads of wars,
perestroika, the sleeping terrorist cell waiting to explode in the middle of
life, the unshaved face in the window cell looks in fear at angry Atlantic
Ocean loudly arguing with ghosts of American Dickinson and Persian Khayyam.
Great sinner Omar!
You thought
that the more you have,
women and [...]
David Breeden | January 28, 2008
Meditation, Not Fallen
We are not angels fallen
We are apes rising
We are not descended
To violence but
Rising to peace
We are not fallen
We are not angels
We are apes rising
When we rise
We are not fallen
Except in choosing
Not to rise
.
Meditation, God’s Name
God is not God’s name
Allah is not Allah’s name
Yahweh is not Yahweh’s name
Elohim is not Elohim’s name
Brahman is not [...]
Steven M. Sloan | January 27, 2008
While searching for truth
You seize and open
An entire series
Of ever smaller
Cubes and containers,
Like Chinese boxes
Each holding the next.
You find inside each
A cherished premise
Inevitably
Exposed as a canard.
Each premise subsumes
A more basic one
In a direct line
To the ultimate
Disillusionment.
Finally you stand
Before the smallest box
And the greatest “truth.”
Only opened upon
Your arrival at life’s
Last second—
There you contemplate
End or beginnings,
And you [...]
Anna Tuttle Villegas | January 25, 2008
With his electric screwdriver, my big brother Lyle is tightening the hinges on the saggy composite doors beneath the sink in the kitchen of the minimalist apartment I rent from Barbi. One of Lyle’s cast-off high school love interests, my landlord harbors few ill feelings toward the person Lyle was twenty years ago. [...]
Charles Hansmann | January 24, 2008
I drop to my knees
on the impulse of prayer,
fold my fingers inward
to construct the little church,
pop up my pointers
to erect the steeple.
I open my hands
and look at the people
my fingers represent.
One has a sliver
embedded near a blister.
Other than this
they all look the same,
stained by the clods
I broke up for worms.
I wiggle them, stupidly.
Then I [...]
Alex Galper | January 23, 2008
my temple will be
my aquarium,
green plants
of Sadness
muddy waters
of Meditation
round shells
of melancholy
fishes’ blind eyes
of unconsciousness
going up bubbles of Hope
exploding upon reaching
the surface of Life.
translated by the author and Marina Rubin
Jay R. Strisik | January 22, 2008
It’s not easy being a humanist,
And you can’t add “Lord knows”.
It sure has it’s bumps and snarls.
Your church-going friends think
“You’re going to the devil”.
And worry that you don’t even
Believe in the devil.
It leaves them perplexed, angry and worse…
Makes them defend their own beliefs.
They suspect that you might be a communist,
Or a believer in international government.
You [...]
Robert H. Bunzel | January 21, 2008
When did world and weather shift,
that we walk friends about in fur?
On scrabbled coast where Jeffers pined
and Mission clay soaked native blood,
I am on Easter Sunday in the back pew of
Wayfarers’ church, simpled green and white.
Hear Father Norm bless all, as my blonde
dog stretches under hymnals and the plate,
with eyes forgiving human egoists
who say God [...]
Paul Hostovsky | January 20, 2008
Sometimes I question the whole
Enterprise, I mean the whole
Thing, the whole
Universe which is the one
Verse, the one great
Poem. Sometimes I think
It sucks so bad it’s beyond
Revision, beyond
Hope. I mean after the Big
Bang, I mean after the First
Fuck, they should have just
Flushed it down a black hole
You know? I mean it
Would have saved us all a [...]
