SHARK REEF

Where sea grounds bow skyward,
waters boil. Dome of heat and stretch,
as rifts and junctions
budge the wombly crust
like wrinkles in turtle’s neck.

Sky eddies swirl like the spinning dolphin
mad for his lover who watches in awe.
The tempest froths my surface skins,
and sprays torrents for Wind to scatter
into the puckered day.

By Jill McCabe Johnson And if I loved you, I could say, stay with me. Istvan Laszlo Geher Another day in a city of days where the sun doles light, and work numbs like a jigger of gray, gray as the sidewalk where we walk. Where maple leaves filter brightness in metered doses of green. [...]

I put her to bed, frail as a torn rag,
and tried to erase the images
of her rickety legs at the edge of the chair,
my hands under her bony seat,

Mila said she never trusted the clouds out in that country. In the summer they looked harmless enough, soft pillows or feathery streaks, but it was their way of moving she distrusted, with no set path and no mountains to guide their course. Even after living there all her adult life, she said, she still felt a little nausea, like motion sickness, just thinking about it.