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I sit beside the brook upon the bank,
and laugh away my time in counts of three.
Looking up, I speak a prayer to thank
Our Heaven’s light for looking after me.
My eyes return now to the riverside;
I gaze upon the water flowing through.
Eternity and now are all I find
To fill this lonely heart, which thinks of you.
Five years have past upon this fatal life,
Reminding me of what we once did share.
An ecstasy of neverending strife
was ours alone: to fight is still to care.
But now ‘tis clear that this is mine to know:
To new love I will dance and let you go.

From the pit of mice, I looked above
To see a bird, was it a dove?
It had black wings, freedom endures
So far away, and yet so close

I reach out, the bird may notice
She does, and sits nearby for this
For this is an execution, a murder of hope
Hope screams out, but only a croak

“Help me bird, I need thee now!”
The birds head, dips in a bow
“I am confused, so far away I fly”
Hope clings on, for it must try

Too late fool, you have perished
But the birds beauty, I always cherished
The last sight that I see, is the Raven flying away from me
Happy, free and flying, that is what you must be

I never loved you but I loved being seen. Your eyes follow me as I dance. Your ears bend to any whim. Your mouth is mine to use where I please. You were perfect. I wish there was an audience of you. Hundreds of you all to watch and clap, but now all the seats are empty. You left and I miss your applause. Kisses from strangers are no sweeter. You all taste the same to me. I don’t care who I kiss as long as they don’t pull away. But you pulled away. You left. I’ll be lonely till I find someone new. Standing on a dark stage waiting for my que. Wish you hadn’t left. I think I liked you.

Japan, by way of Charleston, SC
Is deliciousness.
Beef, red and expectant, hot
Sinking into a bed of welcoming
Broth, silken sheets of flavor rumpled
With a stir.
The legs and fingers of tangled noodles
Soft and clinging, the cloying dampness of
Being separate longing to become
Inevitably joined,
One.
Kisses of green onion, bright,
Verdant, new.
A tongued taste of togarashi sweat
Gathered between breasts, slicking the backs
Of bent knees.
Tendriled hair, seaweed against the pillows,
Laced through a fist
Taught with passion.
The seeping yolk of orgasm
Flooding,
Flushing,
Fleeting.
Full.
Japan, by way of Charleston SC.
It isn’t love,
Simply udon.
Japan, by way of Charleston SC

-L.Mueller

Within coffee hearts, your name I trace
Grasping the world in an embrace
Your heart the desire
A holy place
My heart
Withering
But in solace
Love dispersed in every nook
A touch of you that’s all it took

When the ocean deceived my sight and its choppy canvas
convinced me it would stretch until the end of the earth
it was the end of you

I listlessly stumbled across an empty peninsula
sheeps grazed, flowers fulfilled a beautiful duty
an early-generation phone
pressed against a soaked cheek
presently articulating what
previously was inarticulate
my voice, a whisper over
Maoiri legends and Remutaka Mountains
guarding the grief of
a child, an adult child

this was my time
this was my time to,
over forty-seven minutes
and a three-hundred-dollar long-distance bill,
speak from an uninterrupted heart
sixteen hours behind me, a phone
was propped on a pillow near your ear

I could not pronounce where I was
it did not matter as
you could not pronounce
where you were either
I knew that Christmas morning, something felt different
I knew that wind over the bay, something felt colder
the longer I spoke,
the linger of last words, this
mortal monologue
resting on the day ahead
of the past and the passing

thrashes
and gasps, I imagine
as the low sun shines over the shell station
through the golden pool
where pink elephants circle the bee
like sharks, like a sacrificial circus
and I speak softly to the bee:
we all go sometime

The bee in my Belgian

flails
and flaps its dampened wings
and throws its exoskeleton against the glass
rippling the light on the ale
all before I recall my body
unwrap the napkin, the silverware
and dip the tips of the tines of my fork in
the golden pool

The bee in my Belgian

staggers
up the silver slide having swallowed
half its weight and beating its wings dry
It crawls to my hand and launches
sweeping low over the patio
I return my gaze to the placid golden pool
and take a gulp—
but I couldn’t save you

(angie s)

the heat sticks itself to your skin.
your body is humid
and the wind combs its way through your hair the way your mother used to.

you stand on the dock and watch.
the boats on the horizon don’t see you
and the people on them will never know you were there.

the rain has stopped.
the clouds still loom heavy on the horizon.
they are angry with you, and i think i am too.

you stand there, soaked in heat
drenched in guilt
and you hold yourself tall like the mast of a sail.

the wind sweeps your shirt against you.
it hugs you tight, the way you liked
and you don’t think of me.

1.
I mourn a story with her sweet beginning
speckled with pollen, her flower apron bowed
gentle breeze swaying a field of creation
mother besides her, where the daughter wound ached
torn from a womb in her final moments of safety
she can only chase it as a stranger

2.
Some myths say she went willingly
climbed into darkened chariot
black wood of bone filed and stained in its breathing
pelvis wretched open, pulled out the reins
She knew it was a mother’s body
one she was forced into again
How can I describe the horror
the desecration of a holy place?
Some myths say the cross was forged
from skin and flesh of the most sacred
Virgin mother, arms spread wide, legs bound
to receive her only son
Do you think the myths say
he went willingly?

3.
How starved a woman
forced to submit must be
To break open vile pomegranate seeds
crushed by spoiled teeth coating crowns
with saccharine defeat, a man watching
He told me to force myself
I told him not to use that word
An ugly thing, force
Bereft of any kindness, a might with no master
A man with no humanity
Wielding the pointed end of a broken rib
Like death was something to be feared

4.
Our endings are yet untold
though rot infects from generations before
It eats away at our lungs slowly,
mild hunger never satiated
No mourning for the quiet destruction, the once beautiful
unable to appease any longer
A slight dirt-speck dignity, to die from disease spread
by a mother’s daughter wound aching

Why do you hide yourself
Beneath your steely cold gaze?
I see through it.

Your soul shines as warm as my mother’s lap of the years gone by.
So why do you hide it?
Let it fall free as you let your own hair fall free

In summer’s silky night one fine June
Underneath the dancing dusts of the silvery moon
We swayed to the orchestra of the fireflies and their tune
And it was thence that you imprinted on my soul
In ink invisibly so turquoise bold
That you shall dance with me forevermore.

There the emptiness that hath for long grasped me by my breast
Had dissipated the moment I felt your clasp on my emboldened chest
And this sinful soul that begged to be free
Broke away the chains that bound so tightly
And flew fast away, like the hours of ever-forgotten childhood.

Curse be to nature , oh, accursed rapture!
Why must the fireflies stop their tune?
And why must you put an end to all so true?
Father time always lives in a rush, they say
But it is only when the light fades and your tear-filled eye blurs and sees naught
That one realises the great irony
Father time rushes, but stops a moment and enjoys not any.

Who could have thought the tragedy through
Of two souls uniting and then dissipating?
For if they were to be separated
Why even bring them together?
The anger, therefore, is in Cupid bold
For stories of eternity that I am told
Will never find my tears solid enough
For the tears that I shed are not of the usual
And these droplets of my sadness have in them
Painful memories comparable to the mightiest of any cosmic body

In the silky night of another summer
You but left and left me dazed
Dazed again as the day I first saw your love finally embrace
And I go forth and forth, for despair has not yet clasped my ever-loving lover’s hue
For through the milky light of another tear-filled eye
Even the surrounding loneliness blurs and resembles only you.