I’m going on vacation to foreign countries for two weeks, but there are some things I wanted to do during this time, and thought perhaps some of you might want to be my proxies. You can decide among yourselves (time & dates are of course listed in the calendar), and more than one of you can choose the same options: 1)vote for Green Party candidate Jason West in the 101st Assembly District, 2) attend the Women’s Studies Conference at SUNY New Paltz, 3)go to the Day of the Dead festival at Unison, 4)see Bill Baird, 5)Chinua Achebe and 6)Tuli Kupferburg, 7)hike with Ranger Roy Powers and 8)see Kansas (they were the first concert I ever went to).
—Lee Anne

at day’s end

telephone poles move off into the distance
attached it seems to this earth by only the thinnest of black
Is this how tenuous things can be?
the day is moving to a close
sunlight replaced by the quiet feet of dusk
tramping out a long the highway
stirring up the dust and illusion that only night can bring
I find myself as I define myself
a photograph I carry around in my head of
thoughts and feelings,
heart and intellect stuffed into this packaged
piece of flesh.
How easy it would be to feel alone
as night descends upon me
but the breath of every one and of every where
snaps me back
reminding me of the place and the play
that surrounds me
of the strong walls and bridges between each of us
as we each draw out our day
to its conclusion
rapid fire recoils as the sun’s red border
enlightens clouds and trees with the burning fire of
an autumn sunsetting
another cinnamon sunrise just over the hills
over the countless valleys and hills.

E. Gironda, Jr.

Landscape

Catskill peaks ripple across the skyline.
Treetops twirl in April winds
like toddler ballerinas reaching for the clouds.
Fur flashes in the brush: I spy
wayward deer and squirrels darting do-se-do.
Around the clearing pampas grass weaves and waves
as passerines disappear in updrafts of dusk.

I watch these woods as other do TV, entranced,
like Altderfer four centuries earlier beholding

the Austrian Alps. The crags of chiaroscuro
obsessed the Little Master. His precise
brushstrokes of ultramarine, umber and flake white
replicated the view with no dominating figures.
Just landscape. Suddenly a worthy subject for the canvas,
no longer mere backdrop for gods and royalty.

Andrew Tokash

pulling into the garage at night

the things i might have said

the fine dust
that once was me.

the miraculous powder
that once congealed
as a soul,

the memory
that once played
1st violin
among an archestra
of angels - - -
now battles
for its place
on line
in the supermarket
of an afterlife.

all the important things
i might have said

will argue among themselves
on smiling lips

after i am dead.

normal