Edited by Phillip Levine.  You can submit up to three poems to Chronogram at a time.  Send via snail or e-mail.  Poetica.  314 Wall St., Kingston, NY 12401.  E-mail: poetry@chronogram.com.  Subject: Poetica.

...

Can't collect on
the weather.  We try to gauge
Tongues on sunshine
pelvic thrusts and wind gusts.

I'd never raise a hand to your
jar of unspent love.

Even though musical genius
is hardly something
you can stuff yourself with.

I inhale Wednesday afternoons like dried paint
absorb touch til Thursday.
soak up sickness on Saturday.
This is what the living call me for.

As if there was
a dumb-waiter
of future weeks.
I've got to wait
for the next load.
Put down the highball
open up and add to
a jar
I'll never dip into.

- Amy Ouzoonian

Let's tie ourselves
    together
with a bungee cord
and take the plunge
     leap
off the rail trestle
and free fall
             my love
heart in mouth
bounce in mid-air
     rebound
then bounce again
    hearts pounding
`til the gravity
of the situation
hold's us still.

- Richard Phillips

1.
He held a mirror beneath the sky,
capturing what he saw
running into the house to show her -
but now it was lost.

2.
Seeing my frown,
she escorted me to the pond at the end of the road.
Looking down she said: "Here is the moon."
By morning, water had forgotten night,
releasing the stars into day.

3.
Standing at the marina,
you can witness wrinkle and ray
as they combine to make dance
on the side of ships.

4.
She told me she knew of a painter from Bronxville
who, after visiting Greece,
claimed he could see the Sun's signature.
My only response was to show her the new freckles
on my arms and shoulders.

- Owen D. Harvey

I AM NOW years old.
The time is NOW.
I see now.
Now I move on from HERE.
HERE and NOW.
BEFORE I was not here.
Before I was THERE and thinking of THEN.
Now I think NOW.
Before I was thinking SOON.
Soon is eventually now.
Seeing the ILLUSION of soon is not the seeing of the TRUTH HERE NOW.
The truth is now.
The truth is not what was then or what will be soon.
The truth can only be now.
The truth is TRUE only now.
The truth then and the truth soon are not the truth now.
The same truth now, then and soon is the ABSOLUTE TRUTH.
The absolute truth is the constant that unites all things NOW.

- Christina Varga

reading my favorite
poet
i think that looks so easy
i can write, i know it.

so i
write in his laconic style.
when i think i have it
i miss it by a mile.

- Roger Whitson

i do realize
that these lovely flowers
     along the road
are probably noxious weeds;
but their fragrance
     is so delightful
that i shall smile
     anyway.

- Amy Gunderson

"'SEC. 501. ACCESS TO CERTAIN BUSINESS RECORDS FOR FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE AND INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM INVESTIGATIONS.

'(a)(1) The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or a designee of the Director (whose rank shall be no lower than Assistant Special Agent in Charge) may make an application for an order requiring the production of any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items) for an investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities, provided that such investigation of a United States person is not conducted solely upon the basis of activities protected by the first amendment to the Constitution."

'SEC. 501(c)(3). ACCESS TO CERTAIN BUSINESS RECORDS FOR FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE AND INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM ENTHUSIASM.

'SEC. 501. ACCESS TO CERTAIN BUSINESS RECORDS FOR FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE AND I GET TWO HEADS FOR RAYMOND, BECAUSE HE'LL NEED IT.

'(a)(1)The Director of the Federal Bureau
of Investigation
has been serving for a while

The Director said in a lot of these meetings that
the Director may strike
an application for an order requiring
the production of any intelligence, any
tangible things (The Cuddlers book)

(including books, recorders, papers, documents,
and other things)
for an information, an information,
to protect against clandestine behavior,
clandestine activities in Bethlehem,
provided that such investigation of a piece,
of a United States person,
can crumble pretty quickly;
is not conducted solely upon
the needs of activists protected by the
first amendment to the Constitution.

Then it will be too late.

The Director of the Federal Bureau
of Investigation and wife have crossed the river,
into the sun

- Nancy Graham

Lavender Lingers
packing remnants of her life -
both have their own box.

- Jessica Dawes

With the March skies wrapped around us,
we set out, chainsaw in hand, to forage for firewood
as two crows feud in the branches of a balsam fir,
exchanging harsh insults across the meadow
hoarsely cawing rude remarks,
hurtling epithets at one another
in crow language
under the dull grey skies,
as the struggling sun, pale and weak behind a cloud cover
falls on dead leaves scattered by the wind
You let me carry the axe
I hold it proudly, carefully,
with the sharpened steel blade away from my body
just like you taught me
my lungs filled with the spicy scent of pines
in this ambiguous month of March
perched between death and rebirth, straddling two worlds,
one foot in the grave and the other in the coming spring
You march on ahead with purpose,
no hesitation in your stride
and I feed off your confidence
like a fledgling sparrow taking worms straight from its parent's mouth
The mowed wheat field crunches beneath our boots,
the stalks short and stubby as leg hairs
Soon the smell of gasoline will fill the air,
as you crank up the chainsaw to begin the assault
on the fallen tree trunks that lined the woods
A final blow with the axe will sever them
and there they will lie until we come for them later,
in the big blue Pontiac with the enormous trunk
But for now, the moment just before,
anticipation gathers in the tree branches like a held breath
poised, waiting - hovering with the crows
and everything is still just a possibility

- Carole Bugge