Donal Mahoney

Ye of Little Faith

for Thomas Aquinas

Part readily the skin
and readily the pulp,
as readily the tongues
wild apples bore,
eviscerate the cores,
and watermelon spit the pits
they cannot swallow.
Let this be done before
the tongues
wild lemons bore
find no cores.

Priscilla Atkins

Bridal Soap

I bought it on impulse
(eleven dollars!)
for someone else, of course—
a young thing back home.

When I unpacked from my trip,
I tucked the lace-bag package
(the scent soft, water-borne)
in my underwear drawer.

Time passed, the young thing
eloped, and I decided
(what the hell . . .)
to unwrap the pearly white bar

for my morning shower.
After [...]

Lee Stern

I NEVER ASKED YOU

I never asked you to remove your shoes.
I asked you to leave them on your feet,
as evidence that you were always so busy crossing a bridge.
I asked you to tie your shoes with leather strips.
And then tie the leather strips together into the side of a ball.
I [...]

Ashia Lane

Limper

There is a man skulking up the side of the road: one leg lift, limp. Leg lift, limp. Leg lift, limp. My finger glides automatically to the power lock– shhh-schick—it’s done. Arms out, legs spaced apart in the effort to move, his hulking size intimidates me; my city roots start [...]

Giorgio Mobili

Birth of Democracy (and its Split Subject)

After a troubled night king Solomon
summoned again the two streetwalkers and the infant
before the magistrates, to overturn his verdict.

He said, I foolishly presumed I could evade
the postulate of symmetry in justice.
Bring back to me, once and for all, the sword and balance.

He raised one [...]

Mary Miller

Autobiographies of the Other Sister

Condo

They were talking about their diseases.

Dating in the twenty-first century, one of them said.

I’m never sleeping with anybody ever again, said the other, and the first one didn’t disagree. They were sisters. They never touched each other but they could talk openly now, after a decade [...]