No Name by Ryan Rutkoskie

Am I Afraid of Silence?

Honestly

I couldn't be.

Already I've spent so much time wrapped wonderously up in your words and unmentionable time typing wildly to riciprocate but

what do I say to a sigh so lovely it sais everything?

I want words to circle and shape the suns magnitude

but sometimes when your breath trembles in it's own

iambic pentameter all the poetry

just wants to shrink down and listen in wonder

sometimes

it's like I'm tethered to the shattering beauty of that heartbeat

tapdancing 

on the nape of your neck

so words can't be everything all the time

but for right now

I just want them to rise up

and celebrate the silence with

and help us to unravel all that meaning

wound into 

it's every

moment

What Could Have Been a Child by Christina Osborn

Red rivulet like ribbon winds through muggy water
Slowly, giving bulk back to the body of the daughter
In an oily tub of green and silver visions of the flood
And a rich and rosy residue, thick rubber-wriggling blood

And Look! by Christina Osborn

Shorter and shorter runs the connection
Faster and faster wraps the perfection
And then stop
Cut around the holes and you find a series of
Tunnels under wax paper stretched over styrofoam
Climb in and down to the blackness out of which
We each and collectively arose
And stop
Rest there in the limbo between emptiness and
All your things
Given by others and your nature and
The sting of dreams
Now drop
Your hands are built for grasping even when your
Eyes forget to look
And so the sin of asking punished only
If you believe the book
So feel
The grip that rips your hands
Will dig beneath the flaps and drink the blood
Forget the things you thought you knew
Switch off the engine, throw up the hood
And look!

U. S. Dollar, The Tied Down Damsel by Ryan Rutkoskie

America's back bone writhing

hotly burned by our worthless struggle in the bound places

our sense of progress stifled

then

stagnant

we simply stiffen with fear

when the tracks begin ringing at us

physics claim the train

can move now

only toward us

as a disaster hauled by stubborn steam

our position

is fixed

roped down with a pemanence

the world has reserved only for Washington ideologues

it's that persistance we admired

the desired die hard partisonship grip

defined and hard-wired by party line whip

that

for which they've all been hired

and as train cars crack on our nerves set fire

and our little helpless hearts retire

the tracks

sing us to sleep like a righteous choir