March 2007
John Doe

Empty Bed



there's an empty bed
who reaches out it's hand
& grasps onto my leg
falling through open space
it pulls me so far down to you
sheets in tatters
stained blue ticking
swinging back & forth
like a feathered ball & chain

'feel that acceleration?'
"not really"
it feels like your arms around my shoulders



there's a tiny voice
in the back of my head
reminding me of every sweetest thing
you have ever said

tiny wings at your ankles
shoot you across the country
Don't you ever sleep?

laughing in bed
as it bounces up & down
those damn kids
made us crazy
w/ love & in & out of love
Don't you ever stop?

little reaching arm
clutching sticky fingers
big arms across your back
come home soon
Don't move, I love you •

     --John Doe, 2006

March 2007
Mark Salerno

This Is All We Heard Before the Phone Lines Went Dead

nterestingly I was reading about
chaos theory when the sky fell in
Joe's broke Harry's in the clink
and Tom's still paying for a wrong
turn he took back in 1969 but my
view of life is from a stalled bar
car miles above the valley below
I was even observing the scenery
you can imagine me looking at scenery
on the road every week of my life
far up the people appear so small
you can't even make out the real
people but life's like that a question
or word for word the same an answer. •

     --Mark Salerno, 2003

March 2007
Edmund Martifice

Falling

alling over myself
Trying to get back to
Where I can fall into you
Again
As falling has always been
My persistent parenthesis
In vacancy's void
My heartbreak alcove now
Four flights up
Altitudes of Albuquerque
I fall for you again;
Falling in love again
Falling leaves fallen then
Now falling face first
Falling face down
Fallen angels carved from snow,
Falling into spider-web window
Cocktail-party tempo-quick finger-snaps
Sanguine detective virtuoso
Falling through suspicious cracks
Falling down dead drunk
Your Detroit doorstep
December 22nd, 1981
A long day's Thursday night
Frozen fingerprints, probable squalor
Historic high-rise, river-view
Polar-blue forever Ice;
The melting, the freezing,
And I in love
With you
Still to summon courage for
Declaration to winterworld
O dreamy you,
I fallen forever
Already for you.
That night, that December,
You in your splendor,
My unmade bed of snow
I, baffled vagabond of vodka
And tonic
And limes and limes and limes
And unambiguous ice,
Burgundy brownstone brick
Your lips feather soft
Your tiny hand,
The hummingbird's textbook kiss
On Eternal Optimist Row
Inside leaves of darkened drunken Detroit I fell
Into old riot's wake, 12th Street & Clairmount
Unchained thirsting for All The Things You Are
Angelic unbroken exultant euphony
Yearning for pure yesterdays
And tomorrows today
Your sorrow, your sound
Your silver bells.
Now designated adobe hovel,
The ghosts along Candelaria,
The cactus-rose, the salsa wind,
The Tecate bloom, the tombstone castanets,
Three thousand miles of
Desperation desert
Accordion mountains
Pumpkin fields of snow
Frozen apricot orchards
Radiant river
Great lakes
Between us
All
I fall for you
My heartland
Again and once again I dream of falling
Deep into your boundless mission
And your eyes, your mirror,
My eyes reflected, my heart sustained
My imagined tundra,
My wild, my breathless vision,
My cowboy revery, an echo inverted,
Love songs I never wrote
For you
But would if I only could
If I only knew how
To write love songs. •

     --Edmund Martifice, 2007

Edmund Martifice lives in Toms River, New Jersey, where he teaches algebra and coaches Little League. Though he is a gifted baseball player himself, he has no talent whatsoever with a Frisbee, unlike Henry Martifice, his beagle. He's written five books of poetry, including The Singular of Galoshes (Eye Candy Press), and Other People's Relatives (Windswept). He's an old pal of (Bluerailroad co-publisher) Henry Crinkle, a fact which persists despite Crinkle's best efforts to quash it.