Poet 1

Almost New England Winter
by C.H. Coleman

Ground soggier than saturated bran
Air heavy as sod, even tractors mold.
Dampened emotions, I beg the bedroom window
for a glimmer of morning light.

Days of rain flow into weeks of darkness,
the autumn crop turns from bountiful to rot.
Absent are fall foliage, colored corn and horns of plenty.
Fields grow shallow lakes, a crop no one can reap.

We harvest grass because the animals have been eaten,
and hunt the river for fish and empty the trees of birds.
My children cry because their hollow stomachs ache,
my wife cries because one more child grows inside her.

With no eggs and no butter and no milk for market,
we no longer shine in anticipation of the coming spring.
Instead, good men, lessened by the weight of lost muscle,
make the journey to the city in hopes that the factories are hiring.

My father once told me, "The world does not die, only dreams
when you have lost the images of what you want to want."
And the rain that falls in front of my bedroom window
feels like the weight of Noah’s great flood has fallen upon me.
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The Absence of Romance
by C.H. Coleman

Young women and young men, offering
lives, far from mature, during the season of romance
instead become vehicles of destruction.

At a time when lovers woo intendeds and wedding
proposals grow into chapel and church ceremonies
soon-to-be brides and bridegrooms don helmets
and masks made for artificial breathing,
rather than smelling rose petals tossed
by flower girls imagining their own appointed day.

A missed chance meeting in a supermarket or library.
This spring at dinner time the restaurants will be filled with
travelling salesmen in traditional blues and greys
explaining that the world is based on acquisitions
and the costs associated with establishing new territories.

And weekend afternoons in the parks will be afflicted
by the sounds of little children and dogs running through
the empty spaces where lovers once lounged.
These places expanding in lieu of those who
went over and did not come back and the lovers who miss them
will, instead, fill the gaps in the children’s glee with the silence
of grief without any ability to restore what has been lost.
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Poet 2

 Suzanne Scarfone

Commotion
     for Demetrius, a quiet place

everyone is walking
around full of stories
about life
all those chests
going up and
down
each a place to start
and a place to end
there is so much
commotion
so much space to
get through on
the way home
from war
from losing sight
from visiting
the old
from getting
news
some days it's
all I can do
to wash my
underwear
and socks
to stop and think
of bread and clocks
and drink
for days in my
dreams I've heard
that somewhere
by the pine and
the sea
in a sky of
broken streets
this way for light
and this for dark
where plums fall
softly
from above
there is no past
so no regret
no fear
only the same
quiet of peace
turned inward
a soul there streams
on soundlessly
over the anemone
the lichen
the lapis and
the quartz
as I take your
hand and
breathe

Walking in Sound
          Life is pleasant.  Life is good.  Virginia Woolf, The Waves

A simple life is not quiet

Take an August afternoon
on a street near your home
tumbling red roses
sap rushing everywhere and
birds telling tales in trees
going on and on and on and on 
a blue river seems to swoon
between the clouds
people breathe in a house
a dog twitches
once or twice a lost soul
rustles the curtains looking
for a way in or out
as the dead do when it's hot
all the seas in the world twirl
swirl around you
and then there's the roaring
spin of the earth
you have to press a palm flat
on your chest and jump
into the regular thud of yourself
the children next door look up
mouths open
sighing at something
as you walk home
in the summer air
a grotto of sound
irregular and
solemn
sings to you
all the way

Looking
          …the year span round/With giddy motion. 
William Wordsworth

I haven't looked like myself
for a long time
a kind of unblinking startled look
surprises my blue eyes
I seem worn and alone
but you have never stared into
a mirror

for twelve years it's been
one colorful paradise
it's not hard to sleep
and you don't need to remember 
your dreams
roses and fields
and melon leaves
and lemons on counters
show up everywhere
and sometimes the day
sweats into a peach-tinged
mist where the sun
bleeds pink through the icy sky
and melts into an ocean wet
with other inky lives
you taste crumbling sugar in everything
you eat and real joy
is noisy and painted
and windy
riding a bike at night
and walking by yourself with
nowhere in mind
and answering the spinning
and reeling of your body
with yelps
and jumps
and when I talk you don't hear me
only the drumming insistence
of your heart and flesh
the sounds of your boyhood
pull you into the urgency
of breathing and
looking
and moving
but lately you seem to sense
that maybe I do not live
in this same whirl and
that's why I talk so much more than you
and your desire
to run and run and
never come back
seems frantic

will it be that tomorrow
morning you 
slowly wake
pale and warm
and wrap yourself in the white
worn blanket
and look into the mirror
and stand still
and say
“I do not look like myself”
and without raising your yellow-
blue eyes ask
“do I”

Poet 3

"Jim Kober" 

Dive Suit

My men unload the hundred pound getup from the truck.

Fifty years stand between me and the last body to fill it.

The lake has been frozen for some time.
I never imagined
       today's turnout would be so consuming.

My smile is an autograph to those that see it,
but already I'm having third thoughts.

Running a marathon underwater
is like trying
to out argue your reflection.

A woman stares as the suit is constructed. She wants
to know
             if I have more ghosts than she does.

I can't shake what my wife said last.
          How can she accuse me
of becoming stranger
      with so much strangeness inside her?

The distance felt is expected.

The heavy suit
and weightlessness
as I slip through the ice
reminds me as a boy
I laughed best on trains.

Underwater now, it is time
to time myself.

I know everyone has stories of wanting
        and not moving.

This Is Not My Stop

If a change is what you want
we can tear up the floor.

Each night
while you sleep I can rearrange furniture,
put a couch in place of the TV
so we can watch each other until boredom.

If it's change then we can wear wigs,
paint every other fingernail black and white,
get tattoos removed and your beauty mark.

You can spend the day without saying a word.

Newspaper the windows.
Chain the door handle.
Dig deep holes in the backyard
and fill them with salt water.

If you want a change we can believe in miracles,
                                                    shred up rose 
gardens,
perform deep betrayals
                                    and refuse forgiveness.

Or I could learn the piano,
write you sad love themes.
                 I could break dishes
and wash each little piece.
                                         You could dry.

We can go back to the beginning. This time
you don't have to approach me, I'll come
up to you. I'll pay for everything
and be reckless at all the right moments.

When we take the boat out
you can row, my hand feminine
cutting the water.

We'll give into firearms, the way they feel
and flash like heavy words.
We'll buy mace
and you can try it out on me.
We can stack everything
that has ever gone wrong between us
and name it one thing.

We can find a river
and name the river this word.

We can crunch it all together, feel it stark
on our skin,
never knowing the size of impossible.

The Horse

You pick up a dead bird,
huck it against the wind.
Not like a girl. Not like you.

When this is over
we will divvy the emotion.

It rains and red birds stick to the grass.

      ***

There is a way
of being clean
that takes a lifetime
without seeing an ocean.

  ***

We drove around the block for hours
trying to talk each other out of it.

We drove around the block for hours
trying to talk our way out of it.

We drove around the block for hours
trying to talk.

      ***

There is a horse.
In front of me there is a horse
fit onto a stamp in the envelope's corner.

On the opposite corner is your name.
I stare at it, unable to cross it out.
Unable to open.

This letter, this horse, your name
and new address,
all prove the town is mine again.

 ***

Today clouds like strands
of curly hair over the floor.
I used a mop
and I used it twice.

After Pinning His Neck

Through small rain light gushes like a tongue on hose water.
                        I pin his neck down with my knee until he
tells secrets.

Where was he last night? Where were you?
You think I found out by following. That's not it.

It was seeing his girlfriend at the party. You should be happy.
                                I love it when you catch me lying.

Afterward, I find you at a neighbor's house you're looking after.

Your eyes something like dirt beneath a scab.

You have notes taped everywhere. None mention what's happened.

Yes, I crumbled your neighbor's phone
when you threatened to call the police.

And yes, I cried and hit my face and rolled on the floor,
forehead plastered
                       with strawberry rug burns.

If this moment is not in love with you, this moment is confused.

Empty myself. Sleep with your best friend. Insure you'll stay away.

I try and feel two months later.
There will be weeds in the reservoir but no creek.
There will be grace but fuzzy.
There will trash cans knocked over empty.

When I tell you about her you clench my hand like jammed gears.

      You, my sad piano song, my key of D.

None of this is enough to make us important.