Roadrunnner

May 2009 Issue IX:2

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old pond water under a microscope

moonlight meets a forehead halfway

morning correcting my shadow posture

John Stevenson

When I yawn civilizations collapse worlds are born

Wayne Mason

	At crystal sphere’s north pole — the continent of dust
		For two thousand years scrolls in a cave — the Dead Sea has no butterflies
In the cave’s dream the light becomes a white snake			In fresh fallen snow the travelers’ temporary fossils
	The first dandelion that's what each one thinks it is
	white hydrangea — the secret return of dinosaur light

John Sandbach

seven suns phases of geometry in her bones		seven suns the wrench floats in our common dream
	seven suns disjunction on a sycamore leaf
seven suns few have known the taste of demons		seven suns the hollow in your dream filled with eyes

Michael Dylan Welch

seven moons the globe from my childhood out of date
	seven moons the shopping list includes condoms
		seven moons a pale scar from the rooster’s beak

Tanya McDonald

so quickly no one's sure
a star
through rushing clouds

Allan Burns

we are what we eat crow caw
		autumn falls down the mountain a little each day
	offering left for the god of the way raven takes it
		tiny figures along the vast shore briefly
five till they are one and none geese

Jim Kacian

their wings like cellophane remember cellophane

Lorin Ford

rain hits a clear
plastic umbrella
fear of documents

Michael Fessler

My job one raindrop Listen

ENTERING NO EXIT

Another field cloudless sky becomes a revolution

Jeffrey Beam

laughter
the axe blade shines
with rain

Mike Andrelczyk

	wind bitten trees I promise an ode some evening in Mexico
		all I want: the apple seeds of Cortez
watermelons tossed off the train whispering Spanish

Michael McClintock

slammed by salt and sun the paint has no chance in this mexican prison
	before the firing squad the perfect ash of a last cigar
throughout the night — the shipwreck memories of the lighthouse

David Caruso

As we lift our broken ships :: I feel my eyes go silent

If I'm crushed by a mountain :: haven't I said who I am

Holding a branch of the rain :: how many will I be

With sad decisions that chain my birds to your sky

You can't push mountains with a broken voice

If I eat dark clouds :: whose path am I on

Grant Hackett

neon buddha the endless rain of mercy
	the distant hills look like buddhas without neon
		the long wait to cross the border neon buddha
	garbage strike the neon buddha eats the rainbow
neon buddha the exclusivity of rhinos

Michael Dylan Welch

		gray day the yellow bird a black hole
	into her bed of roses my buzz

George Swede

the wasp
makes the window
more English

Doug Kutney

ghosted summer the bee hedge is the sound of sunlight

John Barlow

an outbreak of laughter red bees storm the brain
		at the end of the tunnel did you see the light glinting off the bullet
a gray mist no one on the bridge between hemispheres
on this beach I could walk for miles along your thigh

Peter Yovu

damp sand ripples cold salt wind
the breath beyond the breath that fills the reed
nothing in a nutshell All Souls' Day
	honeysuckle taking down the spite fence
all ears tuned to the closing bell

Peggy Willis Lyles

in one ear out the other train whistle

Chad Lee Robinson

as if
all things
were possible
a dandelion
before
you

summer i go nowhere twice

Gregory Hopkins

	bronco of her rising the humid night of a lost promise
taken suddenly into a glitter of I… a dervish of you
	bathed warmth admiring she who admires herself

Jeffrey Winke

she’s reaching for the red chicken something passes in front of the sun
			the lump in my pillowcase a pair of your panties I’ve never seen
	finger thick with blood an orange in your drawer flat on one side
the old water glass in the red dark I pull a hair from my mouth
		under the cutting board the flattened ants look just like ants

Chris Gordon

my yearning to spend a night inside a tulip magnolia
mustard blossoms and I waiting for the cue
	city twilight — the autobiography of a weeping willow
		fiddle necks — I remember my life as a butterfly
blue rain a smile only Picasso would admire

Fay Aoyagi

opening her robe against forgetting distant music
cloudshine a flock of sparrows glittering into speech
snow on a wind the vowels howl like a wolf
	for fish, I fish for sorrow — I can do nothing with sorrow
		snails in love, repelled and attracted

Michael McClintock

autumn receding the crow becomes the fog

Patrick M. Pilarski

night spiders armed with red pens

Helen Buckingham

'it's better than it was' overcast dream

close to someone in the stars white seeps inward

dawn a jury of my peers or dusk

ode pool its colors slow into the sound of melt

as the world fails saxophone in the lips of a walrus

universe on tv i could be alive in

Marlene Mountain

	The Chinese Astronauts Were all born In the same fortuitous year
	Their wives dress Like stewardesses The Chinese Astronauts
	The Chinese Astronauts Their suits are different Made in separate countries
	The Chinese Astronauts Aren’t able to touch Their own faces

Chris Gordon

mockingbird an octave shy of the moon

stardust the whole desert wanting

maybe it’s just me but with a sky this blue

Billie Dee

winter's end
the steady trickle
of goals

Rob Scott

blue sea walking up to the bench under a single tree

K. Ramesh

summer day from every angle the hummingbird’s throat

Carolyn Hall

nightfall in Kyōto yet another vermillion torii

Dietmar Tauchner

I leave my heart
to the sasanqua flower
on the day of this journey.

(his death poem, found here)

R.H. Blyth

	fugue state I’m wearing the ocean on a date
fugue state the breath of skulls to triangulate

Jason Sanford Brown

	being told my world view darkening
this forest floor thinking of a mushroom thinking of a hunter		leaves that won’t fit anywhere don’t fit anywhere
but how does it really feel open peony
where the sky becomes empty laughter
while imagination is a daffodil surrounded by daffodils

Scott Metz

		Many lives watering the cactus 眾多生活樣貌灌溉著仙人掌
	Coming to light in the room full of books our sonogram 靈光乍現充滿書的房間裡我們的超音波照
In the cubicles the kafkaesque of a persimmon 在隔間裡一棵柿樹的卡夫卡式
		Thinking in right angles up to the sea's edge 思考以正確的角度來到海岸邊
A redwood forest at Threat Level Orange . . . post-everything 紅木林橘色警戒後萬事
	With light still getting there down the spine of a banana leaf 隨著光線還是來到芭蕉葉的葉脈

Paul Pfleuger Jr