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Military Secrets
by Gaynelle Gavin

His mother and I, encoded with warnings before we
dream he’ll want to fly; great dark eyes, brown-
gold curls, he crawls across light on hardwood.
We blink into sunlight. He finishes college,
huge, strong, taller even than his tall father, head shaved,
face lean; eyes dark bright stars shine above me. I look
up into them--he looks like my son--his smile so beautiful,
who could not love him? We invade Iraq. The helicopter pilot has
a secret life. Barely a speck, I am almost nothing on the world’s
radar screen. A friend says, We believe in God because we have to
believe in something better than ourselves. I live among skeptics,
and who can blame them, but were our sons’ bodies ever really so
small they fit inside our own? Each day, and at night, awake,
remembering I carried the pilot on one hip, I say, God, give
me this pilot. I knew him before he took his first steps.

Zoo at Cancun
by Kim Hamilton

Skinny arm shoots through chain link
furred and strong, white hairs halo her pout,
wrinkled fingers wrap a white-socked ankle,
won’t let go.
Black tail anchored to sapling, she
locks warm brown eyes,
like underground pools, on you.
You feel like the tiny blind fish swimming
in a sunless paradise
and the tug of war for your heart begins.
Behind you, mango trees drop their fragrant fruits
into the sea, their sunrise skin protects the tender flesh
until the waves unleash the core
washed up on distant shores to start again.
A summer roadtrip long ago
kids clamoring in the back seat
A roadside man holds out a cage
orphaned pets, trip souvenirs.
But brilliant houses bore a wild thing,
she pries mirrors from walls,
pulls braids and beards, swallows emerald rings,
ends up here.
Ahead the jungle path,
obscured by vines and palms
takes a bend. Other creatures wait,
tethered and tended.
But now a fist-shaped heart
hammers in her spider monkey chest
she’s caught you in her web of longing
chained to a branch, she pendulates, waiting for release --

As minutes tick
something in you reminds her of a fuzzy mother
in another jungle searching high branches
for the missing monkeychild.
She has been waiting for you such a long time
a tire iron couldn’t pry her fingers from your leg
even oranges can’t persuade her to let go
She knows fruit comes easy,
but love is rare
and so, hangs on.

by Ellen LaFleche

In the spinning room Mama turned straw into gold,
Nine months pregnant she worked the bobbins
that whirled faster than madly dancing dolls.
The morning her womb-sac split open
my birth fluids made rainbows on the floor like motor oil.

In the weaving room the looms snapped open and shut
like animal traps. Cottom cloth floated from the jaws.
Yards of it passed through Pepere’s hands
like Rapunzel’s beautiful hair. Skin peeled from his palms.

Aunt Julia worked the day after her cobalt treatment.
When she swooned against her machine,
a doomed sleeping beauty, the bobbins
scattered across the room like bowling pins.

Now night shrieks through the broken windows.
The walls are charred to black.
Squatters set fires, warm their faces in the blaze.
They hear the scratch and scurry of rats,
racoons. Smack soldiers sit behind the twisted looms
and inject themselves with enchanted bliss.

Old spindles roll across the floor like famished ribs.

This poem is dedicated to the memory of the author’s uncle, Larry Beausoleil, who was a
proud labor union leader.

Pine Log

How long before it becomes pure abstraction?

Hastening, ants hollow one end for sawdust. Speck by
speck,

they bite away rinds of pine

they carry in crumbs to the edge, dropping them

to the hill of wood below, their colony soft as sand.

How long has it taken them to mine these few inches
inward?

How much do they need, these thousands

scurrying into black lines

to haul boulders of bark, reddish

and malleable, rich in minerals, slow

to decay, yet giving way

to the rush, to the industry of darkness.