When I was just five
the water truck dampened the stone-clogged roadways
in a daily ritual
to bless the paths we traveled to touch one another.
Their corduroy surfaces laced our community, binding us to each other
a fortuitous family, once strangers
who built lives at the end of dirt roads. Continue reading Dust Dreams by Nancy Lee
Author: 8-WEST PRESS
Be All That You Can Be by David Kirby
I pick up pieces of paper I find on the sidewalk because
you never know what you’ll find, and the other day,
after I find this note in which the writer expresses sorrow
for her sins and vows to sin no more, I show it
to Barbara and ask if she ever felt that way, and she says,
Vivarium by K.J. Williams
but human life is confined in a glass box
draped in a black curtain;
there’s nothing behind it.
but it’s our audacity that makes us try
Continue reading Vivarium by K.J. Williams
Two Poems by Karen An-hwei Lee
A WIND MACHINE FOR ORANGES UP NORTH
When asked about
the last orange grove in Orange County –
I am at a loss.
Song by Marine Cornuet
In the dark times, will there also be singing?
Yes. There will also be singing. About the dark times. – Bertolt Brecht
You’ve been thinking about the gold rim
of a priest’s robe, a glimpse of light caught
while turning the pages of a book
about ancient Egypt.
You’ve been traveling with a headlight
in the backyards and bedrooms
of a sunken city, somewhere
near the center of the Mediterranean sea.
come back Cy Twombly by Chance Austin-Brecher
chalk dust subsumes
our fingertips
into the board, a shared
motion of
our fingertips circling
the board
subsuming chalk
dust, no
master, no
artist,
only
medium
Chance Austin-Brecher is a San Diego based poet born in Redlands, California.
Caring Is Still Creepy and Modest Mouse B-Side by C.J. Miles
Caring Is Still Creepy
Is there a pill to make me not be this?
(I’m asking for a friend.) Continue reading Caring Is Still Creepy and Modest Mouse B-Side by C.J. Miles
Burial and A Light That Always Goes Out by Branden Boynton
Burial
We spread you off the point,
under the silent gaze of Cabrillo. Continue reading Burial and A Light That Always Goes Out by Branden Boynton
Darkness Holds, These Eternities, Loss by Tom Montag
DARKNESS HOLDS
what we take
into it. Continue reading Darkness Holds, These Eternities, Loss by Tom Montag
Queer by Olive Fitzgerald
In school we learnt the story of Samson
and I imagined him,
strange, blind hands pinning him to his chair
as locks of hair drifted down around his shoulders
like feathers,
like snow. Continue reading Queer by Olive Fitzgerald
8-WEST PRESS 