Pam Hobart Carter brings to you an elegaic reminder of how after great pain a formal feeling comes.

Her letter drifted across an empty sky, a night shadow dragging its feet behind a wandering cloud. Striations on the walls of arroyos mark the arid years…

A short poem from the streets by Christian Black

One angel holds my feet
 while the other two each 
a hand and touch my head

I apologize for finding this dog to shadow you even as you pace the attic from desk to window, you and he, a pair now, contemplating those tough computer programming issues at which dogs notoriously shine.

Push number four because the stairs are murder: a crooked rattle- snake spine, windows painted shut, walls twice papered over, built into catacombs you’re sure they know by heart: busted hall lights & pitch dark landings, cul-de-sacs colored a murderous blood-red.

Assuage their vanity with tools of rhetoric and anything they pay to hear; sacrifice the flesh as a halal butcher hangs carcasses to a commercial god.

My love for you continues to this day. With our photographs and history I stay. Writing stories of our life together keeps me brave: Alive, and feeling better.

On evenings filled with rain the elephants believe my open door leads to a green stretch of forest and trundle through. Each concocts a song or howl of her own— a moan of bassoon, a pitch of piccolos and even agonies of strings to tell…