Fall

    by Tammy Vitale

…none of us can get
far enough away and none of us can
get close enough

forever knocking together, flinging
apart:  the eyebrow attaches itself
to the nose but the mouth goes
its own way when the eyes stop
watching even if Maureen always did
say practice but
I was lazy, couldn’t keep things in one place
after they’d gotten a taste
of the great out there:  desert, stars, cool
mountain lakes full of wishes swimming
in circles scaring away the fish which
were eating stray parts like buzzards clean
roadkill – feet pointed up, feet pointed
down – the roadkill that is, road being
the wrong place to lie down in the middle
of a night full of sky, angry
planets and comets chased by their tails – or
perhaps I’m thinking of the dog, who instead
prefers sausage to tail any day.

The secret to unlocking the door is

 remember

there is no door

there is no key

On the Beach

     by Rose Solari

So this is the measure of emptiness-
exactly the distance between your hand
and mine, the number of heartbeats between
the first wave and the second.  The water
turns over and runs back out.  You turn
around, button your coat across
your shoulders, and walk away.

Sometimes I think that we can make
anything we need of sky or sand.
The big dipper or a baseball cap.
A moat or an abscess.  Last night the clouds
came in in the shapes of bodies,
bodies like ours.  Tumbling and resting.
Earnest.  A little sloppy.  And then

they resolved into a single mass,
variations on one color – warm gray,
cool gray, the salt of a sleeper’s bones,
the silver of telephone lines.  Lightning
ran over in small quick fires and I tried
to memorize it all.  The lights and shapes
of that moment, and the moment before.

Past Perfect

     by Tammy Vitale

When the moon is full
and the temperature
all round
is on the rise

when the whippoorwill
cries its one note song
again and again

and the chorus of crickets
is drowned by tree frogs
and fat toads

my skin remembers the
urgency of your mouth
in all the secret places
where wet and heat make steam

and I wonder where you are
what tangled sheets you sleep on

and if the air you breathe
still smells of cinnamon