Snapdragons Crackle

Donal Mahoney

Snapdragons crackle

in the air for Maura

and her flowing gait,

a swagger neither Nora

nor Maureen would ever

let a suitor savor.

Maura knows

that in her wake

men with scythes

and burlap sacks,

creep like gators,

eyes afire, jaws agape.

Nora and Maureen

can smell these men.

Unlike Maura

and her flowing gait,

Nora and Maureen will smile,

take their time and wait.

Approbations 449—after Mal Waldron’s Nervous

Felino Soriano

Deportation my
silence erupts
                                    anti
innate, cloistered closure
my tongue aptly denies
 charring
commentary, collocated
ending rivalry with reflectional
depictions of mind’s wandering
unaccepted glory.
                                    Démodé                      moments
those of temporal
constants
deceiving modes of a life’s
unlived hitherto, inebriating
slurs of rhythmic devotion
my doorknocker knees
clash and destroy
ambulation’s
                                                pivotal enjoyment. 

Kabul

Ross Vassilev

memories
of gone empires
in the opiate
dreams
of fakirs and sages

gone religions
are mountain flowers
while the faiths
of Abraham
wait to join them
in eternal sleep

the only constant
is the rape of the people
and the blood-red
poppies at the doors
of the angels.