Better When Broken— Empty, open—sharp new edgesCatching the light. More lovelyWhen over, nearly forgotten:Gorgeous on the point of almostGoing out of sight. Better whenWounded, softened by deep wrong—Brackish water—ruined, floodedBy grief; braver moving slowlyForward, holding this moment’sSmall wavering flame—at lastPast furious (No!) disbelief. BetterConfessing loss on the way, late,To gratitude: repeating, Once, once…Best when? Now? Or never. Blessed. Baton Rouge, Ash Wednesday Shimmer of bead-strewn asphalt, the gutters glitter and shine: Pale styrofoam containers smashed open, ooze of red sauce, Greasy bones, splatter of mystery side-dish, sparkle of plastic and Shattered glass. Bright yellow banner of police tape, breeze-tugged, Fluttering. All the infinitely desirable throws are nothing now: muddy Plush…

The Loop (MMORPG) On the last leg of the loop I drive before sundown there is a back road through a tunnel of trees where canopies reach across & the intertwining limbs cast shadows like refracted sunlight in an asphalt pool. Who wants to see anything lovely by themselves? The way a timid moon enrages the blue emptiness of late afternoon, how a length of fenceless pasture turns my truck into one part in this moving diorama or massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Round bales of hay down a field with horses fucking. We’re all driving out here somewhere. It’s not how the heart gets back up but how many…

Independence Day Hugging the Hudson’s edgeon the way to Cold Spring Harbor,in the gray and lavender duskthe amphitheater a lit jewelat the Hudson’s throat.West Point on July 4th becausethe cadets would say “sir,” because once a boy at homelit firecrackers near us,called my angry father an ass.In the flanging dark my mother triedto pull my father off the boy,her slender silhouettelike a shadow puppet full of holes. West Point because they playedthe 1812 Overtureand my father liked cannons,the precision of their explosionsthe sulfured smoke blowing downthe river, dark on shadowed dark.When the fireworks were over,we leaned in the backseat like spent bowling pins.The stone pillars, granite wallsradiant in the sulphur-sparked…

temporal remains   trinkets. traffic. the endless blare of bachata. we walkthe city from one end to another. wherever we come our pale tongue betrays us for what we are: extranjerosthe kind that carries money like a foreign idol, the kind that breeds dreams only to steal them right back from you. the streets crumble under our feet, shed their history likea bad coat of paint. houses, structures, skeletons, it’s all temporal. roots, like the breaking of skin, take time andtime is that most feather-like of things: it flutters. so yes, if offered treasure, take feathers or cloth. anythingthat’s soft against your cheek, anything that rustles weathered, veinlike, brief. gold,…

To Richard Feynman, Concerning His QED   All we do is draw little arrows on a piece of paper—that’s all!—Feynman explaining how physicists calculate reflection It must have been goldto see you in the flesh—oh what profound and light amazement you could radiate. And when translating arrowsinto books, you sharpened the points, then aimedso you would pierce the dullest hearts and minds.Yet how could lines on paper showfull force of your delight? The core of your passion, now,has streaked on through and out to the other side—along with you. In spite of laurels,no spring could reverse your death, or this falling of love into symbols,this plummet of sun into wood.…

Leland Stanford Jr. It’s an old story: a boy had to die        before an institution could be madeto contain a father’s grief.        The child’s funeral masklike an early draft of humanity, discarded—                  white, even in death. Then: crude oil and cross-country railroads,        the children of California shall be our children,never mind who was already buried        in what is now a valley of kingmakers. Every Halloween, sophomores hold a party at the mausoleum. William Ward Butler is the poet laureate of Los Gatos, California. He is the author of the chapbook…

Ode to a Bartender at the Charlotte Douglas Airport, Terminal A               I Her pink-accent shock-blond boband sad-face emoji tattoo softenthe sting of not asking for my ID,the before-noon margarita drinker in me. Her library copy of It atopthe Avantco refrigerator, a badlytattered Stephen King near hersweating, half-drunk strawberry lemonade from Burger Kingdistracts me from the intensifyingpro-Palestinian protests and arrestsat UCLA and Columbia on the TV, from the humanitarian crisis in Gaza,from the failed cease fire and deadhostages. Today’s school shooting.I ask her what it’s like tending to us.               II She shares her customer journal, firleather record…

Belief at Low Tide I hear a choir—a morning concert? Closerthe bodies dressed in white hymn on a wedge of sand. I pause in palm-shade, a godwit probes the surf. A thin man readsthe black book and a young girl shelters in the choir of larger bodies. Afraid. To disturb them. Drawnto their mass. Stay shadowed, skeptical. Before the plunge of the osprey, they take her hand out where eels submerge.I hang on the horizon, distracted by bright clouds. (What is it I now believe?) Fall backward—hair, face bathed, eyes immersedin salt, in liquid light. Leave…before they lead me into the sky. Mark McKain’s work has appeared in Agni, The…

Watching a Beach House Be Pulled into the Ocean   It’s not the same as seeing our kid’s sandcastles eroded,      one detail at a time bleeding into lumps. And this is surprising—            how much stays together, how much the house remains a house, even as the stilts under it collapse.      It’s as if to prove Eliot right about the way the world ends,            that things linger on, haunting the borders, the edges where one world falls into another. They beckon us      to look through their windows, so strangely clear           …

An Agnostic’s Christmas I’m watching my wifedress the Christmas treelike she’s choosing clothesto wear to a coronation the tree lights sparkle inbeauty for any faith, or none at allwhile the heart-shaped ornamentfilled with a friend’s ashes hangs between the Elvis bulband the fabric star my latesister-in-law embroideredand, oh, the tree is dying too we pretend there is magicto this one winter day, that pealsthe bells crafted on the backsof so many in need. Even the creche on the mantle is wanting—wehaven’t unpacked the Baby Jesusand the others yet— so the mangersits empty and waitingas do I. Tom Barlow is a widely published Ohio writer of poetry, short stories and novels.…