november sutra composed in october

calculus of loss: two plane tree leaves yellow-brown
each curled like a hand sinking in the puddle on
the corner below the stop sign

descending chromatic bass line in E minor the
silver flute discharging the tune the Willamette
swirls frigid beneath the Steel Bridge

I tell you goodbye each afternoon the clouds the
blue sky the pine trees draining through the blinds &
question myself if I mean it

so we talked about death your death just the gray
speckled stones beyond the window eaves-
dropped & an empty gray sky

to my right as I walk the apple leaves are rust to
my left as I walk the hawthorn leaves are rust a
waning moon will rise bone-white

by evening—it’s easy to say the self is an
abstraction until that self peers through eyes seeing tomorrow
through a west window glazed by

sunset & lights in the sky you say the international
space station sinking nearer & nearer earth &
then not even rocks not even absence

not a photograph not a snow drift not a white house
the plane tree at the corner sheds a brown leaf to concrete
large as my outstretched hand

 
Jack Hayes
© 2015

"milk and eggs"

milk and eggs

this girl
got bold eyes
and she hide them
behind cool shades.
this girl cool.

this girl,
she look at the men
and she look at the women, too
this girl don't care that they see
they see black
they see sky looking back
see their own ideas

don't see them bold eyes
but they know
they feel that
in their skin
the small of their back

shoot through them
that look
those eyes
bold eyes

this girl
she smile
she walk on

a thousand adulteries of the heart
twelve of the mind
milk and eggs
back home for tea 

Mairi Graham-Shaw
© 2015


Image links to its source on Wiki Commons
Kniende in orange-rotem Kleid (Kneeling Female in Orange-Red Dress) - drawing; 1910: Egon Schiele
Public domain