She loves like a bridge
that ices before the road;
he like falling rock.

For that second watch you steal
you’ll need a middleman
and God so made the world
that there are middlemen.

*

That Proudhon had a point
though he commits the crime
of maligning theft.

*

It took months of lurking
in the aisles of drug stores
but the first woman I married
was the fetching one I followed home
after watching her shoplift
an eyeliner and toothbrush.

*

The wealth of others is,
as my lawyers would say,
a mitigating circumstance.

*

There’s pleasure in knowing
so many people
confuse social security
with identity.

*

It’s not the chagrin of leaving
clues they use to convict you—
it’s suffering the sentence
of state support.

William Aarnes teaches at Furman University. He has published two books, Learning to Dance and Predicaments, and has poems forthcoming in Shenandoah, Bateau, The Literary Review, nthposition, and The Seneca Review.

A live wire spit and thrashed over the cab.
The daylight was another goner; it slid
behind a hill, beyond that field and night
was the hup-hup of a motorcycle, the strange
call of a foreign bird. We spent all night
stuck in the cab, smelling cigarettes
smoked weeks ago, deciding if we wanted
each other, if we’d die by morning.
My game was: make myself smaller,
turn into the damp vinyl seat. Stay awake.
When I woke, you were trying to get us
out. If the glass were diamonds. If the blood
were water. If the boot was a hand on my forehead.
Then, I had to see your body, dead
on the hood, half in and half out
of the broken windshield. I could not touch you,
and the second day became another country.

The deer’s skin was mostly intact.
He tried to haul the body into his truck.
His dog barked; his back ached. The bark echoed.
The body slumped back to the road’s shoulder.
He knew what he’d do—saw at the deer’s neck.
With the saw from his tool box, he cut through skin.
He went at it—vein, fascia, adipose, bone.
He was sweat and resentment. His hands turned red.
He worked slowly, neatly.
He wiped up blood with a napkin, then a fistful of rags.
He figured the deer’s brown eyes had fooled a hundred hunters.
The deer’s head, apart from the body, was something.
He let out a low whistle. Only 5 am.
He’d drive east, arrive before his wife.
He looked at his watch again.
He forgot what it had said before.
The head wobbled in the truck’s bed.
The man rejoined the highway traffic.
He knew he’d leave it for his wife to see.
He looked at his watch. Still time.
He’d leave it on the library steps—
Blood on the stairs, soft ears, the eyes—
Thirty minutes before she arrived to work.

Deborah Ager is publisher and editor at 32 Poems magazine, which has had poems appear in Best American Poetry and Best New Poets. Her own poetry has appeared in Silk Road, Best New Poets, New England Review and other journals. She lives in Maryland and loves cherry blossoms.

Holy slumbers of Reagan’s golden rock!
They’ve found the bones of September, 1982.
My grandmother can’t be too far off.

My favorite color then was Jesus.
Everyone wanted the little flags my stepfather
fashioned from the white feathers of black eagles.

We cheered when the smelter stacks were razed,
despite the implosion of jobs, and Uncle Bob made
French toast and sang a song about roast beef.

On Tenth Avenue, the contrast of white
on purple disallowed for yellow
submarines.
                    Gentlemen, please stand.
It’s ten o’clock, you’re on,
but no Beatles songs, please, no stereos.
Happy birthday, Ronny. Tee up!

I was the kind of kid who wore a clip-on tie.
My girlfriend was a room full of music videos.
I was shy. It was Great Falls. Here, start a club.

Boe Barnett has been awarded no prizes, stipends, residencies, chairs, fellowships, advances, or royalties. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in ICE-FLOE: International Poetry of the Far North, Crab Creek Review, Blueline, SLAB, DIAGRAM, qarrtsiluni, and others. He lives with his family in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Touch. Yes. No. There. Wait.
Notice the swarming outside our submersible?

Eelpouts and tube worms, gelatin shrimp.
We’ve drifted to a cold seep or a sea-mount,
some sort of rift.
Those extremophiles
are the only reason we have light.

How exposed we are now.
I see you, the form of you,
hairs on you, the way you arch and crook
I see you looking.
What you look at, tongue and touch.

Primordial waters gush here,
at the escarpment, at the Marianas.

You within me within you.
Together we bottom-dwell,
feeding and spawning with other organisms.
Together we
touch, yes, no, there, wait—

Something is off.
I fear I am alone down here.

Kate Bernadette Benedict is the author of a full-length collection of poetry, Here from Away (CustomWords 2003) and the editor/publisher of Umbrella: A Journal of Poetry and Kindred Prose. “Sea Floor” is from Night Queue, a collection of dream-poem scenarios.

My shadow will kill your shadow, reader.
Someone has set up an impossibly complex domino thing
at the mall which makes buying shorts
even more tedious than usual.
But, they have everything at the mall, reader!
They have pet massagers.
They have specialty tea.
They have automatic masturbating pants.
They have dominos.
So get out there and consume, reader!
Do it! I said do it!
Stop reading this! Go to the mall! DO IT!
Fine, don’t do it. Watch the local news for all I care.
I think it’s the best show on.
When I watch it, I always imagine tension
between the lead guy and the sports guy.
Like, they banter, but it’s so clear they hate each other.
When I watch the local news, I always imagine sexual tension
between the lead guy and the lead girl.
Like, they secretly want each other, but are forced
to remain professional.
Tonight, on action news at nine,
walnuts may kill you! We’ll tell you how right after this.
The shadow of a walnut is a baby fist,
the inside of a walnut is a baby shadow, the inside of a baby
is a walnut fist. I no longer drink milk because it reminds me
of clouds, blossoming like white coloring
in a glass of water. Like blood
in a glass of water. Like water in a glass of blood.
Look, in the sky, all those people are dying.

Jason Bredle is the author of Standing in Line for the Beast, winner of the 2006 New Issues Poetry Prize, and A Twelve Step Guide, winner of the 2004 New Michigan Press chapbook contest. His most recent book, Pain Fantasy, is available from Red Morning Press. He lives in Chicago.

Benchmarks a crock of ‘em,

terrorists laugh monkeying. Harvest full
on refugees stutter generation. Neighborhoods

a couple they need. You
like testimony? Pogrom surging sectarian
this “foundation.” Every taller democracy

goes such a moment young
behind her ears. But this
enduration? How good nations reveal
violently the humanitarian (since television).

And a more secure?
It isn’t a helluva
much there. Especially Baghdad
to capitalize. For ally
you should (in their

alley blinding little poor
this country) trust security
gangs? Tomorrow starts extremists
dement, demand that same
barrel as you, more
decent, a bargain yet.

Thomas Fink’s fifth book of poetry, Clarity and Other Poems, was published by Marsh Hawk Press in 2008. His poem “Yinglish Strophes 9″ appeared in The Best American Poetry 2007 (Scribner’s), selected by Heather McHugh and David Lehman. Fink’s paintings hang in various collections.

The low hanging hibiscus coos out
its swollen-mouth flower song
to the rare bee holding its tongue
and I’m drunk on the bully world again—
a fueled up fluster coming on.
Look, even two oceans can collide
here in the belly of white islands.
Splurge and risk in the conch-dark
night—I’m going to walk into the water’s
frothy rim. Come here shark. Come
here barracuda. Love the sweet artifacts
of this body. Carry me in the world-class
rattle of a wave. I want the big bite, one
restless, tooth-filled mouth to take me down.

I dreamed the tangled crush of magic peels
in the wax leaves made a spell of bones
and everything bloomed big and better than
before, and beyond the barbed wire, beyond
this fence of angry fists there’s a breathing,
there’s a breathing underwater. Love
the body bending, the useless hair, the
when of the skin, the when of the wrist,
the witching, the now, the now, the insist.

Ada Limón’s first book, lucky wreck, was the winner of the Autumn House Poetry Prize and her second book, This Big Fake World, was the winner of the Pearl Poetry Prize. She is at work on a third book of poems, Sharks in the Rivers, as well as a novel.

Carrie Meadows is winner of the Academy of American Poets’ Poetry Society of Virginia Award, and her poetry has been nominated for the upcoming edition of Best New Poets. Her work has appeared in The New River Journal of Digital Writing and Art, CEllA’s Round Trip, and Fifth Wednesday Journal.

          Fear of atomic explosions

And what about: again? If not explode,
then fracture, blaze. Or, leave. One year I wrote
three hundred sixty five laments. The next
I watched two lamps burn out at once. The wreck
of me sees every city, gone. Each night
the train implodes: my own New York set right,
then overturned like bowling pins. My god.
But really: what about again? What could,
what if, what next. I may not run so fast
next time—not knowing what I know: a blast
of sky, and time; of scientific pap.
I need a nap, a borough in my lap
to stroke to sleep, another year of peace,
a bang, a bigger bang. I need release.