— tapioca world tour

Though he thought I was asleep in the sun, I was not. I was lucid.

For a long time I watched his ship departing

until the flag at the stern vanished, eaten by the gray horizon.

Then the gulls came, then the stars. I began to live between visions

of reunion and the truth shifting like tides against the dunes.

Under a tent of yaupons I built a hut of driftwood, using sea oats

for a threshold and the emptied halves of mollusk shells for the roof.

Butterflies traversed the shore. When I held the ocean’s shell

to my ear we were one

vessel speaking to another vessel

about the rapture of the void.

There had been
A microphone hidden

Beneath the bed
Of course I didn’t realize it

At the time & in fact
Didn’t know for years

Until one day a standard
Khaki book mailer

Arrived & within it
An old

Stained cassette tape
Simply labeled in black marker

“Him / Me / September 1975″
& as I listened I knew something

Had been asked of me
Across the years & loneliness

To which I simply responded
With the same barely audible

Silence that I had chosen then

- David St. John

is no great

bread.
It’s tough

and mostly
tasteless

stuff.
You chew

and chew.
It’s said

to be good
for you, but

it only fills.
Swallow it,

it swells.
And it must

be mildly
sodiate,

for its last
effect is just

like its first:
thirst. Take

birth, for
instance:

nine whole
months

a baby
keeps mum.

Take spring:
up north,

all time’s
a sandwich

between thick
white crusts

of wintering.
Take anything

that bakes,
brews, builds,

or makes
appointments

more than a
few days out.

Take worry
and doubt.

And what’s
hurry but a

hurried wait?
Every day

we wait for
night; every

night we wait
for morning.

Take warning.
Take endings,

especially
endings made

unnecessarily
(or, worse,

by excess
drivel or a

swiveling
syntax,

superficially)
delayed:

the wait
is what

a writer
spends

his brief
and bitter

tenure on
this breath-

taking, heart-
breaking

earth
making

every
ending

worth.

– Todd Boss

Persimmons ripen with the first frost.
                The bitterness inflicted on them
                                 takes their bitterness away.

Would that there were some other way.

– D. A. Powell