RAW STUFF

by Carolyn Gregory



Their guns become their dolls,
each with a girl's name on it
and carved tattoo
they caress and polish
like vintage cars

With summer on their hands
and nothing playing at the movies
after the slasher film goes
the way of its bloody machete,

they train on tin cans
popping off little soldiers
on a fence,
steady as she comes
before antlers and coyotes follow --
no time for sentiment

Back with their kill,
they puff up chests and strut
as they continue
making men out of raw stuff,
rifle in a backpack,
Glock in a leather pocket.


Carolyn Gregory's poems and essays on music have been published in American Poetry Review, Main Street Rag, Bellowing Ark, Seattle Review, and Stylus. She was featured in For Lovers and Other Losses. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for poetry in 2011 and is a past recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council award. Her book, Open Letters, was published by Windmill Editions in 2009 and her next, Facing the Music, in 2012. She has been working on a series about the history of guns in America for several years now.

WHEN ISRAEL WAS ATTACKED

by Laura Eklund

"Contrary Theses,"Acrylic on Canvas by Laura Eklund

I imagined men in bare feet
and soldiers building the toolbox
that was never big enough.
Half of the stars forgot to see
though I could see Heaven
dotting the sky
in the far-off distance.
We talked over dinner
with faces in the background
though it was barely enough
the roots of the earth kept growing
toward the aspects.
Compressing the story
that could never be told

the protestations of children
tucked into the night.


Laura Eklund is an artist and poet. She lives and works in Olive Hill, KY with the poet George Eklund and their four chldren. She has been writing poetry since she learned to read and write, which was about third grade. She writes in order to breathe and survive.