Three Poems

Poem Composed Entirely with Last Lines in Ed Ochester Poems

sunset rising on the window
in the old direction of the world

mile upon mile
the cornfields nourished by blood
stood firm against the moon

slowly as the stars
of a glacial lake
I love I love

beneath the white ring of ice

Poem Composed Entirely with Last Lines in Lucia Perillo Poems

As he arcs the distance between here and those other days
Sinatra was singing, “Jealous Lover.” All of us were young
when comes the cry that I swear isn’t mine.

On the first morning it unfurls
we break, we rise. We do what we’re here for
and we’re already goners, should we fall or not.

Will I inherit to soften this hard skin, to make love tender?
… but no. Stop here. No of course it can’t be said.
They weren’t going to say

that a smart girl could find her way out of anywhere, alive
on darkness. How can any of us be damned
as each body passes through the pairs of upraised hands?

Poem Composed Entirely with Last Lines in Sydney Lea Poems

Before we’re disconnected
you are lost,
I fear, into the night.

There was, or there wasn’t, a moon,
so the world will ask.
Uncertain how to respond, I whistle. The milk of childhood drains

but plain and simple things will take their own course
as if here changed and changed into an answer,
but there’s no safe place to hide.

The world is ether
for you. For me:
creator, creature, riddle, lover, maid.