Conference of The Birds by Gene Fowler

CONFERENCE OF THE BIRDS

Find the rebirthing
love? – personal renaissance?

The only way
is to nudge into being
a whole damned Renaissance.

No other way.
All the hunting grounds
are used up, worked
out.

Inspired thoughts come.
The design for a hunting preserve.
Pull those I might wave
my Poet at, pull
’em into a room.
Then wave it in long, slow
wavings, deep, encircling moves,
wreathes of voice and word, winds
from moving hands, lips, eyes.

Make it double barreled:

a conference, place
where secrets
are divulged.

A reading, a place
where egos, theirs, may unfurl.

Be subtle: not just women
invited. Everybody. Poets,
publishers, patrons, those tickled by
muses . . .

Then, slick down the heavy wool
on my bent leg, tune
my three note whistle.
Attend.

–Gene Fowler

Walnut Creek Fault Finding by Stephen Morse

Walnut Creek Fault Finding

1.

My blonde
suburban
mother tries to
fly
in the socialite
newspaper
dumb show
of Bales Drive
under the dry
white sky
land abandoned
by the deer and
the crow:

2.

co-opted by the
claustrophobic
cat
domestica and
slobber-jawed
dog
snapping
cookie kids and
a flock of bat
toting young
hands fondling
a green-tree
frog.

3.

a word-camp
of post war
blood white,
and blue
anger flaring
soul drying
sodium.
Parents cured
broiled
bland by the
great war
smoked in
mushroom
deaths, we find
faults
to ignore

–Stephen Morse