Got on the bus half drunk again
the driver glared at me


Guy R. Beining, Worm, 2008

North Beach Yuppie Bar
-- by A.D. Winans

Hard to believe Richard Brautigan
Jack Spicer and the Beats drank here
As I sit and watch two business men
Playing liar's dice at Gino and Carlo's Bar
In the heard of North Beach
Their faces white as pie crust
Wearing double breasted suits
and Italian imported shirts
The legal mafia making their own rules

The one with the twisted smile
Hides behind his dice cup
His coconspirator silently poking
At the olive in his martini glass
Looking like a hit man waiting
to fulfill a contract


Death of a Lawn Mower
-- by David Ignatow

It died in its sleep,
dreaming of grass,
its knives silent and still,
dreaming too, its handlebars
a stern, abbreviated cross
in tall weeds. Where is he
whom it served so well?
Its work has come to nothing,
the dead keep to themselves.


The Couple
-- by Louis Jenkins

They no longer sleep quite as well as they did
when they were younger. He lies awake thinking
of things that happened years ago, turning
uncomfortably from time to time, pulling on the
blankets. She worries about money. First one
and then the other is awake during the night,
in shifts as if keeping watch, though they can't
see very much in the dark and it's quiet. They
are sentries at some outpost, an abandoned fort
somewhere in the middle of the Great Plains
where only the wind is a regular visitor. Each
stands guard in the wilderness of an imagined
life in which the other sleeps untroubled.