the INLAID EAR

By Jeannine Chappell see also: This Has Happened .   Pup’s old       It’s unbelievable how Bella sleeps, the same bursting free girl who chased for years sticks, balls, frizzlebees—foaming meadow greens until her muscles cramped, and her peaked ears rounded, and her tongue pierced and pierced the breeze, which always roves in when the sun covers itself under hills. In the aftermath, a walk home, a deposit scooped, suppers all around, and everyone gets a bath. For some, that’s a chance to earn a few treats. The eternal puppy exhales dog breath. She mouths her stuffy and shares tugging games, but no longer levitates off the earth, snapping for a toy or a bite of lamb. The cold weather affects the Bootsky’s knees. Shall I warble “Sunrise, Sunset”? I am, thanks to her, never going to be the same.

I’ve so many good wishes from fortune cookies saved in my home, you’d think to see diamonds and plums in Chihuly bowls in each room. Reality? Bowls by Ari fill with pennies and small apples from our own tree. Fortune’s simple sugary crumbs fill my temple. My luck’s ample. *** Hey! If you have a moment - I'd still love to get input on which Henrik Drescher piece you like best. Read on :)

Hello and welcome and thanks for coming. I have a favor to ask. So: I'm working on a book of poems in which each one will be illustrated by a different artist. Many awesome artists are participating, and one of my favorites is Henrik Drescher . He's done bunches of kids books and even more adult books of strange and gutsy art, drawings, and collage. Lauren and I have an original piece of his in our bedroom, a gift to each other for our 10th anniversary. Drescher is very cool. And he has said YES --I can use one of his illustrations in my book! After sifting through many choices and matching them up with poems, I have narrowed the field to these four. READERS, POETS, PEOPLE: Please look at his illustrations below and read my accompanying poems, and in the comments section, let me know which ones stand out for you most. I need help making the final selection, and I value your input highly. Thank you! And now, the works: Before During After Isn...

By Carole Ambauen Like many graphic designers, Carole's work is often digital and often unsigned. It's really lovely to have a piece of her work here that's hand drawn and credited. More about her, her process and this poem, below. I believe when I relent   I topple to rise up then I tower to fall. I’ve an upstart yen and an urge to surrender. At whose bidding do I cross and re-cross the hall? "I push backwards…I go forwards." —Larry Eigner. "Nothing is true that isn't paradoxical." Kathy Altman says it. I hear waves in my gyre. We are standing bubbles of wind, water and sand. Since the floor is dancing, it’s the perfect partner. Head on the ground, feet researching the air firsthand, what's down pushes up my fire, bruises my apple. "In a field / I am the absence / of field....

Within the one everything everything is, i have felt pressed against a dividing skin, a curtain that both separates and marries each real something with its counterpart non-thing. On the other side of the invisible schism, bardo and its shadow denizens spiral and split, folding and complicating. The exact opposite parallel reason counterbalances both sides of everything. The divide, like Carroll’s Caterpillar, says: “Who are you—unifying and zeroing— a clay body pressed into a clay background? Do you invent names so that you needn’t sing? Are you in the courtroom or on the playground? How do you come to enjoy taking my quiz? The dimensionless alchemy between sound and silence underpins them both, I have found.” By the formidable David Fleischmann, my brother.

I am a chef. I have seen nearly three centuries because I have learned to cook cuisine of formidable sorcery. My orchard yields only weeds. You can look. I fetch a pailful to the scullery, warp creeping jenny, pokeweed and hemlock into aromatic strawberry crepes. It takes me weeks of precise handiwork, metamorphosing moss to muscat grapes— and all the while I am madly hungry. Springtime to springtime. That’s the time it takes to set the banquet, set the trap, then rest my eyes, side by side, on the pewter plate. There’s nothing then but to wait, unconscious, until, at last, some door admits a crook. More than anything, I love having guests. I count the skulls, the times I’ve been so blessed. . Eric Lindsey If you'd like to watch the Pale Man clip from the movie "Pan's Lab yrin th," brace yourself for some serious creepy .

I prayed that the friction of spinning wheels would suffice to ignite the inferno— prayed until bike tires turned to radials skidding disharmony to radio rock ‘n’ roll—until parked, cliff-edged, the squeals of mutual private boiling wet windows— saw spark touch gas. The world began—at last— to burn. Vesuvius blew. Phoenix rose. Summer chased off spring into fragrant grass and wove garlands from immortal impulse— so soon cries of fruition—came so fast— a tiny apple, an ember burning to emerge, new fuel grown from the ashes— searing to flourish, flush with the yearning… Now she dances and pops while my fire slows. Shared concentration of heat returning, this sustaining smolder of my learning. Jay Musler is well known as a glass artist, so it is particularly thrilling to me that he has contributed an illustration for the book.