Daisies border the lawn
like poor embroidery. You do not want them
to be beautiful. Thick-hearted,

on their wayward stems. No one can explain
why you deserve this. Not the doctor. Not
the clock. Not God

in his stained-glass field. The flood recedes.
The fire swerves around your house, your bed, your
face. Hard roses on the breakfast china.

Everyone at their time, they tell you.
The nurse crying in the nursery. The crib
carried down, the buckling

floor. You watch light through the ivy--
day making its same mistakes; spring rain
straying into summer. You breathe as the last

coughs rake blood from his lungs. No one
can change this. The bodies are buried;
music seeps from shutters--hurricane plywood;

cracked glass; the station where the train will leave
in a wake of dumb bright songs. No one can take back
what you prayed. You wanted to live.

You wanted to be safe.

--Alexandra Teague

Copyright © 2011 by Oberlin College. May not be reproduced without permission.

WHY I AM CRYING INTO MY GIN-AND-TONIC

Not the burst blossoms of the pear,
not the chartreuse stems it shed,
their fine eyelashed cups peaked
and emptied of petals, but finding
a few at midnight in my hair.
It is past time for going inside:
the people in this novel are so sad--
as if it weren't enough they are
young and lovely, as if the rain
had been more than routinely
violent, as if grief could not be cut
with golden, as if it might be a pity
to be a man at forty on a porch,
crickets legging it to the heart's
old etcetera, honeysuckle so wetly
sweet with rain that fireflies
rising from it, absinthe-winged,
totter onto the mineral air
and even the stars are getting lit.

--Sarah Barber

Copyright © 2011 by Oberlin College. May not be reproduced without permission.

CATACOMBS OF THE EYE

On the ocean floor, find it. In the corner
store near the frozen dumplings, press it

into service. Soak the local: anarchy of milk
on a May Day tablecloth, the curtainless

shower swamp, the hand-twisted shirts
dripping from every curtain rod, an empty

rental flat. Outside, imbroglio of iron
flowers on canal fences above time

-sledged sidewalks. The rising canals
spill past stiletto-flexed calves

of street walkers, their moving picture
-esques. Sitting at attention, the veteran

of amputations, his glacial blue gaze,
his military cap in his lap like a sponge for change.

The glue-sniffing urchins slouched
on the crumbled window ledge

of the Currency Exchange, their faces
all edges. Their gray frames ashiver,

memorized, seized birds. The water
rises. Glut of the mouth, the unslaked eyes.

--Philip Metres

Copyright © 2011 by Oberlin College. May not be reproduced without permission.