JOHN AMEN
What Sanctuary?

After the day's razing,
I go out looking to get laid,
end up at a coffee shop
reading a cheap zine.
When I leave,
my hands are as black as shadows,
and I am fifteen years older.

Soldiers are eating raw pork
in the streets. Mannequins lie in gutters,
profanities scribbled on their breasts.
I am singing happy birthday to myself
when the first bomb falls.

In a second, I will be an old man
peering through a rusty keyhole,
wondering why the room inside is empty.
My children will walk by rubble
as casually as if they were window shopping.

And when night pounds like a court date,
bailiffs with clipped wings will appear,
escort me to a place lined with broken glass,
where my name will be removed as if it were old gauze,
before God arrives like a celebrated surgeon,
puts the mask over my face, and amputates my memory.

AVERIL BONES
Like Magnets

We two are like magnets,
repelling, sliding liquid skins
over imagined mattresses,
mouths open and breathing
close but smoothed with
aviation glass between us;
or some element that refuses to be broken
even by my most insistent woman's touch.
Your eyes are wide, but still I cannot reach you.