This is a collection of poems from some of the 2008 Participants of the WEST END POETS FESTIVAL.

Stuffed toys, plastic boys, plastic rats and fuzzy hats. Floppy pillows, flappy sheets, a painting where
two lovers meet.

Three Green Day posters lying around, boxes and bags of books and the ground. Paper airplanes, wooden trains and a worn down cane.

A box of art, a bag of toys that used to bring me wondrous joys. Joys that were hidden underneath the boxes and bags and gags; whoopee cushions, buzzers, fuzzies, an old VHS of Muzzy.

Rock collections, election ballets, ballet shoes, blues and jazz records that were recorded. Checker boards and chess pieces, a wrapper from a melted Reese's, a rapper's CD with good sounds and worse words. Thirds of puzzles, uncompleted, a book light that I never needed. And a squeaky handle from a broken faucet.

These are some treasures that fill up my closet.

Alexandra Slydel

Nightsong

I wait for her when the wildbirds start; my feet lounge barefoot in the carpet.
Empty pot of jasmine tea
drunk down at midnight, I'm waiting still for her to two-step through the door and join me with my pen and paper on the bed. Then we begin our nightly labors, carving mysteries out of the air with curving lines and tender rhythms. My hands fall into the pattern of her thighs -- the soft strumming, the change, the climax.
Sometimes it's hard -- I hammer her out
like hardwrought iron on an anvil.
Sometimes it's gentle -- I tap her out
like cedar shake melodies in the rain.
Sometimes I strike the perfect chord
and she breathes out a siren's whisper.
Sometimes I tangle in her strings
and smoke a cigarette outside
to clear my head and find the moon.
Sometimes I catch every butterfly word
she says and pin them down on paper
before they fly away, but usually
one or two escape, forgotten.
She is never as beautiful after we finish entwining in the lampshade shadows -- something gets lost along the way.
With quick scribblings in the burning night she tells me beauty lies in the sometimes.

Ryan Dowdy

He waltzes into the room grinning
like a Steinway Grand, hearing aid cranked
past max, feedback howling up a pack

of hounds 2 blocks away. He sits
& somebody pokes him that I'm already reading
but we're all disabled by his 88-key brain

damaged smile & howling aid now maxed
out past audio code blue & my fillings
are starting to melt so I decide it's his turn

after all. I try to locate him on my world-
class irritation scale-then remember
my recurring nightmare-I'm slowing

for a hitchhiker on I-40 & it's raining.
But then I see his green face
& floor it & suddenly know why

I'm so nice to the old guy. If Jesus ever
comes down to check on me, this is
probably the way He'll disguise Himself.

Dave Manning

Glenn Cassidy

Coronation

I win because
I have four cards
and you have three,
because I have
the seven and eight of hearts.
I win because
I'm a cute five-year-old
who can barely count.

I win because
all your good cards
came early,
because
my cards are bigger,
because your
king of spades
negates
all your other cards.
I win because
you will patronize me,
because
you see the tantrum
start to rise
when you challenge me.

I win because
my cards
have more spots than yours,
because I dealt you
all the cards in your hand
and you will be grateful
to let me win.
I win because
my cards are blue
and your cards are red,
because none
of your cards matter.

I win because
I will throw
all the cards on the floor
and set them on fire
if you don't let me win.

Glenn Cassidy

Fill Her Up

You fill me up like a Pop-tart fills the toaster,
Sweet and hot.
You're every recipe my grandmother made
And I forgot.
You're all my lost relatives
Come home again.
You're my old address, my old dress-the one I wore
To the ninth grade prom.
You're my virginity come back to haunt me.
You're new rains, old pains, cinquains I wrote
In the fourth grade. You're every note
I ever passed.

You are a branch bank opening in my neighborhood
With free lifetime incomes to the first 100 customers.
You're a high like exercise (if exercise behaved as advertised).
Like hitting butter halfway down the popcorn bucket,
Like staying in the movie for a double feature
I didn't even pay for.

You're a microscope that sees through my skin
Without drying me up,
A telescope that lets me keep my distance.

You fill me up like premium gas at Costco
Caught before the cost goes up,
All that power in my tank-and at such a savings.
You fill me up like the first snow
Fills the junkyards clean again.
A million flakes to cover one defunct Caddy
And suddenly it's young again,
It runs again.

Mimi Herman

mlherman@aol.com

It's the little one
I worry about, the fast disappearing
guppy, how his frog green goggles bob
up and down and down
beneath the wet surface,
how the visible becomes invisible.

How for elongated nail-biting seconds
I can't find
the dark mop of soaked hair.

Once I lost him
in a store, aisles and endless aisles
of panic ensued, the floor spun
into a whirlpool of blurred tile.
Circles of loss, small buttons
of me disappearing with each passing second.

Even after I heard his cry,
that tone-specific inflection mama,
pieces of me were so far gone,
I could not get them back.

Maureen Sherbondy
*Published in The Independent Weekly

The baby's pink sock is between
a hard place and a clock
without a second hand.
She squints at the space
his bears make
every time he twirls
his blue, green, red, yellow and orange
charms into fans.
Her brother knows it's inappropriate
but he doesn't
look before he leaps
into the chocolate milk
he stirs into clouds.

I'm their mother who earns pink tickets
after blue lights
when I forget haste makes waste.
Do I want to leap over a cliff
or shout to the clouds when he
says, "Just like the other time, Mommy"?

Yeah, I put all my eggs in one basket
full of needles and blackberries,
cream and sand,
lollipop licks and middle-aged bananas.
Easter's not too early this year
since I need more green and second chances.

Alice Osborne

Par Avion

On one side of the gold face
Christopher and Christ,
halo-bound crossing the river.
A flip of the talisman reveals
two Ferraris blazing under Mont Agel
as a sailboat plays in the Port of Hercules.
Christ is the front car, backed by Chris
who relies on His wake and instinct
on the steep Monaco curves.

This medal, cool next
to my pale child skin
on the Boeing 747 to Paris,
and then on to Nice
where my relatives
welcome us for a three week stay.
Tucked into my sailor-striped top,
not to get snagged or stolen - I guess.

I will rely on my mother to navigate
customs. She'll fill the air with D'accord, Merci and S'il vous plait
polite words that match her burnt orange skirted suit she
bought expressly for this trip.
The only French I recognize
is on the lips of the stewardesses: avion, chaise, attention, vous
But our seatmates from Canada have mashed up accents and stresses
like the wing patches on the TWA plane.

St. Christopher and my mother stave away
delays and cancellations,
crashes, hijackings, and water landings.
She never sleeps.
If she did, she'd dream she
shut her lids tight in a Clipper America
swaying in the jet stream over Scotland,
before anyone knew about the Beatles.

She presses Christopher against her plaid shirtdress.
Gin on her breath, she listens
to the props slicing through foggy air
thick like tongues.

Alice Osborne

From "Offshore St. Mark"

"he preached in their synagogues throughout all Galilee,
and cast out devils"

asp expected drunk muse folded
see she folds double tongue

east eaten is the first
neverdone as swallow I am making you one

south eaten is flowers is the second
swallow childhood memory rivers all wet leaf
swallow memory as to become one
not so different not so scattered so
I am making you one remember
See not so scary

All the time the southern sun
So what? You think you can hide you
Hide down there rocky crags in the west sun hides in
Goes between, Ha you think you can hide
In afternoon clouds all rain gathered
You think there's a solution?

I am reading this backwards
I am making you one

Put your little fox clothes on
Go down into your dens
I put my arm through python
I put my arm through python
Anything there last jewel I find
I swallow it I am making you one

I've even got a time machine go back to midnight
I go back to winter
I go back to your first face they are always talking about
Daoists I go back before what they are thinking
And I swallow that too
whole north, pole star, the whole angle
root tree pole magnet
I swallow it see?
I am making you one

Big belly One
All one-smelling
I am swallowing you back
Followed every one of your tracks
East Honeylight
South Sunnygrass
West Doomcracks
North Still

I fold it all up.
I fold it all up.
Make it one.

You say Air
You say Earth
You say between mark spit
Don't get the split tongue
I say air one side of my face
I say earth one side of my face
My tongue flicks
Ha Ha

I say interpret that, sage.
Tell me your battlefield dreams now dead man.
I say you are swallowed
I am your one Ness
Can't even stop joking.
Not so scary see?
Your one bones I suck.
Your scattered finger brocade rattle
All that scattering

All depth folded. All surface turned snake skin out. See
Swallowed.
One

Try and touch me.

David Need

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