Allan Peterson and Christine Ecklund

Happening Again
Allan Peterson

I say it again because it is happening again
The clothes that pretend to love me
are out there laughing and dancing on the line
glad to be free of me especially the shirts
whiter than I remember and unconfined

It is like the last line of September
when things are fully preparing for themselves
worm rolling up its leaf and painting the walls
with silk turning inward as if receiving a memo
on the first freeze and paradoxically the squirrels
are carrying leaves back inside the tree
as if reloading for next spring

In the theory of wind the infinitesimal heart
is moved by the least force and the earliest emotions
were observed in the laundry of the Middle East and Asia
whose shirts and tunics revealed that happiness was
lighter than air like the breath of animals rising in cold
I see its repeatable physics joking with the coast
I put my arms into them again. We console each other.




The Old Man In The Bed
Christine Ecklund

The old man in the bed is her father, not quite her dad. Connected to him are a few tubes she can see and a couple she can’t, which is just as well for both of them. She is his youngest and the one who knows him least. Until recently, she has been mostly grateful for that. She’s always been told she had his smile, his Swedishness, a little at the tip of the nose. more