X:ud
by Gary Every

The rain falls into puddles
with drops as big as buttons,
splatter bombing the shallow pools;
creating concentric ripples
with nowhere to expand.
With the first summer rain
the spadefoot toads end
eleven months of hibernation.
The toads emerge
from deep inside the earth,
immersing themselves in tiny ponds,
submerged in miniature desert oceans,
slurping the monsoon’s slobbery kiss;
passion tasting of spit, slime, sperm and song.
The frogs sing loudly,
engaged in a frenzied amphibious orgy,
eager to make eggs
while there are still puddles
to rear the tadpoles.

In the early hours of the day,
Antonio leans forward
to sip from his coffee mug,
where it sits on the table;
too full to move without spilling.
Antonio leans forward,
his lips eager to taste
the black warm liquid
while his wife prepares breakfast.
Antonio likes a traditional O’odham breakfast;
coffee, beans and fry bread.
Juanita is tall but not slender.
There is the voluptuous swell of the hips
and the two round full breasts
which sway beneath her nightshirt,
like puppies wrestling beneath a blanket
Juanita is X:ud;
an O’odham word meaning
“full to the brim.”
A word which can be used to describe
a rain puddle, a coffee cup,
or a voluptuous woman.

Antonio kisses Juanita on the cheek
as he leaves for work,
the colors of the sunrise streaking the sky.
The first rays of morning sunshine
causes the frogs to hide from the light,
amphibians submerged in the water
up to their eyeballs.
A soft rain continues to fall,
more water than the puddles
can possibly hold.
Antonio drives towards work,
already anticipating his return home
and the sanctuary of Juanita’s warm embrace.
The spadefoot toads burrow
back into the earth,
their hungers satiated.
Sleepy from the exertions of their amphibious orgy
the toads hibernate and dream;
dreaming through eleven more months of slumber,
the better to whet the appetite
until
next summer’s first monsoon rain
when the spadefoots emerge once again
in sonorous croaking chorus,
a time when the Sonoran desert
is very very X:ud.

THE BACK APARTMENT
by Nancy A. Henry

Every thrift store candle cup lined up on the mantel. There must be seventy, we like things that twinkle even if we’re shabby. Those clay whiskey jugs
whisper in their original dust. We know better than disturbing them. The wiser part of gentle living is noninterference. The spiders scatter their babies like wild pinwheels, the little sacs all bursting in
one night. The children find them, weeping at
how easily they crush.

THE HEYDAY
by Ed Galing

burlesque was bound
to die

when the store down
the street

showed x-rated films
for a quarter

there for a few
brief seconds

you could see
the whole thing

burlesque was bound
to die

when down the street
there was this place

where you walked up
to the second floor

and found yourself
in a room where you

could talk dirty to
the woman on the other
side of the booth
for a price

or when the turntable
went round and round
with naked women
reclining in all kinds
of positions

burlesque died a
gasping death

when the floodgates
opened

and civil liberty
took a different turn.