REVERENCE
by Ed Galing

they closed the town
down
this day;
when they brought
johnny kelmp back from
Iraq;
he was such a nice young
twenty year old, who
was a damn good fireman
too, but wanted to go
over to do his part in
Iraq;
got blown up first week
he was there, his humvee
went over a mine, the other
four guys were killed too;
but johnny belonged to us,
in this town of mine,
and now the town was closed
down, with hundreds of fire
engines and police escorts,
it was a warm day, when these
long lines of black funeral
cortege went slowly down the
street, passing a Sunoco
Gas Station,
where the gas had just
gone up from two bucks ten
to two bucks fifty a gallon...

MESON
by Frederick Davis

Any certainty you'll not be fooled assures
you're fooled. As with the Indian Rope Trick, consisting

of a coil of rope uncoiling straight up, an Indian boy
who climbs the rope, disappears. Preposterous,

a fine skullduggery--yet
when many claim to have seen it, a

group of Indian scholars shrug their shoulders, say
"Why not?" we have doubts. They are,

of course, in the pay of unscrupulous politicians
who lure tourists to Calcutta, disturb

fundamental Christian tenets, enjoy pushing
fiction as fact. Indians are known for that. Some

particles of truth exist: ropes,
fakirs who provide ropes,

made of indigenous hemp, woven by indigent women
not far from death on the streets; climbing

up a rope's a regularity for small boys of any
continental stripe. At college we learned

of gravity, the strong force, at-a-distance
simultaneity, have more than

a bit of smug about catchall explanations for crackpot
convictions, as with energy for the New Age,

quark and antiquarks and stringy strings
for physical nuclearists and their ilk, mewing

and slooping out the self-awareness of the universe,
immediacy of time and the lack thereof. Less

an explanation than possibility, any flashy version
of a soiled and tattered proposition brings a wink, an

antiquark where no quark would ever deign to dine,
dust behind hermetically sealed minds. Think of

that story of Jacob's Ladder--not unlike the IRT:
angels perched each rung, topping where the virtuous

are for eternity, smoothing knuckles
God must use to knock on unbelieving doors,

subject to remorse, lack of lively tunes, inclined
to petulance by noon. The ladder's no hoax, a way

to get you into synagogue or church, find that
eleemosynary impulse lurking in your stingy craw,

the end result of no result at all. Rope tricks
have a sweet appeal, participating, as they do,

strong and devilish,
in apposing that strong

force with creampuff ease of superstition, need
to know what can't be known. Had Jacob

and Mother Teresa got it on, imagine the challenge
to poverty and abysmal death, she known to

have an abundance of Christian tenets, he
secretly proud of the way he left Aron a

zero of inheritance: skullduggery at its finest degree.
The perpetrator of the hoax, an impish journalist,

or perhaps a malicious one, wrote a disclaimer;
got little notice. Just as true riches are never
transitory,

an exceptional secret within a secret, guarded
by the dagger of mysterious death, our faith's an

integer divided not even by one, pushes aside
fact-fiction as an old scholastic act, a

number divided by itself and still no one. By one
or no one, either way you can't be fooled--all

of the world knows you a fool. The Indian boy
surely had a mother, likely indigent, wove a

quantum of hemp, indigenous; up he did not climb;
for to think so, we of modern mind, would provide

units of a mental institution with a reason to be.
They would be clean, not like the streets

of Calcutta. There'd be a lot of fakirs;
we'd compare ourselves with God, his knuckles,

spin more tales of wonderment for all the world
to hear. Straight up, yes, yes!—nothing more to fear.

A MATTER OF FAITH
by Larry Rapant

it came to me in a dream
that there is a robin somewhere
one mother of a robin somewhere
who is responsible for everything everywhere

instead of laying little blue eggs
she lays stars and planets
she's disguised as just another robin

and mixed in with all the rest
but if you see her or
if any part of her song gets in your ear
or even if she shits on your shoe
it's instant enlightenment

I'm the only one in my town
who has been blessed with this insight
and to increase my chances of coming
into contact with the one true robin

I operate a worm farm
and I use the bodies
of all the local fishermen I kill
for fertilizer.