THE 100 DAYS

by Anne Graue

mark the number
of days of falling
into loss
no handholds
only slippery ones
hanging loosely
from tongues
from threads
beckoning, urging,
cajoling—Hang on
to me! Gotcha!
underwater blips,
radar, red herrings
falling still past
the 100
looking further
down
hundreds more
beckon
want to be spent—
hold onto that longing—
taunt with ropes,
scaffolding,
promise news
further down
much further down.


Anne Graue writes poetry and teaches online from her home in New York's Hudson Valley. Her poems have appeared in Compass Rose, Sixfold Journal, VerseWrights, and The 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly. She is a reviewer for NewPages.com. 

MYSTERY PLANE

by Phyllis Wax

They keep searching the seas:
the Bay of Bengal, the Gulf of Thailand,
the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean.
Might as well look in Lake Michigan.

No terrorists on board, no hijackers.
Two good pilots—a grandfather and
a young man looking forward to marriage.
Only good people (ask the relatives,
wailing and weeping), a planeload
of concentrated goodness
from Asia, Australia, Europe
and North America.  Where
could they possibly be?

I know.  A night flight.
Two pilots, heads in the clouds.                        
One gives a nod, turns                   
off the transponder.  The plane
rises to 45,000 feet, 60,000, higher—
approaches the glowing face of God.         


Phyllis Wax muses on the news and politics from a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan in Milwaukee, WI.  She's been widely published, most recently in  The Widows' Handbook:  Poetic Reflections on Grief and Survival from Kent State University Press.

LOST FLIGHT

by David Chorlton

Between the disappearance
and the find, there is a time
imagination flies
to an altitude above
unhappiness or discontent

and circles the globe
following the possibility
that nothing is wrong, that
the pilot simply tired
of gravity and when
his announcement was broadcast
in the cabin, all

the passengers applauded.
A wonderful lightness
took hold at a cruising speed
of survival with a view
down on the earthly struggle
where bad news

is the only kind expected,
but waiting for a signal
we can watch

for the perpetual flight
passing overhead: a silver
arrow pointing
at beyond, at
wherever it is
such freedom ends.

David Chorlton has lived in Phoenix since 1978, and still sees his surroundings with an outsider's eye. This helps his writing projects, which include a new poetry collection,"The Devil's Sonata," from FutureCycle Press.

IN THE WAKE

by Anne Graue

 

Fuselage will float
from the sky
no longer burning

in the coming days.

Long after the search &
rescue has turned
to recovery;

long after the stages
of grief
have been observed

and discarded,

someone will find
a seatbelt, a cushion,
a glimmer of metal

or they will find
nothing at all.


Anne Graue writes poetry and teaches online from her home in New York's Hudson Valley. Her poems have appeared in Paradigm, Compass Rose, Sixfold Journal, and The 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly, and she was a finalist in the Patricia Dobler Poetry Award competition for 2013. She has written reviews of literary magazines for NewPages.com.