Issue 4.2

Lanterns in the Alley They hang low, strung between bricks like captured stars, flickering against damp walls. I walk beneath them, counting shadows stretching across wet stones. Each lantern hums a story: laughter abandoned in July, a whispered apology pressed to a hand, a knife of moonlight splitting fog. I, a stranger to all of it, carry the weight of unseen footsteps in my chest, learning how light bends before it breaks.

Crow Poem So sure of themselves, these big crows. Their loud queries carry through sky like fierce commands they somehow know their ready god cannot deny. As for me, I can barely walk around the park in such thick fog, much less summon the nerve to talk of meek or bold demands for god. Then again, what is this new day but a question asking, again, by its answering: *come what may.* Be like a crow: belt the refrain.

Anyone Who Disagrees Is an Idiot *“Contra si quis sentiat, nihil sentiat.”* Sing to me Muses, tell me of the fame of that critic, endowed beyond his peers, Volcacius Sedigitus by name, who numbered on six fingers passing years. If Sir Sedigitus were living yet, he’d be a circus freak; or seek his pay with concerts on piano—I admit ovations, well-earned, might just come his way. His fragments are not much, for what it’s worth, though Fontanus and Malcolm praise him fair and think today to give him second birth by publishing in journals odd and rare. “All fame is fleeting:" it’s true of this Roman of whom near all we know is his cognomen.

Facing It Trying to decide between doubt and belief, as though common sense were something I’d forgotten, I began shaving away at cults by employing the razor patented by Ockham. Various candidates—climate, gender, medieval thinking—were, and weren’t, a bare-faced lie, fanatical bearded prophets selling blunt clippers the gullible buy. Not relying on an afterlife or traditional God, I lauded Christian atheism and art. Thinking in fashion and gadgetry I rejected, especially if praised as ‘smart.’ In Western culture, Christian submission became exploited weakness, fear of offending a farce. I looked to mirror Nietzsche, though I wish he’d shaved off that awful moustache. Logos, away from shaggy faith, serves as a precision tool, thought’s analytical laser; but, handled poorly, proves more deadly than a cut-throat razor. Ugly causes, secular or religious, appeared presentable, though less attractive than they seem. Beware, for instance, chinless wonders intensely purveying a utopian dream. Belief is the way we act, not look. Facial expressions accord with deeds and how we behave; a food-encrusted beard cries out for a barber and Ockham’s aftershave.

Leaving the Club Now that the band has freed and swung all notes imaginable from their drums, guitar and organ keys, we leave the club, the jazz still shimmering in our soft ears. Outside the silence welcomes us, embalms the music, holds its shape with gentleness. We huddle close on the curb. I kiss your mouth or not, as you might wish, or not, and nothing is not ripe with unheard sound in quiet such as this. To dwell inside extinguished song, to touch the touchless night, and sense the chords we know are there amassing in the air is what this hour’s for—to feel, to want but not yet hold what holds us tight as tombs encase the dark and loss embraces loss.