Absences

Absences Winds Nothing has crossed the road at the turn today. Not the usual deer and fawn that come out early in the meadow adjoining, not the pair of turkey hens with their long-legged young two weeks apart. All night I dreamed I heard animals running, as if before a fire, but when I woke up sweating, there were only the deep bellied sounds of frogs at the river and the hum of locusts in the willows. Every wrong day I ever had began with absences; I know when night comes, I will have nothing to say. -Trent Busch There's been only one tornado what's come to these mountains If we'd done a little tiiinkin' we could a stopped it But it blew in from the flatlands destroyin' ev'r'thin' in its way Few of us figured we'd be smart an' hid far back in the hills But it still blew The ones what stayed in the valleys were uprooted An' twisted so they furgot ev'r'thin' they knew It flattened our forests Levelled our peaks An' left behin' concrete, asphalt An' white trash All we had to do was stand firm Our breath would a blowed back the eastern storm Now don't git me wrong The wind would a come no matter what But it should a been a cool breeze A helpin' us through a hot day -Nathan Holaday Cold Sleep "Do they dream," my sister asks, "In winter before the cold deepens?" "Do they dream into death when the cold takes them?" The hornets never stirred, before they died, their porch nest packed in plastic and plunged into the freezer. In my dreams they thaw and bite their way through plastic, swarm through the house, watch for us, their heads turning. They guard. And I feel their eyes. I dread to sleep, after she asked those questions, in fear our dreams will mix, and my mind become filled with them and I awake in cold, my thorax rigid, frozen. -Christyna E. Mecca 15 ...