The One Eye Love
By: Jack Conway


We are all shipwrecked
one time, or another
trying to get back home
longing for revenge
hoping there will be leftovers
from the feast, at least
and someone who might remember us.

I find myself cheering on the poor Cyclops,
Polyphemus, wishing he had not been taken in
so easily, blinded by Nobody.
How foolish we have become,
thinking love is a voice in the darkness.
For the love of Poseidon pipe down!
Only the sea saw, the one eye love.



Red Pens
By: Jack Conway


I sit correcting papers
at the sturdy Shaker table,
stacking stacks of them
in some elaborate battle plan;
red pens, scattered like spent soldiers,
casualties of this long war of words.
I move the red pen to where
transitive verbs carry you
from here to there,
marking how you've gone
from active to passive voice,
noting where first person
slips to third
and present tense to past.
You only have a first draft; and,
there can never be enough conjunctions
to connect us to the things of this world.
In the stacks I've stashed your obit.
I pencil out your name.



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