：Even the Ohio Can Change
Rick Campbell
The river I grew up on was rank
with oil. Shoreline stones
gleamed slick-blue and nothing
in the river was worth a slug
of scrap metal: carp and catfish,
sick, riddled with chemical blood.
My river was for barges,
owned by US Steel, ARMCO, J&L.
They pumped it full of slag,
dripped and drained oil and gas
through a thousand hidden holes.
Nothing good could e of it
except a living and life,
a whole valley's clinging dream.
The Indians who named it beautiful river
weren't wrong; how could they know
what would e, dark and sooty,
burning the sky, turning the earth
to mud and cinder.
Even in our terrible need
we couldn't kill it and the river
is ing back to river once again.
In the cold ruin of the Ohio's banks
muskies swim the secret paths below.
We grow older, the river younger,
and great fish *** ash into the air
to swallow a caterpillar
fallen from a willow branch.
：Adam Home from the Wars
Sean Bishop
Yes, when the orchard's dolled up in pastels
and the finches scrawl cursive across the sky
and the big moon sags like a tit o'er the meadows,
I'll trade in my Glock for a pocket of dew.
And the wars will stop. And everyone
will do the dishes. And the lion
will sweetly go down on the lamb
as among the rifle casings the brambles
eject -- at last -- their thorns.
Once, on a bench by the river, the little ducks
seemed bread-sated and happy. I had my girl.
It was the Great Past Tense and everything was lovely.
Then, on the breeze: burnt spruce or a musk
of black powder and blood from a further field.
I made for my wound a poultice of wounds,
and the ones I wounded made poultices too.
We've e here this evening to give them to you.
：Parable
Sandra Beasley
Worries e to a man and a woman.
Small ones, light in the hand.
The man decides to swallow his worries,
hiding them deep within himself. The woman
throws hers as far as she can from their porch.
They touch each other, relieved.
They make coffee, and make plans for
the seaside in May.
All the while, the worries
of the man take his insides as their oyster,
coating themselves in juice - first gastric,
then nacreous - growing layer upon layer.
And in the fields beyond the wash-line,
the worries of the woman take root,
stretching tendrils through the rich soil.
The parable tells us Consider the ravens,
but the ravens caw useless from the gutters
of this house. The parable tells us
Consider the lilies, but they shiver in the side-yard,
silent.
What the parable does not tell you
is that this woman collects porcelain cats.
Some big, some *** all, some gilded, some plain.
One stops doors. One cups cream and another, sugar.
This man knows they are tacky. Still, when the one
that had belonged to her great-aunt fell
and broke, he held her as she wept, held her
even after her breath had lengthened to sleep.
The parable does not care about such things.
Worry has e to the house of a man
and a woman. Their garden yields greens gone
bitter, corn cowering in its husk.
He asks himself, What will we eat? They sit
at the table and open the mail: a bill, a bill, a bill,
an invitation. She turns a saltshaker cat
between her palms and asks, What will we wear?
He rubs her wrist with his thumb.
He wonders how to offer
the string of pearls writhing in his belly.