ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

Poem
by Michael Costello


Ophelia, the Moon

O cadaverous moon! So sightly in this night’s sky.
You cannot be dead, traveling the river as you do
nightly along this highway. A zephyr of a tempest
rumbles down from the Berkshires. The license plate
of the navy blue BMW in front of me reads “BTTR FRDM.”
Bitter freedom roars, the engine revs and gears shift,
rocketing it out of sight in seconds flat, like the sigh
of that last breath as you said goodbye, constricting me
—immobile. Twisting as you did (and no doubt still do),
like a screw, bored into my noggin—I’m bored by this now!
As I am when I find you, alive instead of dead, in these
memories inside my head. O heaven! O love! O freedom!
You are strange rumors circulating in the air. All roads lead where?
Somewhere different. But from here, from any rumor-
laden road if one wants one can see, even if only slightly,
the white pearl bright pearl edge of you, who has never lived
—O cadaverous inanimate friend.