Hawthorn
don’t write this down she said and said
we would remember this a hawthorn always up ahead
we gently break their beacons from our ankles
caress the skin where now the signals stop
for though the rails will snake and moan with their big guns
we will not wait unless to sleep
while overhead a hawthorn guards the tor
our networks hold like dirty lace upon a map
a compass rose spells keep the faith
where now the ash pond lives
the river fork will retake its flood plain
Haymarket Ballad
A hanged man’s song’s worth more to me
Than a railroad prince sonata
So I’ll sing until some police pigs
Come steal my hat and books
The day grows hot in Babylon but
It’s cool beneath the willow tree
They waterboarded our poor villain,
They asked me where I’d been
“You threw that bomb, you did,” they said
No, I’d been home that day
Cooking, brewing, what have you—
Your Halsted pigeons know—
Baked in the bread to stretch it out,
The holy fishes too
The day grows hot in Babylon but
It’s cool beneath the willow tree
Do I not live where you have pierced?
Here: look through my fingers
I’ve nothing left to lose or hide;
My breath’s next order’s void
The day grows hot in Babylon but
It’s cool beneath the willow tree
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W.E. Pierce‘s poetry can also be found in The Literary Review, Word For/Word, and Heavy Feather Review. He lives in Oakland, California.
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Joe Lugara began creating digital paintings in the 2010s, debuting in a 2018 solo exhibition at the Noyes Museum of Art in his home state of New Jersey. Lugara’s work has been featured in several publications (multiple in ACM: “Inkling, Sketch, Tattoo, Scar,” “Two Places,” Two Poems by Donald Stang and Poems by Heather Derr-Smith) and has appeared in more than forty exhibitions in museums and galleries in the New York metropolitan area, including the New Jersey State Museum and 80 Washington Square East Galleries at NYU.
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