Lines excerpted from Bentleyisms: by Nelson Bentley

Quick acts of thievery are essential in this business.

Without poetic vision there is no love.

Everyone should write an outhouse poem.

Poets invent the language. There would be no language if it weren't for us. People would just go around grunting.

One extra word can ruin a whole poem.

Visualize your metaphor!

Avoid self-pity like the plague.

Support onamatopoeia.

There's no such thing as

Hey Columbus! by Thomas Hubbard

You step
out of your sport utility vehicle and
begin
fueling on pump number three while I

finish up
on pump number four.



You eye my
braid, my old car, my flute bag
in the
rear window, and that expression comes
onto your
pale, clean-shaven face.



You seem upset
that I don't shuffle, step aside,
show
embarrassment about my dark skin, and
why must I have feathers in plain view?



You are

Surface, by Peter Munro

Swept among seas that walk downwind,
beaks and feathers wheel to hook and pick.
Skimming low, fulmars heel and spin
speed. Their twines knot the world to its quick.
I learn to listen with my skin.
Gusts kiss me, whispering their cold.
Caressed in tempos that whitecaps kick,
rust scours my vessel, fills her holds.
She presses into a surface nicked
by birds feeding where salt unfolds.

Fulmars

March 6, 1890: Eugene Schieffelin Releases 80 Starlings in Central Park, by Holly J. Hughes

I�ll have a starling shall be taught
To speak nothing but "Mortimer" and give it him
To keep his anger still in motion.
Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1

Snow has shaken loose all morning,
nesting in the crotch of the ailanthus,
streaking the black trunks of the locust.

Upstate, currant farmers worry about the freeze.
In the city, fathers hitch horses to sleighs.
He hugs