(Columbus Day) Charades Streets recede as waves of, pulses, swells right left straight back slack furls bank and fork between buildings closed off as crime from sunlight. Liquid edges, and eddies endless, sans ends where arabesque of route entails tail merge with head, flatten, surge, a breast stroke with wake at the outskirt, troubling flouces. I'm tired of leaving a beautiful boy in bed each morning, not to fight as Hercules-- to work when I want to read not seed the tide (marchers, revelers) waving sticks, wreathing poles, being polled when to panhandle out to the borders of grailseeking starlight, or on the order of mushrooms burgeoning become a disciple of song exposing myself to their kids like a book, fraught as a new bird whom touch infects, is the one thing I'd elect. --Ange Mlinko (1999)