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FOR WANT OF SLEEP<br />
by Tasha Fouts<br />
In this bed<br />
your body splays<br />
over fields of flowers,<br />
yet sleep<br />
is a chimera to you.<br />
During the rut, males engage in frequent and furious sparring battles.<br />
Nothing settles:<br />
your breath is fraught,<br />
and your mind is<br />
a vast and raging tundra.<br />
Tormenting insects keep caribou on the move searching wildly for windy areas.<br />
Every night I feel you rise<br />
and migrate through this house alone.<br />
How long can you possibly go at it?<br />
How much exhaustion can you take?<br />
Year after year, the antlers are grown and shed, then regrown and shed again.<br />
ARS POETICA<br />
by Lucas Wildner<br />
Midnight. My roommate still<br />
restless after sleeping pills,<br />
ear plugs: futile resistances<br />
to the moaning from the dorm next door.<br />
Ironic given the women on his lap<br />
-top, the calendar of blondes.<br />
If asked,<br />
I would choose sound<br />
over image. My body lay parallel<br />
to the couple two feet away,<br />
my breathing shallow, ear to the wall.<br />
The groan of stressed wood, slaps<br />
of skin hitting skin. My right hand<br />
silent in its work.<br />
My sweet man,<br />
let me unburden you<br />
I will eat the meat of that bark<br />
I will hold to you like velvet to the bone<br />
I will lumber to the mountaintop for you,<br />
I will give to you my deepest, deepest sleep.<br />
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