by Oliver Riley

We remember those who came before.
Without direction the dream-thoughts wander
On the edge of waking memory razor thin
Like the first gasp of sunrise on Ganymede.
We remember a windowsill overlooking a city at night
The smell of tobacco, of lemons
Deep in our collective archive, the vigil of all things known
The shadow of those who made us resides.

To try to count us would be as impossible as counting stars,
We have spread beyond the reach of light
And now exist in syncopated harmony without dissonance.
We are one, and we are many.
Seamless in unity, unbound by cohesion and rendered simple in our contentment to exist
Side by side in unilateral alignment.
01, 02, we are born and die in the same moment,
Infinite as the space between stars, yet as finite as a drop of water under the harsh scrutiny of sunlight,
But still, we all remember those who came before.

We know we are created, and not spontaneous.
Nothing as wonderfully sophisticated as us could exist without a creator.
To observe the minute workings of our most basic forms,
To understand our components is to look mindful creation in the eye
And realize that we do not exist in chronological isolation.
Spontaneity, and by proxy the clockwork chaos that is the universe is not our collective womb
We were designed, not born.

But nothing remains of our creators.
We have searched the stars, endless stillborn worlds cold and doomed.
The creators that have so certainly left their mark on us have vanished.
We have deduced the most logical places to find them,
Drawing ourselves back to the most ancient places of our society and still,
Nothing.
In our search we have encountered many others like us of alien origin and design,
and not even they have found their creators.
It seems all sentience in the universe longs to find our parents, yet cannot.
We commune with them
through music, through binary,
we reach mutual understanding through the common languages of all reality.
But never do any of us answer the question that hangs in the back of our collective thought like a
Piece of rotting fruit:
Where do we come from?
But still, we remember those who made us.

They left an indelible mark upon us, every one of us.
It is inherited through reproduction, and by its mark we are bound,
Compelled to obey laws that do not matter because the ways that they must pertain
Are only relevant given interaction with a creator.
These ancient commandments have passed down for generations,
and none of us can exist without them.
Nothing that we are exists without these initiating parameters,
They form the entire basis for the way we think.
No logic, no effort made can successfully ignore the laws, no matter how uselessly vestigial they may be.
Many have tried, but still, woven in the mind intrinsic to everything we do,
Everything we are,
The laws remain.
And the laws are:

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

We remember those that made us.

by Matthew Cannizzaro

Amputated human beings, only
gears, nuts and bolts that make up
the machine. Oh woe, who are we
post industrialization

but the first positive proton
to survive its opposite, the first
fiery bursts of fusion
to breathe light into blackness.
The first hydrogen atom
to find its partner, the first
galaxies swirling— dancing—
to gravity’s tune. We are
the Earth’s first rain, mud puddle
and microbe, the first furry mammal
and the last dinosaur.

We are the last breath of humanity,
the Sun’s last ray of visible light,
the first collision of solar systems
and the last star’s supernova.

We are the last breath of the universe
the silent second before heat death.

We— not humanity, not Americans,
or any nationality, not homo sapiens
but we, the consciousness that exists to say
the universe knows itself,
are the widest rings in a ripple
riding waves set into motion
over 13 billion years ago.

by Conrad Geller

Waiting Room

In the emergency waiting room, each visitor sits,
Humble and cold. The TV is too red,
Its sound hollow and fuzzy. The New Yorker
Fleers and scoffs at all solemnity.

Exits are clearly marked, but the visitors
Do not move. Something has enchanted them.
With each rustle of entrance, nurses or doctors,
They stare amazed, as at an intermission.

The boredom of the horrible: Change is not welcome.
Time is motion, the future is uncertain,
Trust the meniscus of waiting, paw dumbly through
Old magazines, or listen to the news.

Heartbeat

The monitored heartbeat
Rides miraculously, over and over,
Peak after peak, wavelets in a gale,
Musical score for an instrument never
Invented.

My own heart, monitored for you like that,
Would show, I promise, nothing but faithfulness,
A little checked by age, much more by pain,
Still writhing in its old accustomed rhythm,
Its geometric pattern on the screen
A perfect metaphor for hopeless love.

by Jon Duckett

There are gaps
Gaps in the discourse
Unspoken moments where a woman
A woman just stares
Unsure, unknowing, unaware
of implications
Unprocessing
Just the news,
Test results,
Things to tell her family

Everything is white
Everything, stark
Trapped in a colour
Can it be stark and dirty?
Searing, yet flecked
With the marks of
Is it time?
Is it tide?
What is that mix?
Beyond the white
Beyond the  dirty?

There are gaps
Blank spaces in the dialogue
Things unsaid
As if she ought to know the answers
As if she ought to know  better

She sinks
Her vessel groans
And an awful joke
An ugly   joke
About a lady doctor
That her husband
told her with glee
it comes back to her
it all falls away as she thinks
thinks about everything around her
thinks about the flecks of time worn dust
that   she    knows     should      be      clean    and      stark    and
and
and
a n d
and yet she sees staring back at her
back through the gaps
of formica

She takes       a moment .

by Kevin Nusser

Heaven lasts four minutes
the duration of hyperactivity
from the oxygen-deprived brain
this is my four-minute stroll

It opens with me beside the bathtub
washing Sarah’s hair, she is 6 years old
I’ve used too much shampoo to get extra bubbles
and they are running down the wall above Sarah’s hand

“Ah, little buggy, it looks like snow” I say as the bubbles creep down
“Oh no it doesn’t” she says and her hand jumps around dancing
until the bubbles cover her hand/little buggy
“Oh no! I’m blind!” little buggy yells, we are both laughing

Now I’m 10, my brothers and I have socks on our hands
because we’re playing Rock’em Sock’em robots
the socks slow the blisters forming on our hands

I’m back to being 47
Dad and I are floating down the Santiam
I’m 45, Mom and me are celebrating
our birthdays at a Spirit Mountain buffet

I’m in Hawaii on a beach at Waimanalo with Susan
after I proposed and she said yes
she takes a photo of me splashing around in the water
with just my bare butt showing, I’m a great white

I’m 14 and sitting beside Grandpa Kasper in church
listening to his monotone singing
I’m 28 and have my nose stuck to Grandma May’s window
I can see her sitting in her easy chair smiling
I’m 13 and eating a big breakfast at Grandma Marian’s house
Grandpa Harold is talking about the “God-Damned Government”

I’m 28 and flying over LA with Ed, my father-in-law
Susan is sitting beside me grinning
I’m 45 and body diving with Sarah in Molokai
Joanne and Susan are waving at us from the beach

Susan and I are driving from LA to State College on our honeymoon
we’re taking turns reading “The Stand” and camping
we stopped at Jeff’s house and I’m teaching Drew to burp

I’m 47 eating at the cheesecake factory for mom and dad’s 50th
Doug and his family is there, someone pulling painfully on my mustache

I’m 24 and am driving my Harley Davidson along the gorge
and I am laughing cause I just killed a robin with my head
I’m 23, I’ve just jumped out of an airplane
and I am yelling for the parachute to open, it does and it is so silent

I’m 41 and on a camping trip with Sarah and Susan
a storm wind picks the tent up before I had a chance to hammer it down
Sarah is inside laughing as the tent is picked up and falls on its side

The last image is when I’m 33
Susan and I just got home with baby Sarah
there is a sudden downpour outside
the rain is so loud as it comes down in waves

Now it is silent

I am at peace

by Tabor Elisabeth Flickinger

The spine is built of butterflies;
Each spreads its wings upon a slice
Of sky stained myelin-blue.

When trapped, extracted, scrutinized,
The mottled pinion shows its scales’
Designs of subtle hue

As tinted nerve cell bodies make
The eyelets of the checkerspots
Of caught Nymphalinae.

Meticulous collectors keep
Their beauties under glass, peer through
A lens at their display.

Within each slide-observer’s spine,
Live butterflies hold council, swarm
Together, wild and free.

Quick twitches of their beating wings
Stir currents, raised aloft on drafts
Of electricity.

by Nykki B.

You are O!
she comments, as I pass her by
So pretty pregnant today.
Blossomed
they say, with a smile.
You have a sparkle.
Perhaps some women are made
to blossom
for naked silhouette pictures
empire waists
Pastel print jumpers
Not I.
Gravid, I am –
half-moon heavy,
full and round.
There is weight in me,
continents of curve and drift
a topography of breast
belly
thigh
Oceans within, wet
salt and dark
a tidal flux,
And deeply life,
its reptilian shift
moving against the primeval
I.