Romeo, gosh, I'm sorry how things turned out,
and sorry I didn't die after all like you thought.
I'm old now, you wouldn't look twice at me
but I miss you still, even so, most definitely.

You could find me tonight across from a cornfield
working the St. Lucy's Fall Festival and how would you feel
about that, babe? I wear a lumpy old overcoat
and sell tickets to teenagers so in love they almost float.

I get feeling sentimental and sad about everything
remembering how you said you were the All-Powerful Weather King
and could make the sun come out if I wished it,
or kiss me and kiss me again if I told you I missed it.

My goodness, Romeo, you don't know how often I still think of you,
like when I saw some crestfallen kid with wild hair walking through
the festival like he had something on his mind
and he seemed lonesome, like you, and quiet and kind.

It's almost midnight and the lights are going dim
so I've got to pack up and go home alone again.
I wish so hard that things had turned out different
and I'd say, "Romeo, oh Romeo," and you'd know what I meant.

You are the long, long shadow
Lain across my life,
Lain across my heart
Where memories of you
Lie like old curled parchment
Desiccated of joy
But not of sorrow.

Please
Take my hand,
Step into my light.
I long to see your face,
The count of joys
In lines radiant from your eyes,
The count of sorrows
In lines falling from your lips.
Do I rightly remember
Your eyes the color of
Norway fjords?
Is that shining fall of hair
Now grey entire?
Are grey your days?

Please take my hand,
You were once the joy
Beneath my touch.
You were my light.
May my lips touch yours
With a tenderness I owe you,
So much time has taught me.

Let this not be the end of us
A dust rag taken to
A few old memories.

Venomous words of self-defense
Swallowing self-preservation
Listening to the cackle of charlatans
A clique of laypersons
Who wear pink on Wednesday
Diagnose my critical thinking skills and logic
As a dangerous mental disability
I held back
Venomous word self-dense
Because I’m not a medical doctor
Just an academic, a meger PhD

Lucid dreams arise after hazy
Safaris through tangled vines of
Neurons and synapses in the jungles
Of sleeping gray matter
Searching for the swift and innocent prey
Among the hungry carnivorous beasts

During REM
When nothing is black and white
transgressions provide
The playlist of ominous electronic dance music
Announcing the opening scenes
of today's daily rushes
missteps create nightmares in 3-D
fueled by a steady diet
of content creators spreading division
Endless hours of True Crime
And rerun marathons lusting over the brilliant minds
Of Reid and Alvarez
Until the jarring sound of a DJ’s old school scratch
Our breath grows short
we bolt upright then sink down
eyes in an airtight squint
as the scene changes
A dramatic rescue
Into the wishes we are to shy to visualize
Or speak after daybreak

Julia Masi

After a while
I opened my sketchbook.

Holding the pencil
again felt so good.

I sketched the face
of a random girl—
it wasn’t very good,
yet it felt right.

It reminded me
of a lost love.

Art—
my first love.

. . .
that which has a secret inside itself . . .

which is :
that exhilaration that is serene and untouchable . . .

that self contained God-like feeling
that is completely independent of all of the chances and changes of life

. . . . Joy . . .

like sweet cherry wine. Strings things
on a swinging vine. Dresses them
in lace and satin. Then rolls them
out like cotton batten. She pours them

like cream in her morning coffee,
stretching them like yards of
toffee. They stick to her gums and
teeth. Hangs them like a Christmas

wreath. She pours her words like
laundry detergent in the washer. And
watches them spin like a flying saucer
out into atmosphere where they

disappear. Pours them like golden cake
batter into a bundt pan, hoping they'll rise
like the stars in the skies. But like the
moon they cast shadows in

the afternoon. She pours them like
gasoline on a raging fire. Wires them
to a movie screen. Just like James
Dean. Hoping they blow up like

the European super cup. But they only
burn, leaving powdery specks of ashes. So,
she flashes them to men on her safari. But
they shoot her down like Mata Hari.

It’s a dull ache
But not drastically bad
Missing something I never had
Self-inflicted
Delusion of pain
Caused by a thought in my brain
Hurt over something that doesn’t exist
What kind of madness is this?!