Walking on the Levee on Our Way to Angel Mounds Mark Williams __________ We met on Sunday mornings with our dogs: beagles,retrievers, John Biacinni’s two German Shepherds,a collie, a pair of Great Danes, a pit-mix . . .An ecumenical gathering if ever there was. OnceI counted twenty-one people and twenty-six…

Free Steven Ray Smith __________ You were a baby on the day I met you, and also not, because you had lived already, alone and for yourself already, somewhere invisible to me that I could never visit. But because you didn’t know how to hunt or to hide from those…

How My Dog Smells Dean Flowerfeld __________ The world is a whorl of wonderful whiffsfor a doggie like me who lives by his sniffs and the wind is awash in a welter of wafts,such succulent scents on the breeze are aloft: the sweet and the sour, the savory and musty,the…

Cat O’ Nine Tales   Ann Howells __________                                                      Cats domesticated themselves            9000 years ago. My neighbor’s cats are Powderpuff,Queen of Sheeba, & Sugar Dumpling.Their eyes glow like vitreous amber.They loudly order dinner, stayperpetually stoned on canned salmon.        My cat, silent & soot-colored, explores       unknown spaces, answers to no one.       Green…

RuthAnnI Tricia Knoll __________ Men in Louisiana grabbed me from the hoarder’s house with the two dead dogs. They called me Ruth Ann. In their shelter they cut open my belly and made fleas go away. Told me I was pretty, but time ran out, they’d have to kill me.…

Pre-Obituary for a Rabbit Francis Walsh __________ pre-obituary for a rabbit he was, he was, he was asleep on the carpet and stretched like a strand of dough his paws tucked beneath his chin perhaps dreaming of hay fields and bananas and all the other morsels that occupy the wide-eyed…