Shaving Fate by Liz Betz

How ordinary, to rise each morning at four a.m. to collect his bread and drive from the bakery in his hometown to the small town grocery stores. That this was wonderful never crossed his mind. But he could ponder this now for the next fourteen years if he didn’t factor in the possibility of parole. Bill isn’t inclined to factor it in.
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Jeni loved to swim out against the blue current of Kealekekua Bay and crawl on the water’s surface with the spinner dolphins. She would turn onto her back and float as they bobbed through the water just feet away from her. They would eventually jump out and spin until they splashed back down into the swells off the coast of the Big Island. She used to love to wave back toward the tiny dock where her husband helped tourists load their rented kayaks into the sea. He would always wave back, a wave that said we finally made it here, we finally moved to Hawaii, and I have given my wife what she had always wanted, the chance to be one with the ocean.

so much
depends
on holes
dennis cooper, sunday school teacher, ca. 2001 also by Eric Eich
it's empty. empty as a grave for unnamed soldiers. no weapons. no drugs. or notebooks. don't bother searching. no messages, no bottles. the last unbarbwired cemetery. et cetera

He put the food in other food to show where shoes are made.
It is enough.
Finches prove passerines right.
I arrived too quickly, found you rested up below the troll bridge.
Sounding Out / Inventing
Saccharine harmfish
does tremble and sway per sea-
breeze—it is
a hack, the same stiff
line as holds
up octopus arms,
anemone, tree
of life.