Haiku from Middle-Earth
by Christopher T. Guerette and Michael Stutzman

Were I a Hobbit,
I would never name my son
Bilbo: that's just mean.

Once in Valinor,
You couldn't get me to leave:
West-side for life, bitch.

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If Sauron had won,
Arwen would be on his jock.
Gold-digging elf whore.

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Nothing
by Christopher T. Guerette

6 a.m.
People call this time of day 6 a.m.
Numbers cannot express the way this time of day feels
To me.
Numbers cannot express the way I feel,
What surrounds me,
What envelops me.
Numbers are not sufficient.
Numbers do not proclaim my pain.

360 degrees.
I can see the horizon in every direction.
There is an entire hemisphere of heaven above me,
But heaven is empty.
I see no stars,
No moon.
There is no sun.
There are only clouds.
I feel the weight of the clouds.

1 dog.
Ahead of me there is a little white dog with a brown spot on his head.
He is wearing a collar.
He is loved,
And if anyone knew he was lost,
He would be missed.
As I approach him, he is afraid.
He will not let me come near:
He barks to keep me at bay.
This far from home, he does not know that he is alone.

3 mourning doves.
As I walk, I startle three doves
Who burst forth from their sanctuary in the schoolhouse bell-tower.
Every morning, they weep.
This morning, they despair.

13 crows.
A murder of crows perched high in a dead tree.
The crows know.
They scream at me:
Their voices pierce my soul.

6, 360, 1, 3, 13.
Numbers are not sufficient.

3 times.
Three times we kissed.
"What's wrong?" he asks.
"I've fallen in love with her."

All of these numbers mean nothing to me:
The only number that concerns me
Is Two.

I have nothing.

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Manhattan's Complaint
by Michael Stutzman

I grow weary of beautiful girls
who forget they are beautiful. This one,
across from me on a busy subway train,
her business-casual gathered up
from a heap of clothes beside her bed,
Her eyes are fixed the same place as mine,
silently following the stops on the line map,
impatiently counting down the stops
until our intolerable jobs.

One day, we two will be stuck in an elevator, alone,
and then we will begin to fill this city with people
who hate it as we do. 

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