Detention

by Donald Levin

On the D train rushing underground
in the seats across from where I stand,
a teenager with his girl. Spanning
three middle knuckles of his right hand
a solid ring spells "Louis." He flexes
the hand, drives it into the other palm.
 
Gold chains hang like vines around his neck.

Louis stretches, lays a tattooed arm
across the narrow shoulders of his girl
as though holding her there, where she sits
in gold, luxurious custody.
 

Donald Levin is the author of a new chapbook of poetry, In Praise of Old Photographs (Little Poem Press, 2005), and poetry and fiction published in numerous print and electronic journals.
 

On Mozart in the jungle

by Jon Muggleston
 

I talk to a girl
that I know is lovely
and have every good reason to like

we ride the trains
from Fresh Pond to Harlem
and laugh and chat all night

I wait for my heart
to do it's skipstop and
dizzy to fill my drunken delirium

and when I don't fall
I wonder whether it's my fault
for being broken old hypocrite

and quietly fear that there
are only so many skipstops,
so many dizzy falls

and I've blown through them all
like the heavy wet wind
behind an uptown express