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Gregg Weatherby
Graham Burchell
Jennifer Van Orman
Chris Crittenden
F.J. Bergmann
Cami Park
Nathan Leslie
Michael Estabrook
Rich Murphy
Marge Piercy
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December Trees
half-melted popsicles,
rain slathered,
bark spongy with drench—
a lettuce of wood—
and spiny
like squished crabs
in a tubular crate,
icy as rejection,
twitching gale-numbed
claws.
don't climb them;
they snap like horns
of dead ibex,
and grimace
from fangs in notches,
revealing the crush
of hungers inside—
decades of lives
sucked by roots
to lard the pith—
every splinter an ant,
every rumple
some hapless sprite—
the twigs pedipalps
stolen from spiders
after they veiled
oaken bones.
Chris Crittenden is a quirky hermit living on the edge of
Maine. He recently had a poem anthologized by Arsenic
Lobster, and was nominated for the Best of the Net Award by
The Rose & Thorn.
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