Alex Salinas writes

Moon dream

I dreamt there on the dark side of the moon

I with my mind, body and soul isolated from

All humanity figured out the answer to the 

Question I’d posed my entire life, as if only

There on the dark side of the moon where

Shadows are their coldest and loneliest could

I fully understand the power of arriving at 

Conclusions without the slightest distractions,

The minutest sounds -- a bird crying in the 

Distance, a breathy yawn induced by capitalistic 

Strain, elbow joints popping pleasurably while 

Stretching after a nap, wiping off steam from  

A mirror revealing a two-toned face, a lover’s pen 

Scratching the start of a poem on an old

Phone bill -- and then the greatest joy -- lifting off

The cratered surface of the dark side of the moon,

Head facing the Alpha Centauri system, body

Suspended in zero gravity, slave to no gravity,

Obliged at last to no one thing, nothing, no one, me.

Moonbase Overlook -- Jim Scott

Alex Salinas writes

Rolly pollies

Every morning, I wake up to find

about seven or eight rolly pollies  

scattered on my beige carpet,

some alive, some barely, some dead.

I used to approach them cautiously,

use paper towels to shield 

my palms from their shells,

then throw them into the garbage.

O the damage that did.

When I finally decided to take matters

into my own hands, actually feel the

pellets of their bodies roll,

I stopped dumping them

into the trash and instead released

them to the patch of grass 

outside my front door.

They say newborns need their 

mother’s touch, skin-to-skin contact,

to help their brains produce the right

amount of hormones. 

Adulthood is no different.

Walk into any state prison and stare 

long enough into a convict’s eyes—

tell me what you find missing there. 

They say we eventually become self-sufficient—  

logical, reasonable, responsible. 

They say once we pass the age of childhood,

we’ve grown up.

This is the point at which we

lose touch, probably—forget the connections
we made when we used to be unafraid
of using our hands.