Glass Tuning Fork Started by a line in “Saguaro,” Eduardo C. Corral It’s a game this wanting you to be wrong, like winding up for a hard-hitting back hand, almost too easy the placement of the challenge backs up to the corner of the room, and, no, this is not a poem. This is about keeping one’s word, about lessoning the meaning of crying “Not wolf” but coyote as the animal barrels into the canyon air, in one fell howl that says hunger and means No, forever No. This is not how I want to be trying, This is how I want to be moving on and opening up to that great missive I inside the sky of you, where change is possible, even when I know otherwise, where Ventura Blvd turns into dirt Mulholland and makes a fork in the road, bending like a musical note finding its range, a tone that we have to match to turn, to meet, to when we want to join in on the chord together, us, alone and fat inside the note, on pitch when we want to be and on time with the key signature that tells us clearly what sharps and flats are meant to be and what survival is all about before we sing it.
-- Millicent Borges Accardi, a Portuguese-American writer, has four poetry collections including Quarantine Highway(FlowerSong). Among her awards are fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, CantoMundo, Fulbright, and The Foundation for Contemporary Arts NYC (Covid grant). She lives in the hippie-arts community of Topanga, CA.