Rondo-Burleske
            After Gustav Mahler, Symphony no.9 (1909)
 
Lost in a labyrinth of counterpoint
a polyphony of dead-ends
where the hedges move
even the earth is no longer unironic
somewhere deep within
a minotaur’s in a fugue
though he too is
 
lost in a labyrinth of counterpoint
a clew of tangled scales
marches leading nowhere
Léharian laughter in D minor
and once a glimpse of sky
and song birds who aren’t
 
lost in a labyrinth of counterpoint
but all exits are blocked
short-lived joy poisoned
overwhelmingness overwhelmed
 
by labyrinthine counterpoint
and somewhere deep within
a minotaur’s roaring
rampaging through hedges
enraged  by a redly-budding century
and the obscene tumescene of spring

Jonathan Taylor

Jonathan Taylor's books include the novels "Melissa" (Salt, 2015) and "Entertaining Strangers" (Salt, 2012), the memoir "Take Me Home" (Granta, 2007), and the poetry collection "Musicolepsy" (Shoestring, 2013). He is Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester. His website is www.jonathanptaylor.co.uk.

Unfinished Painting
 
The lemony sun, freshly
juiced, in the air,
its mirror-glow—melting butter-pats
in the shallow pan
of the lake. Earth, heavens,
waters, barely
divided.
 
A human construction on the right vapourized
to the vaguest taupe, the castle itself only blue
smoke thickening into a suggestion
of deeply indented cliffs.
 
Only one solidity, a cow splotched
with silky brown—the others on the shore
after her kind yet to materialize.
Head down, she laps water-earth-sky,
seeming to siphon off the possibility
of colors deepening, as if to keep
the sixth day of the world
from being complete.

Judy Kronenfeld

Judy Kronenfeld’s fourth full-length collection of poetry, Bird Flying through the Banquet, will be published by FutureCycle Press in March, 2017. Her most recent prior books of poetry are Shimmer (WordTech Editions, 2012), and the second edition of Light Lowering in Diminished Sevenths (Antrim House, 2012), winner of the 2007 Litchfield Review Poetry Book Prize; her most recent chapbook is Ghost Nurseries (Finishing Line, 2005). Her poems have appeared in many print and online journals (such as Avatar, Calyx, Cimarron Review, Connotation Press, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Natural Bridge, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Sequestrum), and in twenty anthologies including Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose about Alzheimer’s Disease (Kent State, 2009), Before There Is Nowhere to Stand: Palestine/Israel: Poets Respond to the Struggle (Lost Horse, 2012), and Far Out: Poems of the 60s (Wings Press, 2016). She has also published a critical study, King Lear and the Naked Truth (Duke, 1998). Judy is Lecturer Emerita, Creative Writing Department, UC Riverside, and an Associate Editor of the online poetry journal, Poemeleon