Lover, Is This Exile? and OF DC are still in print from InnererKlang@aol.com ________ A prose poem is available online at The Literary Review Robert Gibbons writes a regular column, “Observations," for an online magazine out of Switzerland at www.niederngasse.com

Robert Gibbons Before Each Sacrifice He counted twice before bringing down a tree to turn it into charcoal. First, it was a living thing. Second, it might have hidden powers. The brief pause before each sacrifice assured Nassir avoided harm. When the lone date palm in his village of Betaaboura, Lebanon was destroyed he knew the man would come to grief. A neighbor, disturbed that bats feasted on the fruit, reluctant to cut down the tree his father planted fifty years ago, let his uncle’s son convince him it was in the way. The cousin drilled the hole to add the poison. Within a month: a withered silhouette. As bad luck had it, while ploughing in the field the tiller caught the man’s pant leg chewing down to flesh to ankle bone. He still walks, but with difficulty, five steel rods clanging rigid in the limb.