Virginie Colline- Haiku

The Blind Woman's Haiku

Mind, night and ocean
the magnetic obscureness
of her fiery tale

The Ghost of a Blind Female Street Singer by Utagawa Hiroshige


You can read Virginie Colline's latest poems in The Rusty Truck, The Fat City Review, Winamop and Boston Poetry Magazine.

A.J. Huffman- Three Poems

Set . . . Match . . .

The level bubbles red (stop) not

yellow (pause).  Flip

the flag.  The play

[ing field] has been empty.  4 years

of silence = emotion

                                 al evolution.

You call it disengagement.  But that is

another equation.  Entirely

inappropriate, I begin to disprove all

constraints consistent with

[your] gravitation

                             al pulling.  I am

all thumbs and thoughts, scraping

erasures over blanks filled in

with zeros.  That is a history

worth recording.  For posterity,

I pose in contemplation (mostly

for the cameras).  In reality,

I am immune to every gradient

pheromonal influx of this relation

you title:

                        Game.

Sifting Out All the Impossibilities

I am bubbling (over?)

with ideological idioms of breath

and breast and blood.  Where

am I in this nightmare's rampage?

Trampled or triumphant

hold the same space.  And

both are too abandoned

to separate my shadow. 

Let alone my resourcefulness

regarding misunderstanding.

The whole scenario is misguided

(at best).  Beastly.  Bleeding

amongst exhaustion's drippings:

Discards over dreams.

(Now that's a house worth folding for.

Or) Falling over.

The biomathmatical calculations

take on a captivating glow.

Is it power or pyre?

Guess we'll have to wait

and see what flavor the ashes flow.

My Brain is Fried

Sliced on angle to keep

the flavor in, it wilts in bubbling

puddles of butter-flavored Pam.

Losing color (and calories?)

with every prolonged minute of this

forced interaction with onions

(their stench alone, shading it green).

A flip finds the other side

crispy and crackling with exacerbation

at being overdone.  It always believed it was

more sunny-side-up-smiling-eyes, feels

cheated of its chance to drool

at point of puncture, mourns such mock

metaphoric death as it drops,

an unceremonious plop,

onto chipped enamel plate.

A.J. Huffman is a poet and freelance writer in Daytona Beach, Florida.  She has previously published six collections of poetry all available on Amazon.com.  She has also published her work in numerous national and international literary journals.  She has is the editor for six online poetry journals for Kind of a Hurricane Press (www.kindofahurricanepress.com ).  Find more about A.J. Huffman, including additional information and links to her work at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000191382454 and https://twitter.com/#!/poetess222.  

B.Z. Niditch- Three Poems

CINEMA VERITE

Forgetting Visconti
for one night
and tuning in
to Tuesday Weld
in "Pretty Poison"
about a cheer leader
then "Snakebite"
which scared
the pants off me
all because
you passed
on to me
in living color
the three "R's"
rebellion
rejection
and resentment
having no answers
to your album
of questions,
preferring to open wide
my third story windows
along the Channel
and play tenor sax



PROMISES, PROMISES

The promises of love
are not for a night
in a noisy warped
amusement park
when emotions climb
like roller coasters
which flood light over us
in a spectacle,
what about
our shredded nerves
of a Dear John letter
in the morning
for convenience sake
kept in a musical box
in a deafened past
that often makes
us cynical,
yet love was obliging
when Eros calls on us
with lighthearted gestures
upon a melancholy day
and slips out like cat
in a black handbag
with big changing mirrors
you carry
by the fun house
in your over sized look
of goodbye.



ALIBI

Nature,like time
pardons
every memory
its forgotten miles
of word loss
from the cold reality
of a gentle affair
as you trudge up
the great blue hillsides
trying to find that crevice
of your former love poem,
it's summer now here
in your absence
with my new watch on
you handed me
for luck
by these Japanese trees,
bidding a farewell
to a curious letter
I cannot locate
framed to the earth
into innocent oblivion.

Leeroy Berlin- Two Poems

chevy minotaurs wander the desert

childhood dreams wither with age

where they play

where adults sit in the somnolent shade

and families gather in resentment round coolers filled with beer.

twisting paths of liquid stone bake in the untended sun

cement poles and alien trees

reach for siblings across the road,

and shelter the lost from feeling.

endless cinderblocks, stacked and mortared walls

hide

foundations

wide second-story windows gouged from pastel boxes

peer out at traffic and

a thousand permutated castles

defended by suburban moats

under chain and lock

peer out over automated progression

through a maze with no egress but collision

and no ingress but a kind of death.

rumplestiltskin

calling a rose a gun makes it something

else

women are always surprised when I say their names

i'm not sure if it's the rarity

or the acknowledgment

that they exist

i’ve screwed a lot of ‘hey you’s

on sofas

on twin beds

on the floor of a laundromat.

different faces

and voices

smiles and cries

but always just

'hey you.'

knowing a name has never given me power

you can’t control something that way

but 'hey you' is a slave to my desires

and 'hey you'

can't hurt me the way ... can.



bio:  Leeroy Berlin was swept out to sea in an unseasonal typhoon.  Somehow he washed ashore back in LaLaland, and is waiting for the day he can afford airfare back to paradise.  Read more of his poetry at leeroyberlin.com

Robert Demaree- Tanka Sequence

Town and Country: Three Tankas

August 2010

Couple paddling by,

Canoe caught in golden glint,

Cool August evening.

Without other evidence

He assumes they are in love.

Battle of Wits

Chipmunks foraging

Under the new bird feeder

Tries to climb pole,

Senses the baffle, turns back,

Smarter than you would have thought.

Big Box

Wal-Mart, nine a.m.:

Aisles empty, almost cheerful,

Mammoth TV screens

Side-by-side, all but unwatched:

Yesterday’s football highlights.

Robert Demaree is the author of four collections of poems, including Fathers and Teachers, April 2007, and  Mileposts, October 2009, both published by Beech River Books, and Things He Thought He Already Knew, published online in 2007 by Slow Trains. The winner of the 2013 Burlington Writers Club Poetry Award, he is a retired school administrator with ties to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, where he lives four months of the year. He has had over 650 poems published or accepted by 130 periodicals. For further information see http://www.demareepoetry.blogspot.com 

Donal Mahoney- A Poem

The Whole Mad Swirl

I was out of control, spinning 

on the whirligig of youth, 

giddy to be caught 

in what Kerouac called 

"the whole mad swirl

of everything to come."

I didn't know what to expect. 

I was ready for nothing

though I had spent years 

in solitary confinement

with books, exams and degrees.

You would think I'd have learned 

something about life as it is,

not as I wished it to be. 

I went out on the street 

to look for work

and was surprised to discover 

no one spoke Old English 

like Beowulf or Middle English

like the Wife of Bath.

An old professor told me 

I talked the way 

e.e. cummings wrote 

and no one would hire me.

A few years later I married 

a woman with several degrees. 

She thought I was normal.

We had five kids in six years 

and drove landlords bonkers.

"The Lord will provide," 

we said, and He did.

Fifty years later, the five kids

have rucksacks of their own

packed with jobs, marriages, 

children and good lives

measured against 

the standard of most.

Their mother is dead, 

and like everyone else

on this strange planet 

I am in the process 

of dying in the jaws

of what Kerouac called 

"the whole mad swirl

of everything to come."

I have seen almost all 

of "everything to come" 

except for the best part

and that, I am told, 

will take my breath away.

Ross Vassilev- A Poem

testament

when this body dies

I hope someone'll scatter the ashes

among the dumpster weeds

I'll be a spirit in the woods

which is the only place I ever truly loved

and yes, I'll remember all of you

and yes, I'll be cursing all of you

 just like I did in this life.

Edgar Albright- Two Poems

Untitled

Pennsylvania

in the spring

in the rain

is just like Paris

in the rain

or Portland

in the rain

or anywhere else

in the rain

with its blooming romance

and thousand

philosophic deaths

Untitled

I'm keenly aware

that it's possible

i'll perish someday

and find myself

in some kind of hell

or void

or distant dream

where everybody's ass is chapped

and no one cares for

balloons

or alters their voice with helium

i'm keenly aware

it's possible

that i'll just go on

dying forever

edgar albright resents capital letters

Linda M. Crate- Two Poems

consequences 

 

what is this country

coming to?

we're so far into hell's

handbasket i'm surprised the

sunlight can still find us

immorality and injustice rings 

loudest in a world of apathy

and indifference; in a world where

i'm right and you're wrong i'm

big and you're small mentality still exists —

prepare for battle, war is on the horizon

of every blackened cloud;

this fury of our darkest hour lays it's

angry palm before us, wanting nothing more

to crush us beneath it's bloodied hands

have we learned nothing of the past?

are we doomed to repeat the same mistakes

because people are all either not enough well read

or illiterate zombies that care not a dram for

books or education? can we not swallow

our pride and wear a bit of humility? why is it so hard

to admit that what we're doing and where we're

going isn't where we want to be?

women, men, and children in our nation once great

deserve better than the best this land is giving them

you shake your fist at gays, at women,

at anyone who thinks differently than you do?

then perish men in a sea of your own hatred

because love is the greatest magic of them all and she

could heal you, but you choose to give into the

darkness of your hearts and for that there must be consequence.

monster

 

i was happy once before you

but now that you're gone 

i've forgotten to smile i asked the moon

but all he knew was of grey and silver

i asked the sun,

but found her laughter irritating not contagious

there's no denying it

you ate my pretty little red heart

now i'm yours; forever yours — 

what kind of manner of monster are you?

a charming man in wolves clothing

or a charismatic wolf in the disguise of man?

i suppose it doesn't matter, 

either way you've devoured my joy

for it only exists when i'm with you as if

the topography of a smile can only

be found in the presence of your love — 

all the sunshine in the world could not give

me the bliss of your passionate kiss

startling leaves off the trees in autumn;

you gave me a necklace

and a butterfly ring

for you my heart sings,  and if i had to spend

eternity with anyone then shine me seven

infinities spent in the comfort of your arms

because anywhere else is misery — 

your pretty white raven sitting in the tree,

has now been stained your shade of

indigo black hiding behind every smirk of your eyes.

Michael Cluff- A Poem

Bernadette

Tired to prove to Monroe
the come-on was no ill-timed
but a begged for

the counteraction tripled away
from a set of yesterdays
controlled by elephant pajamas

She blinked once
in reverse and Monroe dissipated
a blip now ionized near to Io.

Another space expiated
back to blank
snow singing in dark.

Craig Kurtz- Three Poems

TAMPER PROOF

Unlisted is my name,

unscheduled is my home.

I paralyzed my files,

set the toner to flare

& printed antimatter.

I switched the code,

scooped the dead data

into a zip-lock bag

& unpublished

the funnel.

Involuntary is my name,

unwelcome is my home.

I spindled the ribbon,

severed the certificate

& laminated the scan.

Ipseity was cracked,

signatures reversed

& indexes traced

to corpuscles,

fast-forwarded.

Occupant is my name,

atlas is my address.

I ruptured my insert,

scrambled the veins

& substituted registrant.

My larynx is a mirror,

my gender is a xerox

& my cartridge

authenticates

unavowed.

__________________________________

ADDRESS UNKNOWN

Thinking like a poet

causes problems

on resumes

on first dates

at traffic lights

underwater.

Use only as directed.

Thinking like a poet

causes hardships

in supermarkets

in parking lots

at traffic lights

under arrest.

What if the perfect word

was triceratops

extrapolate

autistic

quicksand.

Restrictions may apply.

What if the best idea

was

diagonal

analogue

ungrammatical

void where prohibited

B♭

partitioned

contingent

disabled

ventriloquism

— inexpressible.

Contents under pressure.

Thinking like a poet

is

anoetic

incompatible

unliable

antipathetic

inutile

incurable.

What if

numinous misunderstandings

loved you?

__________________________________

THESE LOOK LIKE MY WORDS

you are reading. Not quite.

Surrogates retrieved from

words you use. Here is my brain

attempting to reach you.

It's an elliptical route.

Emotion map w/ experience

storage. Lifetime of usage. 

Unverified events cannot be

exchanged. Only their

communication transpires.

Take mine. I know only words

corresponding to yours. We

intend alignment of meaning.

Once I say words

they are yours.

We have projections. Under

new management. Inventory

lonely. Meaning reaches

you in ways I cannot

anticipate.

I wasn't there. Schematic terms.

Context at your urging.

I am undefined. Collation

recommended.

I trust you.

Your words amend me.

Equidistant interpretations.

Infinite transcriptions.

The instant it's uttered,

it's altered.

Affinity may be attempting

you. These words are

ingredients, not

equivalents. Copy

& trust accordingly.

Interpretation

implies

participation.

__________________________________

Craig Kurtz lives at Twin Oaks Intentional Community where he writes poetry while simultaneously handcrafting hammocks. Recent work appears in Out of Our, Randomly Accessed Poetics, Penny Ante Feud, The Bitchin' Kitsch and others. His first record, The Philosophic Collage, 1981, was reissued by BDR in 2012. He has been a staff writer for Perfect Sound Forever since 2003.

Jeremiah Walton- A Poem

Hampton, Love Me Back

Under the dock

untouched by

morning light

scuttles

morning dew

down a sleeping spider's leg

 

The pubic hairs

of the beach

are infested

with crabs.

 

Teenagers yawn

with the gulls

and wake

with sand

under nails

and fire

on their breath

burning

warm nugs

of weed

into beach air

perfume.

 

I love the smell

of the ocean.

(Originally published by Boston Poetry Magazine.)

Tom Hatch- A Poem

Hobbies III

Buttoning your cardigan 

From the top down

The hobby of it being 

Uneven

Unbuttoning and rebuttoning

Is part of that hobby

Walking down the street

The beautiful girl just ahead

Is a hobby when you catch up

To her and keep pace with

Her hobby for few seconds

So people think you are a couple

The worst part of that hobby

Is when she realizes that you 

Are doing this 

Then slowing down 

Or speeding up becomes a hobby

The hobby of every

Breath you take is yours 

Then the bright sunlight 

Hits the air

The hobby of seeing all the 

Dust particles that are there

Then the hobby of telling 

Yourself it is not as bad 

As cottonwood season

The hobby of a big sneeze 

Waiting for someone to 

Say god bless you is a hobby

Part of that hobby is no one does

Another sentence to that

Hobby is everyone says 

Gesundheit and god 

Bless you 

The hobby of thinking leave me alone

Why did I sneeze 

It inches me closer to death

Another worst hobby

Is realizing the women

Sitting behind me on

The train are going

To talk all the way to Grand Central

One last thought

The hobby of when did

Banks stop looking like banks

Not holes in the wall

In the mall the hobby of

Giant Doric columns

Michael Dwayne Smith- Two Poems

Across the Embarcadero

A red ferryboat turns on the bay.

Three gulls spin above it,

then pinwheel against glints of sky.

Wingless, we consider these spirals

magical, as alchemists might,

that like may conjure like,

that the heart, astonished

as it beholds this ascension from below,

may suddenly leap and bend upward.

Nestlings, our imagination precedes

evolution: We will fly, the curvity

of our desire blooming with feathers,

our weightless thoughts

gliding upward in the pure

oxygen of heaven, which also we have so

deeply imagined. Sails crest the water.

A flock of gulls turns to circle the pier,

wings fanning out against sea’s gravity.

Portrait, in Miniature

I think of you,

and the smallest breeze disperses you

like the leaves of an unbound novel.

I am unable to sweep up with my hands

what remains of you.

I think of you,

but you disappear by degrees everyday

like leaves beneath a falling snow.

I am undone by how increasingly hard it is

to see you at all.

The more I think of you, the more your face

fades to an intaglio of sorrow,

the more withered and veined we become.

I cannot retrieve you.

I see only this locket

portrait I’ve painted: winter’s twin bodies

in our bed, clothed, untouched,

uncomforted—neither sleeping

as night’s last howl and stir leaves us.

Michael Dwayne Smith is a California desert native and graduate of the creative writing program at U.C. Riverside. He's the poetry editor at Cease, Cows Literary Journal and has been a professor since long after the cows came home. His work appears in cool journals like burntdistrict, Word Riot, decomP, >kill author, Heavy Feather Review, Monkeybicycle, and The Cortland Review. Michael lives near a ghost town with his wife and rescued animals--follow him at http://michaeldwaynesmith.com

B.Z. Niditch- Three Poems

IN THE CORNER

Your first holiday
with no love letter
falling into strangeness
out of hand
barefoot by dunes
on the warm shore
after summer school
once seeming immortal
in sober exercises
and lesson plans
that never go into effect
making up for laziness
and lost time
in those marred days
of false disciplines
down heated corridors
with hospice smells
and sorry lunches
on purple edged vases
replicas of the Romans
who occupied our world.



CITY READING

Here at my urban read
adolescence pumps
out a rascal's diary
and return to my past
with signs everywhere
like effaced wounds
of disappointments
apprenticed by visions
on sleepless hours
stroked by kilometers
of magnetic language
grown up from running
on fragments of words
in uppermost fervor
of memory not distant,
in an expressionist time.



UNSPEAKABLE PARIS

Whispering a Rimbaud
poem in an attic
hiding with a slogan
by a blinking past
you recall
your first piano recital
at six playing Satie
doomed like a voice
inside you piano notes
hiding apparitions
up the staircase
locking the school doors,
memory moves
in my leafy eyes,
a love letter
left on your bureau
falls in a shaving mug
by a Balzac miniature
given to you at school
before graduation.

Donal Mahoney- A Poem

Waiting for Answers to Resumes Mailed Weeks Ago

A phone call from anywhere would be nice,

even a call from that clerk at Sears

with an apology for charging that dryer

to my last employer

or even a call from the company I phoned

for estimates on the fence we need

to run to the alley, take two lefts,

and dash back to the house,

the fence we hope will keep the kids

from threshing the neighbor's 

lilacs and phlox

or even a call from my wife

about the fever Meg had this morning

and a third reminder to record

the check for the penicillin.

Yes, today or tomorrow,

a phone call from anywhere would be nice.

--------------------------------------------------------

This poem first appeared in Salt Lick Magazine,

a print publication, in 1971. The author wrote it

when he was out of work and had five children 

to feed. The scars of unemployment are difficult

to erase.

Paul Tristram- Two Poems

A Break

I had a break from

serious poetry and

wrote me some Haiku.

Impossible Wishes

The sky outside of this window seems to be made of a dark sort of living skin,

I can almost feel it breathing, the stars are merely ulcers in the belly of its

being. No wonder birds only choose to fly and sing in the daytime- well except

for owls but they fly with the aid of silent wing feathers so as not to disturb its

quiet melancholy.

The planet earth is simply the dust that has collected beneath its mattress, we

mean nothing to it, we are merely an annoying buzzing which disturbs its

slumber with tiny high-pitched drunken cries and fireworks.

The song thrush which rests in the hedgerow waits patiently for the dawn to lift

away the skies depression while the Prozac sun filters its soft warm medication

into the pores of its soft skin, giving it the strength to carry on for at least one

more day.

I pity the sky; it has no eyelids to close, its view is only temporarily cleansed by

the passing of the many indifferent rain clouds. What does the moon matter

when it can only shine for its selfish self, as for the other planets, they

unhelpfully turn away in uncaring disbelief to talk two-facedly with the meteors

about the alien satellites we’ve sent up amongst their tired midst.

Would a sudden night time rainbow not spare the pain of the skies midnight

watch, would it not show us that there is life beyond the realms of light?

As something far stronger than gravity chains me here to this slightly insane

typewriter, I fancy the world as a graveyard- a temporary one of course- which

waits irritably for me to stop my defiant tip-tapping of keys and to come join in

the repose of stillness.

Ah, in the hammock of my dreams tonight, I shall send multitudes of unspoken,

unbroken secrets upwards into its tired heart, to explode into sparks of wonder,

emancipating its emotions, freeing its anguish and giving back hope and

laughter to its fragile sphere, maybe then the night can once again sleep with

the deep, blissfulness of infancy just like I remember it doing when I was young

and innocent.

Yes, I know, impossible wishes but I’m sure you won’t begrudge me at least

trying?



Paul Tristram is a Welsh writer who has poems, short stories and sketches published in many publications around the world, he yearns to tattoo porcelain bridesmaids instead of digging empty graves for innocence at midnight, this too may pass, yet.

Joseph James Cawein- A Poem

blank pages

few things intimidate me more than blank pages

i still prefer to fill them slowly and with the most care i can muster

if you can't muster enough care to fill a blank page with the most care you can muster, who will conquer the universe?

who will fill my mind with radioactive bobcats?

i try to muster the most care i can muster because i have a profound interest in what makes a bobcat radioactive

blank pages should be respected until they are no longer blank pages and then they should be enjoyed and beaten with a stick

and then they should be burned

and then there will be more blank pages

Robert F. Gross- Three Poems

Misadventure

Lift his body out of the pond
He’s dead isn’t he

A pile of paperbacks
A wrought iron chair
A basket of white geraniums

A boy in a three-piece suit
At the height of summer scholarship

He never shared thoughts
About himself
Just Theocritus and Virgil

Let him dry on the lawn
Let the sunlight speak to him



Empedocles’ Estate Sale

You cannot see this thought
rising to heaven old and stale--
scaly body and forked tail.

Beyond any kind of order.
Beyond the stares of your father.
Inevitably made of history.

A rheumatic reliquary
arranged like spokes of mind--
the radiation of a certitude

Released. Smear a little spittle
from your mouth on the horizon
while it arduously ascends.

The trees may talk to you.



In Lieu of an Epilogue

It does not speak to this
any longer
the subject of love

It does not speak
the dry mouth
swollen tongue

It does not
prevaricate
resplendent

It does
distant speechless
as the sky



Robert F. Gross is a playwright, director, and poet who currently lives in Rochester, New York but is preparing to hop a freighter to Hamburg. His work has recently appeared in Wilde Oats, Danse Macabre, BoySlut and Philosophy After Dark. 

Benny Biesek- A Poem

Trouble Is

I am down here with Flora and she is nuts.

She proclaims that faith in God in my

Mind vanished ten years ago.

Ten years ago I was working at least

One job and had a woman in my life

Who got me square between the eyes.

Now I am prone to beg for not begging

For mercy. To make matters worse,

I can hardly spell "mercy" right no mo'.

Robert Barry Tipping- A Poem

 The Tomb

Who are you? with your destiny of doom
You wield your will with a stick in a back to front act of cruelty
Embalmed as duty evil blind
In a universe of ancient truths secure
In a shadow forever

Who are you? in shape and form you make no sense
Or justify the future floods of reality
We are not really different from you
Restless arcane germ of the future
You leave as you came in still without prophecy
Nor seeking reflection or disgrace

Who are you? when you violently shake
With another promise empty of thought
No measure of time inverted

Who are you? snared in the realm of the tomb

Mike Cluff- A Poem

             Ombre

Potash is too nearby
washed down from the yellowooded hills
but too far away
from where the huckleberries,
the magic of my youth,
sleep until some winters
so distant to count towards
slip them out
into reams of blue lichen
carpals
and fibulas looked scorched.

Pot-au-feu
in a sauce
of ash and asperity
will be served no more
this week
to a quadroon
of no one's making.

K.S. Mahaffey- A Poem

“Sitting Through a Lecture with Split Personalities”

 

Brilliant eyes flee to the window.

She is lost in a pool of excitement,

While her body remains in the room.

 

Her silence is all they hear.

 

During the lecture,

She has the capacity to linger in the wind.

A “U” is written on her face in the sun,

While in the room, her pen lays dormant.

 

Her parents wait.

The professor and classmates wait.

The judge and jury wait.

 

As her mind plays with all the decadent scenarios she creates.

 

Laying in the grass.

Taking a walk.

Talking to an old friend.

And then killing the bastard.

(Whoever he may be.)

 

But her luscious lips,

Cherry glazed,

And poised like the sun as it falls behind the horizon,

Let those frivolous thoughts recede into the back end of her mind.

 

If she were to speak on the matter, she would say:

“Go ahead and lock up my body. My mind will still play.”

 

And she reads this poem to "her class",

Only to hear the judge say she that she is not guilty by reason of insanity.

Linda M. Crate- A Poem

rain dance 

 

the rhythmic footprints

of rain washes away entropy

reigns in some sort of serendipity

i found when falling into his

azure blue moon eyes, 

dancing becomes a second nature

as i pirouette in the silver blossoms

singing his name in my heart;

i remember once he was soaking

wet with his hair matted to his neck,

and when he kissed me i felt like

i was graced with the osculation of a

king breathing his golden warmth 

against my rosemary flowers —

there was a lesson in this, there's always

a silver lining to entropy hanging on the elbows

of the bitter grey moon; i just wish i could

have captured the light in his eyes in an lantern

so i could remember that now as i grope around in

the thick of this dark cave without a clue as to

where i'll find the balm to kiss away the sting of 

recently opened wounds, threatening to bleed dry the

fabric of my heart crimson as a sunset.