John Grey( Providence, Rhode Island )Reid MitchellIn SomewherevilleA sedan rots in the tall reeds behind the shack. Sparrows made nest in it but a copperhead ate the eggs. Andy smashed that snake's skull with the blade of a shovel. Crows made off with its meat before he had a chance to skin it. Bobby picked off those pesky black birds with a BB gun, a present from Andy last Christmas. Their bodies plopped out of the sky, smacked against the roof of that sedan, dropped down into the tall reeds.( Hong Kong, China )Joanne FariesPaper CarnationRemember that night I told you I was a boy and you laughed and bought more drinks but kissed chastecheeked good night? Maybe I lied. If you come again, I will go with you to your hotel and break all the lights, even the television screen, and block windows with sheets from your bought bed. Tell me when you plan to come. I will meet you at Suvarnabumi Airport. You will see me, biting the nail of my little finger, long-limbed, smooth-legged, slender.( Bedford, Texas )Barbara HendrysonMimicpeel thin string attached to cellophane flip box lid tear open shiny wrapper tap box shake out single white stick rub under nose inhale between two fingers curl, not squeeze bring to puckered lips squint pause, tongue tease teeth tidbit tilt head linger, remove flick sidelong glance exhale wait wait smoke wafts, dissipates repeat Dad’s post-dinner Camel my dessert candy cigarette( San Francisco, California )David McLeanGreen Bowl with Clementines– for N.S.The information’s all orange . . . but rewards travel with loose connections. Therefore, sachets of delay follow the kitchen’s scented tides. And what of green? See the potter’s hands . . . How the concentric corrugated surface blooms.( Stockholm, Sweden )Marge Piercy, Two Poemsa solitary crowit sits sole crow descrying every suicide tonight, patient observer and fallen angel falling still, feathers ruffled by no love’s clumsiness, he is the oblivious eye of night shared with us, lunatics that listen to him still the song he sings forgets us, each sin against the flesh in the nothingness that dresses him in black and the hunger in his blood does not need us just as meat for decay’s pampered palate – rather the palliative omission, neglected carrion persisting in living, all the “not yet”s falling from night’s formless fingers forgotten already dying a difficulty for every coward heart closing crow’s lonely door, entropy’s gormless whores in time’s tender war, rendering our blood to the grave crow that sits above us in our obliging chains below, a trophy to Sisyphean futility this loathsome meat, crow’s protein on which a future feeds, the moving beak that writes in us and, having writ, never stays to read
( Wellfleet, Massachusetts )Terri Kirby EricksonThe truncated trainingMy father through my childhood was constantly challenging me. He called me coward at eight when I didn’t want to climb the leaning ladder to the choked roof gutter. When I feared walking on grey ice over the frozen lake like a false meadow to the ice fishing shacks, coward again. It wasn’t till years past his death, I realized that he was the eldest son, now replicating his father’s taunts, a stern task master who built railroad bridges by day, carved tombstones for fun at night, while thundering at his meek Welsh wife, rattling the sword of his swift temper at nine offspring. My father tried to mold me into some fierce stoic boy until at puberty he abandoned the task and me. My spilled blood set me free.Who’s blushing now?Alba roses, old roses of white flushed into pink, perfumed delicately but sufficiently, arching foliage touched with blue, sturdy way into northern Vermont: what do we read into roses? One Alba was named in France Cuisse d’une nymph emue – thigh of an aroused nymph – yet in English, Maiden's Blush. Whoever can gaze into a full rose, red, pink, salmon, even white and not think of cunt – they have the heart of a nun. The sexual organs of a bush, they leak their sensual fragrance across the beds toward our bed. The full heat of summer laps across our flesh and we too let our petals loll open.( Lewisville, North Carolina )Tree RiesenerSleeping AloneI hate to sleep alone. The bed looks like Antarctica, cold and white. There’s no one around for miles. Every sound is magnified— ice tumbling in the freezer, the wind bashing its fist against the window, the drip, drip, of a leaky faucet. If only I could mold my body to your familiar shape, breathe you in, like anesthesia.( Wayne, Pennsylvania )Martin Willitts, Jr.EuthanasiaUnwilling to let wind and rain have their way with walls and roof, our crowbars do not let the floor miscarry, intervene as roots work into the foundation. No more old receipts, plumber’s bills, love letters fluttering as wind rasps through the ravaged frame. We are not let to linger as the last window shatters from the breath of a dove’s wings. Barricaded from us, battered bricks and bones yield air space to new birth, even angels and chimneys no longer left tombstones amidst Queen Anne’s lace.( Norwich, New York )Richard LighthousePerceptions of Light and ColorAs if I touched the wires of a battery
Emerson about clarity of seeing natureHis phantom-like light is cold of touch, lyrical as a bird calling a mate, this is not another way to perceive light, it is another way to see the world, not only in the illuminated hills or faces, it is also in the things in nature, what Emerson called the transparent eyeball, the subjectivity necessary to really see things as they are, not what we want them to be, to go beyond realism to magnified intensity, this is the true poetry of things, all things have their own movement, nature is a smooth mirror barely touched, so direct and immediate, it is already gone.
Note: Based on the painting, “Eaton's Neck, Long Island” an example of Illuminist art John K. Kensett
( Pasadena, Texas )Barbara A. Taylormean ingyou will never know why this poem means. only that it does. it will stalk you tomorrow. hunt you in dreams. curse you for not knowing. and remain un known. it will say forget it, then wake you at 3am demanding answers. you have none. it will telephone. send letters. whisper at night, do you know? and still, you will not. you will contrive, pretend, falsify meanings. in the end, falling asleep each night. knowing only – you do not know.( Australia )Today’s Specialpleasures past present and future up for grabs I find it difficult to pass by a piano without the need to tap on keys. When the shop owner asked if I cared to play the polished upright Wûrlitzer, I replied, “Yes, please.” Dulcet tones drowned through his jumbled rows of secondhand wares and antique furniture. I stopped. He applauded. “You can have it at a bargain price.” He told me the piano belonged to an elderly lady who’d recently been moved into a retirement home. The matron there insists that piano playing is too loud, disruptive in their recreational area. “She’s giving away all her sheet music, eighty years’ worth,” he prompted, hoping I could see it for the steal it was. “That threadbare piano stool comes free.”
I - Into the Shelter of Dark Caves
II - This Bend of Quiet
III - Silhouette of a Plume
Review: Desi Di Nardo
Featured Poet - Melissa Buckheit
Contributors
Current Issue - Fall 2008
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