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Poetry
Hamilton Stone Review #35 Fall 2016
Roger Mitchell, Poetry Editor

 

 

Lana Bella

Dear Suki: Number Seventeen 

 

Dear Suki: Akita, Japan, 2010,

to know the years had collected

snow caterwauled on shingled 

roof, I wept red on cherry trees

and turned winged shortly after

loving you. How to speak it right

without floating up the aches of

your copper-eyes, I lifted you out

over the perfume of cedar chips,

bearing ancient rhythms of past 

seasons laden with pale tunneled 

mist and rich dark wind. In this

perfect aerial bloom, we touched

fingers to Lake Towada's cool pane

of glass, reached back to porters-

stained purlieus of Kosaka Mine.

Eventually, our dendritic breaths 

were a soft, conglomerate cable of

supine motes, unshaped yet for rain. 

 

 

 

 

Robert Beveridge

Darwin in Java

 

ate turtle soup

as the servants

walked his dogs

they came back

missing one

he did not seem

to notice

 

 

 

Pavlov

The white coat has just a smudge

of red below the third button. It shines

in contrast to the walls, sixties-

vintage aquamarine tile. Attendants

scrub and scrub without effect.

Dirt never seems to go away in this place.

 

Night. The moon obscured. He feels rain

deep in his shoulders. Most

are asleep, save the few whose eyes

never close, the helmeted who rock,

endless, their heads little more

than mauls against the ceramic

though not as effective.

 

He smiles, reaches for the button

that will set all the alarms

off at once.

 

 

 

 

Gareth Culshaw

Night Gulls

The streets are peeled

Of life. Leaving a tarmac

Skin to fade under the sky.

 

We wait for our bus

Voices twang in the station.

At night the world grows

 

In size, like it is a deep

Filled lung taking a gasp

Of the skylight.

 

Then they appear. Rounding

Up for the night the sounds

Of the day. Smog coloured

 

Polluted by the dark.

Squawking syllables echo

Above us as they settle like dust.

 

 

 

 

Salvatore Difalco

Progress

            Shining a flashlight on the past,
none of that nonsense this evening. Raccoons
scratch around the back.

The moon, a menacing shift of blue,
illumines the vicinity,

highlighting sinister peaks and ridges.

 

            As for the past,

shaking it off after plunging back and forth

            for years feels dishonest.

 

How forget unforgettable moments,

            illustrious scenes,

the fast unfolding melodramas?

 

            Wear the mask

into night, without beaming a flashlight,

            and find what’s truly there. 

 

Maybe you’ll decide the task is too much

            to ask of a man

with no hair and cold air in his thorax.

 

            Outside, there could be

powder blue snow touching everywhere,

            the street lamps misting.

 

Or you could be missing the keys to the house

            and be honest with yourself

about who loves you and who does not.

 

 

 

 

Alejandro Escudé

Ask Focus

 

The anger is speedy

and complete—surrounded by warehouses

and donut shops, the cop cars

cycling through bitter moon phases.

 

I’d been there a long time.

 

The priest was a giant strawberry,

ominous wheels forgave the gulls

for being gulls, white droppings out of the sky.

 

We approached the trays of food

and ladled it onto our plates, the person in charge

spoke as if she wasn’t in charge.

 

I dreamt of taking a boat up the Mississippi,

awaking to the voice of the Audible reader

reciting Huckleberry Finn.

 

We spoke to each other, managing it.

Some flare up

was tamped down. We knew it was coming.

 

The fight was for all of us.

There’s a bus, but we’d rather drive ourselves north.

 

Industry gives us back our money.

Today it’s hot and sunny.

 

 

 

Highway of Angels

 

There are angels flying in the night.

A cross section of dense fog, a vein of shimmering quartz.

 

Some will stop when you call

and give an inquisitive, anxious look

as if to say, why would you stop this important work?

 

Others will glance over beneath the hardened moon,

grimace and continue, their robes like the tails of comets,

unstoppable.

 

One may halt, and hinge like a butterfly upon a large tree,

afraid to come too close, as they are all very sensitive creatures,

and float there, tentative until you speak.

 

It is the angel’s duty to hear you speak,

to watch your hands

and to slowly descend and kiss you on your head,

 

as you pray for the souls trampled, the hundreds of crypts rising,

gunshot, hemorrhaging, the blood like ghostly rain,

the wings of these busy beings stained,

 

like wartime nurses, others bowed like workhorses

hitched to endless carriages.

 

 

 

View From a Rented Room

 

One tree-lined Hollywood street, quiet, suburban.

One window lit, someone on a leather couch.

I walk to my car, more conservative than ever.

I want to tell the youth: you’ll hate better tomorrow,

today you think you must protect your neighbor.

An ambulance does away with the red lights.

In. I hate the word “in.” Supper was very light.

My shadow is a superpower. I wait for him.

Women are more woman than ever. A horse burns.

Several horses actually. No, pardon me, the horses

were saved. In America, horses don’t know danger.

I was hunted.  The youth need to know that:

you are hunted, and the consequences come late.

I smoked in my rented room, drank a bottle of wine.

The window faced a far-away-from-home landscape,

the ocean close by, beyond a few blocks of shops,

a promenade.  You could walk there, but I never did.

The setting sun, and a phone call to a local girl

I met in Europe. She answered and talked. I said

the exact wrong thing. Ten minutes later another

young man called her and said the rude thing,

and she went out with him. Wrong is wrong,

but rude is right, so I drifted further to the right.

Angry faces come in egg cartons. Most of them

are not cracked. You only find out later if they are.

The heavy door goes slack. Walking among

the hurried, you seek friendship. There is trash

between the rocks of the jetty. Mexican fisherman.

A yacht cruises by with a silent family onboard,

or maybe it’s a male boss with his kid, coworkers,

one never knows. Ripples toward the shore.

 

 

 

A Salt Rifle

 

comment typo on stream

of Democratic sit-in on gun control

 

It would be awesome             to witness

the grains pounding                someone in the head

covering them,                       turning them

 

into Lot’s wife                       without anyone

even needing to have              turned around,

neglecting                              Yahweh’s command.

 

And I picture                          the rifle white as salt

and the victims                       of salt rifles

also holding                            salt rifles

 

so that they appear                 like crusty white figures

spread over                            Judaean Desert dunes

calcified in their                     last position.

 

 

 

 

Alice Friman

Anthropology 101

 

Women gather. Men hunt.

In every society, the same.

I gather sheets and dirty clothes

for the wash. You go crazy

hunting for lost socks. We open

the fridge. I gather vegetables

for stirfry, you rummage, hunting

for the last piece of cheesecake

which of course you can't find

being a man. Charles Darwin 

said nothing about that. Nor did

Margaret Mead who studied Samoa,

peeking under bushes and finding

to her amazement, a profusion

of diddling going on. So busy

bushwhacking with its attendant

giggles, there was little time

for any hunt-and-gather business.

Nor did Samoans seem to suffer,

being the exception to the rule,

abiding as they did on the inner

thigh of Eden where fish leapt

straight into their cooking pots,

and coconuts and ripe papayas

fell like manna from the skies.

Husband, do you think—despite

your gray hair and my droop—

we could follow suit, if only

for an hour? We'll need a blanket,

sun screen and a good bug spray.

A radio for mood music, Brie,

chocolate, and a little Courvoisier.

Sound good? I'll do the gathering.

You hunt up your spear, your little

blue pill, and I'll meet you outside.

 

 

 

What Lowell Said

 

Poets die adolescents

which was Lowell's way

of saying how poets live:

forever changing, running hot

cold, raw and flighty.  

 

Fourteen. That was the year

the mirror floated me a new face—

elongated, the baby fat

stretched taut, a glow of promise

and juice blooming the skin.

                             

Late one night and I'm running

down the hall calling to Mother,

Look, look at my face, see how

I am different, changed.

                                      

What does the mirror signal

to me now, after sixty-six years

of being fourteen, now

with no mother to run to?

 

Poets die adolescents, he said,

the beat embalms them.

 

Oh poet of skunks and manic

phases, mentor of the silver tongue,

never mind this business of beat

and rhythm. I was born with that.

Instead, speak to me of rhyme.

If I am perpetually fourteen,

when did rhyme's doppelgänger

sneak into my mirror? Rhyme's 

homonym that waits for winter

to ice its name on every living thing.

 

 

 

 

Louis Gallo

Other People

 

For Jack realizes Jill concretely,

And we do not.

                     −William James

 

Perhaps we would all like to realize

Each other concretely

Or maybe realizing Jill concretely

Absorbs all of Jack’s time and energy.

Nor do we realize Jack concretely

Even as at this moment

He stubs his toes against a plaster wall

And howls in pain.

It’s not our pain after all;

We have enough of our own.

And Jill . . . she is in the kitchen

Concocting jambalaya.

Thus we meet them as abstractions,

Old photos in an album

Of ancestors with our blood,

Yes, but ghosts nevertheless.

The missed opportunities,

The still-born embryonic love,

The one who disappears

Around a corner,

The one you had your eye on.

 

 

 

 

Howie Good

The Best Part

 

The gulls spiraling above the dilapidated buildings and potholed parking lot of an abandoned shopping mall call out to each other, Yo, where’s that ocean at? but that’s nothing compared to the worried queries people stick on lampposts, or the loose dogs that roam in ad hoc packs. So, yeah, the best part of the day was early in the morning, very early, when I had just woken up, and drifting in the dismal gray between dawn and the remnants of a loony dream, I clearly heard arpeggios of rain, Bach composing with a violin in his hands.

 

 

The Fly in the Room

 

What is important isn’t

what is going to happen,

but how it will happen,

for instance, without you

even once crying out.

 

Afterwards, we lie in the dark

on the vomitrocious couch

you bought off Craigslist,

not speaking, just waiting

for our hearts to slow down.

 

The fly is another character. 

Everyone hates flies. They bite,

they drone, they overbreed.

So there is a tragic aspect,

all those detailed little dots.

 

 

 

 

Gail Hanlon

Great Island Common, New Castle, NH

 

 

The sky Irish grey, the water refuses

to lie still, rustles, turns away

                                                   

among the rocks, shellacked

and black in the shadows.

 

A black box

of a car, all sealed

 

up with blackened windows,

slides past with bagpipes trailing

 

half grief, half joy, almost

lifting me off the ground.

 

 

 

Small Gold Figure

 

Arms spread wide,

running across the spine

 

of a red book, Artemis

in a shower of arrows?

 

Ten years old,

my principal desire

 

to be good in a

noble, boyish way.

 

Now, I cannot think

of anything significant

 

to say, everyone

like someone

 

I have met before; only

the homeless look interesting.

 

How to read–

left to right or right to left?

 

Sunwise or moonwise?

 

 

 

Spoon

After David Hockney

 

This shape mirrors

the bowl it is in.

 

A generative restraint?

This spoon in this bowl

 

is like every spoon

in every bowl and the first

 

such spoon ever. It inhabits

the bowl. Luxuriates

 

like a loose tongue, shines.

Haloes and enshrines itself. 

 

Caves in. Joins up to follow

like a horse in a herd.

 

 

 

Extra White

 

Pressing hard, line after

line, gutter by

 

gutter, Agnes

Martin is raking long

 

rows of sand into

cursive,

 

loosening the beauty

of extra white.

           

roiling in the selvage.

 

 

 

 

Dave Harrity

Cloud Form #372 

 

Slits cutting through stitched veil, sun’s cellulite patchwork:

pewter-edged, markings brightened by dusk. Swollen, rippled

like a worn flag—reaching & the whole sky is light; all light is

blood; all blood rivered under skin to bruise. No birds this time.

 

Psyche

 

She is inclined to see the water as an image,

a specimen—like her, an obscure, unwinged

 

butterfly—a dream of barest sutures: water

silvers simulations of a last supper, or a god

 

kneeling to write on the ground.  One night

she sees The Madonna choking a serpent by

 

feeding him with a bloated breast. Iconoclasm is

more than a rejection of images but the reimagining

 

of the bodies contained in the images themselves,

both as social & political creatures. But she grows

 

wings in the dark, patterns as nuanced as faces

in the act of articulating pain or pleasure. There is

 

a murmur in sea pines, brusk air headlong over

the edge. Above her, strange constellations,

 

behind her an expansive woods full of bustling

wildflowers: eyespots, nostalgia. Gaze at slight flecks

 

of grey powder on her fingers, ornaments sprouting

longer as she throws herself over the dark sea.



Blizzard

 

Little one: I pour salt to keep

us safe from the ice storm.

 

Last this happened you couldn't

question; at two, you confused

 

sounds naturally: grapes was gapes,

sick was thick. Charity is how

 

we grow up. Now you’re older,

enough to occupy yourself with

 

needle & thread. If you spend your life

making things into other things

 

you can dress down even the snow

as rain & rain as river. You'll lose

 

everything that way, by dressing

up the world with unrequired

 

sentiment. You'll learn as you grow

that storms receive names, names

 

come through & fill up. Gaps are shadows

bent across a storm whose name you couldn't say

 

years ago, white animal falling asleep

on top of us. Little one: I'm making

 

promises to stay alive I can't keep. But

I know this much: the salt will work.

 

 

 

 

Heikki Huotari

In Addition

 

I believe it when I fail to see it, when I think the best and when I think the worst. There's poetry in stasis. Mother Nature also loves a vacuum plus someone dispensable to taste the food. And I see people pray then faint at altitude. A miracle occurs in my vicinity and I'm a saint and see right through you and a clock that gains two minutes every day is right approximately once a month and in my flightless bird's-eye view maybe if I hold my breath you will love me before I turn blue.

 

 

Proprioception

 

According to my inner ear's accelerometer, I'm sidling, there's time dilation and it's twelve A.M., so I know where my limbic system and my limbic system's children are and I don't need to see them. I'm abundantly supplied with gravity and subtlety and vibrate sympathetically with spiders at all angles, the excited plasma in the cursive tube of glass. The writing in the window says, If you would have me, stay. If you would have me stay then signal visibly and audibly and at the school bus and train crossing have your red and yellow fiberglass reflective arm descend. 

 

 

You May Have Won Already

 

When neither frying pan nor fire suffices, neither beds of glowing coals nor nails, the lilies of the field spin in and spin in needing neither your liturgical consideration nor your statutory spatial frame. How beautiful, beneath the vapor trails and vees of geese, the lessons learned, how visible the picked-up sticks and stitches and how radial the pedals there for metric feet to step on, singing, living, status quo. This offer ends at midnight: love me, love my latitude and longitude and altitude, agree with me, and I'll throw in a fourth dimension absolutely free.  

 

 

 

 

Clinton Inman

The Real Missing Mass

They say that most of you is missing
Perhaps from your most private places
Something more than just an arm or leg
And even deeper than your darkest spaces
Researchers conclude as much as ninety percent
Lost deduced from a long line of X’s and O’s
But it takes no greater science to tell me
That your muted mysteries no one knows 
I too have peered down your opaque passages
Have felt your fractal pulse dimensionless
Have seen your eyes hidden in a veil of stars
And knew that you are quite featureless         
Like staring at the stars you cannot be seen directly       
And all your skies are blue from a distance only.

 

 

 

Butterfly Effect

Trapped behind broken glass
In a window pane
A butterfly fluttered his paper
            Wings in vain
Trying to reach the roses beyond
            The garden lane

But if those tiny wings can
            Cause some great effect
To move the wind or mountain
            That no science can detect
Then perhaps I too might fly from
            The gardens of my own neglect.

 

 

 

 

Clara B. Jones

A contract is a worthless agreement enforceable by law¹

 

My friend sat on a curb crying about the failure of Capitalism to secure World Peace

while a colored man offered to shine his shoes and shave his head

 

so the gardia wouldn't be suspicious.

He planned to have coffee with Tony Hoagland in Burger King®

 

where he could buy smack before taking his son to dinner—otherwise he was stylish

with patrician nostrils and a chin shaped like a double helix

 

exposed to the parallel bars in Prospect Park

across from the French bistro that serves the best wine in Brooklyn

 

unless you count the rioja in Leon's cantina.

He ordered lobster bisque

 

reminding him of brunch by the pool in Palm Beach

drinking bloodies in sunlight

 

like sitting on the beach in Quépos

trying to finish the book he had promised to Routledge nine years ago

 

before the romance of nihilism taught him that doing things well is futile

since perceptions fracture almost as quickly as they are formed

 

and the pursuit of excellence disappoints

whenever he ventures into the jungle beyond Tegucigalpa

 

finding army ants carrying their prey home

to larvae destined for lives of hard labor.

¹Architectural Digest, September 2005

 

 

Repairing A Damaged Brain With An Artificial Cortex

 

A random numbers table chose ten eight-year-olds from

Appalachia for tango classes and a trip to Argentina where

 

they heard a priest's litany about Evita Peròn the most

powerful woman who ever lived though she was afraid

 

of horses so the priest told the girls to stay away from

hoofed mammals and to become nuns but there weren't

 

any convents in Madison County only Mars Hill College

for Baptists. The priest's advice was clear to Amber whose

 

stepfather taught her Spanish so he'd have a

warm body to talk to. The priest told Amber she was

 

beautiful, inviting her to lunch with his seminarian

so she asked Ashley to come along, but the priest said

 

“Forget about it.” as if his feelings were hurt. Amber told

Ashley her stepfather said priests are creepy but he likes

 

arroz con pollo better than chicken and dumplings so what

does he know? The priest blessed the girls before they left

 

the cathedral promising to remember las blancas manos.

He spoke to Amber in a hushed voice:

 

“You talk like a campesina. Anybody can tell where you

came from.”

 

 

 

 

Richard Jones

The Sky

 

It’s not much of an airfield,

as quiet as a country cemetery,

just two grass landing strips that crisscross a field.

But when I go there and wait for my deceased father,

before long he lands his plane,

a little white Cessna, a two-seater he calls “Bird.”

He checks the controls while I put on my headset—

we’ve done this many times so I know the routine—

and when the tower says we’re cleared for take off

he gives it the throttle and we speed down a runway

lined with blue grass and clover.

Just seeing the clover rushing by makes a difference,

and when the wheels lift and Bird starts to climb,

I feel a sudden willingness to let everything go,

the terrible need to talk or the compulsion to carry

all these stones in my heart. From high in the air,

the world below looks small, which it is,

and people are so tiny they disappear.

Flying with my departed father,

it is very difficult to hold on to troubles

and suddenly it is right to love everyone

as we burst free from clouds

and fly into the light.

Dreaming in the Language of Angels

 

Wearing a captain’s hat and uniform

my infirm father sails a brigantine

across winter seas to frozen Russia.

 

In the mansions of St. Petersburg

his wife debates sanity’s reward

versus delirium’s buoyant virtues.

 

In the palace, half-dreaming on the tsar’s settee,

coat unbuttoned, I recite my life’s story

in French, the language of angels.

 

Back in America, Jones Very was weeping

because his loved ones doubted the vision

of his divinely inspired poetry.

 

 

 

Megan Kellerman

On joy,
 
I have thought to tell you 
that dimes spill out my pockets, 
ring to the ground like wind chime 
petals downed in a storm. 

 

Rats tongue them into their jaws 
and run off with shining aspirations. 
They will drop them in the sewer, 
water carry them all away. 

 

My eye follows the fur, 
the change down, the tails 
down, the prickled, linked toes 
down. Everything goes Somewhere. 

 

My eye goes 
down, through lightless 
tunnels, breaks out 
into fleas, into nickels 
and pennies, into meantimes, 
into somewheres, 
fingers splayed 
to catch,  
you. 

 

 

 

Vomiting; Weakness 
 
I feel the something go out of my spine. 
Not sure how to take this limpness— 
 
am I comfortable, or what? Cornflowers 
burst out my eyes when I look. 
 
Not meant to twist that way. Ask 
someone else to look for me— 
 
how we doin’ back there? Someone Else 
snarls in my ear. Good. I like ‘em lupine. 
 
I finger my teeth—flecks of yesterday there. 
Green sensation on my skin. This 
 
is how it feels to navigate love without attachment. 
The snarl, I memorize it and turn, 
 
my heart grimly peaking. 

 

 

 

 

Anna Ivey

hottest day of summer to be hometown farmers

Chad and I decide to try gardening and so he calculates and sketches as the baby plays with measuring cups on the rug near his feet. Sunday morning I ask him if he still wants to plant. By noon he's going to the store and I laugh at him for the fireworks now on this hottest day of summer to be hometown farmers.On the edges of the treeline we thinned before Cade was born--after we were both cut up like Christ from briars--we mark dusty clay for the planter. Well I may have gotten a little carried away while I was there. I got cucumbers and tomatoes and peppers and squash and zucchini. And I bought watermelon too he says as I unload the car when we finish the grid. He hates watermelon. Aralyn and I eat it almost daily. I dig the holes for posts like a patient priestess and then dump the soil when his back aches. He sweats beside me resolute and disciplined in the task--his raw wildness commanding it all to formation. How do you want to arrange them? he asks. I graph those vegetables into the box and the next day we will create a second. He waters and I pot the cilantro and curry. In a silence earned by sweat and dirt we eat a dinner of chicken tortilla soup I made that afternoon.


any other way to order

The dog's ear becomes infected and we theorize on composting and the cat drags socks from the hamper and the pork needs a finer layer of salt as I take the minutes and hours to play Go Fish with the checklist to get tasks done. The fear of mishandling it all sits across my shoulders boa-constrictor dense. I wonder if there is any other way to order this sphere to where I am not always always moving hours before I must. Pruning off the gym or making Cade's food or cooking every meal or making the bed will counteract because these are spokes in the moving wheel. Nothing realigns on the differences we cannot settle. Chad changes the subject at the hint of it and I allow him to ask instead about where to put the berry bushes or how much a chicken coop would cost.


own hands

As we etch ourselves onto the couch Chad says he likes the photos of the kids. I show him a website that sells plants as we theorize how far to shuffle money into this hobby. In the past we created cheese candles pies soaps lotions curtains woodwork. I ache with poetry on my own but he wishes for unnavigated realms to master. Wouldn't avocados be hard to grow in this climate? I observe alongside whether chickens would be too much. Eh, I don't know. We could start growing grapes and then make our own wine cellar he suggests. Americana torqued into a smooth machine. These wooden floors. These suburbs. These two children. This cat and dog. These notions of grappling a future we select into our own hands.


water the soil anyhow

So we compost to coax the vegetables. Hey make sure you chop the scraps up. And be careful of snakes since they like the warmth Chad advises. At least twice a day he meanders into reasons to spin the black tube. Cade and I watch him as he adds in egg shells and edges of peaches I trim from our fruit trees. Searching the vagrant skies of heat lightning for droplets we testify against the weather and water the soil anyhow. The strawberry roots send up viridian beads in the six pots they inhabit.


gentle enough

The bees nibble the rotted peaches as our trees shed the last fruits. The freezer holds 16 cups of peaches and I use the basil from the garden in dinner. So what all did you do today? Chad asks as he approves the pasta. Just went to the gym and did some writing and took care of Cade. Kind of quiet but it makes me happy to have quiet. I tell him. He chews and mentions how to adjust the peach tree for next season. You really like this stuff, don’t you? I ask. He smiles. My husband sees he needs more than one place to be gentle.


from the tree

I pick up Aralyn from camp and listen to her chatter about the time she was away: I loved rock climbing! I made it almost to the top! And our tribe got second place in the song contest! And I learned how to make apple dip! And did Cade miss me? Did Neville get in trouble? Hey I can't wait to see the squash you said grew so big! She admits she did not write her dad a letter and each time qualifies Well I wasn't sure if the address was right. That evening when I help her brush her tangled waves I ask Truth time, baby. Did you not send him a letter for a reason? She admits I just didn’t know what to write. Lavender detangler coils in the humid air as the brush muffles through her hair. Baby, accepting the parents you were given is very hard. Maybe with time you'll see your Dad with a spirit of compassion. But that may not be where you are now. She starts to cry and I make her favorite dinner and cut her peaches fresh from the tree.

 

 

 

Michael Lauchlan

Raptor

                        for Marion Hayden

 

Cruising thermals over wooded hills

over a quick scurry in the ferns

over rattlers sunning on rocks

over road and thistled beach,

the beautiful hunger of hawks sails

on wings shaped for nothing else,

fitting a corner of sky as though

inked into being, then gone,

dropping to a necessary feast

of torn fur and flesh. You glide

from brief repose into a song’s

ordered moment and meet

a desolate ear, meet souls

calling on God in a town

living and dying on a beat,

each head bobbing to your struck

string (shaped for nothing else),

each granite heart split open,

each gig just one more descent

from Basin Street and Highland Park,

from Mingus and Marcus Belgrave

and all the voracious angels

to the macadam where we wait.

 

 

 

Cellar

 

A friend helps me rebuild steps.

Ancient soot hangs in the air

as I demo the cracked, uneven planks.

 

He laughs easily as ever, scribes

cut-lines, and guides the saw.

A new scent rises in the air we breathe.

 

Though we totter on the verge of the strange

and clouds bear a greenish tint, though

we face each summer a thousand year flood,

 

my friend cuts stringers, treads, and kicks

as our sweat catches sawdust and grime.

Late afternoon light fills a doorway

 

and, soft as a word unspoken,

tries our stairs, level and sound.

 

 

 

 

Sean Lynch

 

Milky Way

 

The dog and I are bathed in starlight

as the approaching Atlantic

somehow separates our future selves,

tears our vessels apart.

 

We're the only Winter movement

in the open unwooded island

of Wildwood where what few trees

we have left stick out skinny and crooked.

 

My companion's name, Milky, shows

on his white coat, it reflects what little we can see

of our galaxy, as he relieves a yellow stream

and hot steam puffs off of living wood.

 

He and I are both gossamer

compared to what's ahead

but more so my friend

as his step is really a trot

 

as we are two different kinds of beings.

Still I feel something every time our eyes meet

in doing this we slip on ice

then catch ourselves

 

I with my feet

he with his paws

and so we continue

like nothing happened

 

waiting while walking to encounter

the inconceivable ocean.

He doesn't see this yet, but smells

the sea’s salty breath. He is content

 

in the sparse topography of this crest.

Soon we find the end of land.

I hold him in my hands

against the backdrop

 

of blended sky and water,

feel his heartbeat through fur

and wonder if Orion’s Belt

is proof of eternal life.

 

 

 

W. P. Osborn

He Ran Without Stopping

       He might lick his lips as he turned back to the birds nearby or to coming-on scents, loud like the upwind skunk or quiet like the corn snake curling into an autumn respite. Another second would find him in the hills he’d come from, with the bison, bear, coyote, white tail, pheasant, quail, and turkey. He knew the need to feed and of the desire for lea. Food was anything he could eat. Haven was not always available. Most times the best he could get was the cranny of a log or a low branch under the canopy.

He conceived the shape and motion of a would-be mate. She spoke to him of settling in, of a moment of shared setting. She had not thus far materialized. This longing could if it came from one direction weight him, from another lighten, for she was ether and a shape shifter and the outline into which situation would fit if and when it occurred.

Even in such a state of mind he was present too, and in this sense he barely carried this keening after mate or the impressions of brother-sisters-mother disposed to feed, teach, amuse, and train him, the memory of a mother dying, of siblings emaciating through a winter before being taken off themselves.

If he were able to possess and hold he would carry meat, water, shelter, invisibility.

They knew him as cougar, puma, panther, painter, mountain screamer, mountain lion, big cat, catamount. They called him magnificent, called him threatened, reduced, protected, thief, pest, vermin, opportunist, a carrier of disease, possibly rabid, out of his territory; called him a threat, a danger, a robber of livelihood, fierce, gorgeous.

His first verb was to move. To move meant to walk, to trot, to lope, to run, triangulate, double back, wade through, swim across, explore, seek, stumble, bound, leap, climb, hunt, pounce. To pounce meant to swat, rake, claw, bite in, shake, strangle, knock silly, break the neck of.

High West Michigan Summer: University Convocation in Session, A Late Arrival Approaching

Tan and light green rectangles interrupted

by irregular patches of darker green.

A wandering line, a river. A deep gash

in the earth almost perpendicular to the water.

Wavering rooves of copper and enameled tin,

the sun reflecting in ripples, the cluster

of edifice hemmed on two sides by fields of corn

—some ready for harvest, some in stubble,

some still standing, stunted, stiff, dead.

The constructions are linked by landscape

unpeopled, though the automobiles amassed

in one of the westernmost parking lots

suggest a human presence.

 

Beats of the wings of birds flying in pairs

and threes flashing white above the brown-

green water. A sound, a whirring whine.

Dragonflies hovering over the algaed edge

of the manmade pond sinking toward

the surface without their usual flits and zooms

and desultorily rising. A robin

fluttering nearer. The buzzing, expected

on such a day and yet surprising,

coming from everywhere and nowhere,

and then again abruptly. . . .

 

Brown bricks, a butterfly roof, the pulls

of a pair of double doors seahorses,

their patina the blue of oxidized copper.

And that whirring coming on again—

cicadas in the trees, the foliage and grass.

 

 

 

Simon Perchik

This door slams easily now

 

*

This door slams easily now

though in the dark

it remembers more

 

reaches around and the rain

returned to you as lips

pressed together

 

weighs almost nothing

keeps both these hinges

from drying the way a deathwatch

 

night after night anchors

against the splash

and makes from your hand

 

a mask to ward off the Earth

tightening around your cheeks

two shadows, two mouths.

 

 

 

It’s a meal, your elbows

 

*

It’s a meal, your elbows

crawling the way this soap

is shaped by salt

 

though she still believes

the water stays young

by letting you touch it

 

washing her shoulders

with undersea prairies

as if an arm so old

 

could still reach out

make room in her breasts

for nourishment

 

and already your fingers

smell from saliva

and empty riverbeds

 

kept wet for these wrinkles

taking away her cheeks

her legs and agony.

                                                                                      

 

 

 

John Repp

After Driving Through the Holland Tunnel

 

we’d window-shopped antiques

on MacDougal, shivering

in our pea coats. Have I

 

told you this already?

We pointed uptown & down,

bought a newspaper & a map

 

from a man bundled behind

a green plywood counter.

We climbed five steps

 

into a wine bar where wine

threaded one of the cheeses

they brought on a board

 

bearing an apple, a paring knife

& a miniature baguette, a word

among many on the menu

 

unknown & therefore worldly.

I’ve probably said this already.

We ordered a bottle of Lancer’s

 

& they brought it—my beard,

her mass of black hair,

the way we manipulated

 

cigarettes & our having come

to nestle in The Village—navel

of the world—on a commonplace

 

winter night all the verification

we’d need forever. Frosty taillights

drifted past our window booth

 

& people blowing out fog.

We fed each other & drank

the best wine we’d ever drunk,

 

so elemental I can’t believe

I haven’t told you what joy

I’ve had being here all this time.

 

 

 

The Arc of a Life

 

I’ve said the arc of a life

more in the past month

than in the rest of my life

 

so far & with any good luck

in what days remain. A boy

in his first brogans squints

 

at the camera, hands

in the pockets of his best

short pants. A woman

 

with bright white hair heals

in Jesus’ name forty years

after she let me unbutton

 

her new flannel shirt.

We licked tears of joy

from one another’s cheeks

 

& fed each other cubes

of Gouda as a cold draft

fluttered the blue candle’s light.

 

An old man asks Are you

coming back? before I leave

for the last time. The strongest

 

man in the world gasps

each breath & wants

to be slid into the river

 

on a raft or given a gun

& left alone a few minutes.

When I say the arc of a life

 

I pantomime a parabola

with my right hand. A girl

dances in Astoria & the boy

 

who can’t keep up

plops onto a wooden chair

& then it’s 1927, then 1956,

 

then a grandson the besotted

boy never knew snaps a picture

of his gravestone, remembering

 

how he took extra care

when he worked there to trim

well the long grass of the plot.

 

With any good luck I said.

Ha. I know all my loves

& they me at a glance,

 

no matter time or pain

or words idiotic & profound.

I’ll vanish as I’ve been vanishing

 

all along in this gorgeous world.

The Great War

 

My son commands a squadron

of Mark II tanks. I say You’re fighting

 

for the Kaiser now? so he gives me

That Look. The final veteran

 

of the Great War died a week ago.

The trapezoidal treads churn

 

No Man’s Land into pixelated slurry.

Someone hacked the game, so my son

 

can’t be killed but can slaughter willy-nilly.

He could care less about the ancient nurse

 

& her fragmentary memories, what the gas

did & the ludicrous tactics. He can’t bear

 

to hear me tell the joy carnage brought

in the vanished woods, Spear Patrol ranked

 

behind me, split-broomstick sword

& bamboo lance laying waste. I tell him anyway

 

as tiny Tommies crumple by the hundred,

then a French tidal wave, then Belleau Wood

 

piled full of Americans. I thrill for him.

How could I not? Steel & fire, he kills

 

what needs killing, free for now

of everything he already knows.

 

 

 

 

Judith Skillman

Tiny Animals

in blown glass on shelves

Wedgewood plates

stacked on the buffet

for company

quilted place mats

salt and pepper shaker

from Tahiti

horns of ivory

rhinoceros don’t you dare

touch else the host

will bellow

you’ll become the child

who ran into winter

jumped the fence

to fall on concrete

where a shard

entered your palm

look at the cicatrix

like a tattoo

a little leg

pulled from flesh

 

 

 

 

J. R. Solonche

Speech For the Giant’s Wife

 

Mostly, it's the weather

in a giant's house.

Everyday it rains.

 

Sometimes twice a day,

in the morning when he wakes

and at night when he retires.

 

He hardly ever notices me.

But several times

he nearly ate me for dessert.

 

I understand this.

It isn't his fault.

He frowns most of the time.

 

He does not enjoy his work.

He is a teacher of the deaf.

His clothes do not fit him well.

 

He says he never dreams

and I believe him.

He lives in different weather,

 

in a country of clouds.

He is still growing.

His eyes are weak.

 

He sees the world from the top,

the way an aviator sees,

or an angel.

 

He is afraid of water,

but he gazes on the ocean for days.

He loves music,

 

but the loudest symphony

is never loud enough

to fill up his ears.

 

He is still growing.

He gets taller and taller.

He has no interest in the dead.

 

He is difficult to live with,

but not impossible.

I live where I can.

 

 

 

Andrew Spiess

 

String & Rift

 

You bet your pretty painted eyes

the smoke and light blended dusk

will rest it’s head on

your cream-colored shoulder

by the time this train horn

drains into white space.

The sky leaks and the wind

won't stay in its corner.

This won’t be your

last disappointment.

This won’t be

the last time

the headless

night beckons

your naked legs.

 

So you come here

where they invented

the kind of dark that smells

of porcelain

and sulfur

or wet skin

where we can hold

our hideous nature

in glassy sparkle,

the perfect place

to attract.

Afraid our eyes together

could become hard

to touch, a tasteless mistake.

I am here and I am missing.

My kind of distance hangs

between two mirrors.

We can make our range

a two-way tether

that we grip

with our blue palms.

 

 

 

When You See Me, I'm Moon-Sized

 

My left eyelid twitches

like a loose window shutter

in a stormy wind

or a sheet-winged fly

in spotlight.

 

Like all shadows, I grow

in the lunatic pumpkin's

bathroom fluorescence

where it's mirror aspect

catches my vision

and I'm stunned

by its buttery

thickness.

 

The moon reverberates

like a stricken gong

or the nervous look of a woman

and my spine could shatter

not from warm affection

but from its revolving

curves behind a robe

of clouds.

 

In times like this

I wish my mouth would

hang wide open but instead it

shrinks and hardens shut

and I get as full

as a one-lamp room.

 

And sometimes the lights

outside are nothing more

than holes chewed

into a shirt

by cats.

 

And this time I scratch

skin from my knuckles

harbor an inflamed heart

add a chemical to my color

attempt to respectably spill

and stumble towards

the wide automatic night.

 

 

 

D. E. Steward

Via Cobra Rock

The first unfiltered air after the eleven-hour flight, ramping from the landing pod toward immigration and customs

 

Leaving the Air Pacific 747 after stooping from nearly forty thousand feet

 

Down through the tropical random cumulus island-splattered moonlit end of night 

 

Turn an unlighted corner ten feet from a predawn-dim frangipani trellis of raucous high-decibel common mynas in a din of hysterical harsh chatter

 

Waking on their tight communal roost

 

Cacophony bounced off the white frangipani’s brown backing wall at flight-stunned passengers plodding past who take no notice at all

 

This is exotic Fiji, tropical jolts and surprises, what they came for

 

But they pass the myna-laden frangipani as though the assertively real myna reveille was something coming at them off a muted picture screen   

 

Landing from LAX’s Tom Bradley International Terminal

 

With its immense high vaulted food-court balconied basilica hung with arrival and departure boards that spell the immediate futures of all who are there

 

Sending us off to the ends of the earth

Leading the sun across the Pacific from LAX to slant well into the Southern Hemisphere

 

Light finally in the east only when above Nadi

 

A Captain Queeg figure, Commandant Charles Wilkes, b. NYC, 1798, burned out villages and killed over fifty Fijians in 1840 on Malolo ten miles off Nadi

 

Now Malolo is dotted with beach resorts

 

At a Nadi Airport Republic of Cappuccino outside café table in the balm of early morning, sit with a few people from a village in Viti Levu’s northern mountains

 

There in the dozens to see off one of their own bound for a training college in London

 

A quorum from a Fijian village moved to the airport-circle parking lot 

 

Mynas, omnivorous mynas, forage around the palms among the men who over there are drinking kava

 

Tubby, low-slung, interior-linemen, quiet look of many Melanesians who when absorbed with drinking kava no longer seem vaguely threatening

 

Omnivorous Viti Levuians whose ancestors ate their island enemies, and random Christian missionaries if they turned up

 

Here in the old Cannibal Isles 

 

A short hike off the airport to Kings Road to hop a carrier – Fijian for jitney – south into town and spot a golden dove, one of Fiji’s unique birds

 

Then comes the first Southern Hemisphere disorientation of the trip, a sense that the carrier is headed north on Queens Road into Nadi

 

That sun-sweep opposite of the familiar

 

Moon phases opposite of the familiar, wax is wane, spring is fall, winter summer backward shadow lie

 

Upside down moons, right-side up 

 

Glancing up to find the moon or sun or stars, or down at the shadow fall in the other hemisphere, impels a sense of foreignness

 

The only times the switch into the Southern Hemisphere works smoothly is when crossing the equator slowly at sea with the variation day to day undetectable

 

Here in Nadi staring at the mountains, that should be to the north but are to the south, from the terraces around the central shrines of the big Hindu temple at the edge of town by the cane railway along Queens Road

 

Sri Siva Subramaniya Swami Temple to Lord Murugan, guardian deity of seasonal rains

 

Overlooking green cane-field hills lofting to Mount Koroba and Viti Levu’s highlands

 

Penitents rapidly circle the temple complex one hundred and eight times on foot

 

For the one hundred and eight names of Shiva

 

A hundred meters or so each time around    

 

Women who wish to become pregnant and women who hope they are not, dressed vividly like the gods they are there to assuage 

 

Open and airy brightly painted wood, plaster, stucco and stone vaulting skyward a like elongated stupas, symmetric painted plaster figures clustered level upon level

 

Gopuras on platforms above sand paths walked barefoot, shoes left at the main

gate  

 

Ribbed fruit motifs, doorways, ceilings and columns decorated with foliation, jeweled motifs and guardian figures

 

The whole, cluster by cluster, painted in garish shades of vivid colors

 

Flaring colors that vibrate challenges to nature, colors that make our kibble-colored matching tastefulness seem barren and symptomatic of our chronic occidental loneliness

 

Nadi itself that day uncrowded and somewhat forlorn

 

Jump another carrier back to the airport and then off again for the other big island, Vanua Levu, riding up near the old patched-up Twin-Otter’s cockpit bulkhead across the Ba River high country at eleven thousand feet

 

Peaks to thirteen hundred meters, cane field slopes, single roads in toward isolated farms are the only roads out

 

Cross Viti Levu’s encircling barrier reef and then overfly Bligh Water

 

After the mutiny, the Bounty skipper and eighteen of his crew came through here in 1789 in their open boat on the way to Indonesia’s Timor

 

Bligh was chased through Bligh Water by Fijian, Cannibal Isles, war canoes

 

Tip down over Vanua Levu’s reefs and islet coral heads through scattered rain clouds and slant a tight turn to the strip at Savusavu, a narrow belt in the clouded-in rainforest green

 

Savusavu, exotic, provincial, is one street along the water, stores and offices up against the slope, the market and open greens on the inlet side

 

The boat tied up stern-to in the old copra shed marina, water clean enough for swimming

 

Mountains very much like Tahiti or Morea rise high across the water

 

Frigatebirds above the bay          

 

Pacific swallows and a spectrum of small tropical doves

The road to Labasa in the morning with a rented Suzuki

 

The sugar side of Vanua Levu and the locale of the short-lived sandalwood trade

 

Joss sticks burn on shelves beside cane knives and gauntleted cane cutters’ gloves in the only duka open in downtown Labasa on Sunday morning

 

A narrow, dark and deep emporium whose inventory comes from the ends of the earth, clerked by wary young Indo-Fijian women, skinny and sullen in their pistachio and raspberry saris

 

In the Labasa region, four out of five cane-worker families are Hindu

 

There are mosques in the Muslim cane-field villages

 

Ragged, even nearly derelict, sugar villages with cane sugar a glut on the world market

 

Fiji is half Fijian, half Indo-Fijian, nearly three out of four around Labasa are Indo-Fijian

 

UN statistics have spousal abuse and female suicides in and around Labasa at seven times the world average, an extremely rural place, a twenty-first century My Antonia locale with Islam, bride price and purdah piled on  

 

From Labasa eastward via Cobra Rock, toward the far end of Vanua Levu

 

Fiji is cobraless except in the bright imaginations of Indo-Fijians

 

But all over Vanua Levu, kinetic Pacific swallows, spotted doves, shy ground-doves, Layard’s white-eyes, silvereyes

 

The white-eyes and silvereyes are like sunny motes

 

Out on the empty Nubu-Vitina Road past the point of no return of being able to get back to Savusavu before dark on partial pavement

 

Sense of the complex immensity of the world vivid as the afternoon itself

 

Deep into the unpopulated backcountry of one South Pacific island, one of thousands  

 

Manifestation of the immensity’s abiding stability in a serene and motionless sacred kingfisher, Halcyon sancta, vivid blue and gold on a ragged lightning-struck stub of a big Fijian kauri tree just off the treacherous road

 

Eternity might be following out bad roads in far corners of the world like this one, not a bad eternity at all

 

Down along the long bay, the road back around to Savusavu past downslope coastal villages, a Christian revival meeting in one, talk with the ministers there, each wearing a sulu and sandals, with jackets, shirts and ties

 

Curious, polite, intelligent and sane

 

Religion in extremely isolated places like backcountry Fiji has always been a path to any offshore universals

 

The missionaries always were the first to arrive, and then with progression to zenophobic nationalism, Christianity is the last to succumb   

 

Off to Taveuni next morning, a light half day’s sail 

 

Trolling at five or six knots, landed without gaffing a big ocean whitefish, brilliant blues and yellows, it threw the hook on deck before anybody got on top of it

 

Anchor off Niuasawa in Somosomo Strait absorbed already with Fiji’s alliterative vowel-rich syllables, its kava-stoned men sitting cross-legged in their sulus as in probably every settlement along every Fijian coast

 

Lovely barefoot kids running pell-mell through the land-crab holed sand grass, cornering each village bure, rounding the tubby rusted copra burners, and then off up the strand

 

The splendor of tropical island countries, disparities that unify, their isolate peace, fruit for the asking, vegetables all year, fish, strong sun that purifies, lives along water

 

Hiking in toward Taveuni’s waterfalls pass a young couple headed for town carrying two magnificent jungle cocks

 

See chickens everywhere in Fiji, foraging in the forest under-story, chasing across the copra plantations, brood hens clucking along village paths, mostly feral or quasi-domesticated, some truly wild

 

Climb off the Lavena coastal trail to strike up Wainibau Stream toward the lower falls

 

Beyond a banana patch on the trail’s first switchback up the mountain, hear it first, the strange tock, tock, a very undovelike sound

 

And there it is feeding on a limb twenty feet away in direct bright sun, the famous orange dove, Ptilinopus victor

 

A male

 

Vivid, fiery orange

 

It flies off upslope in bright sunlight and the brilliance of its plumage like laser light, an orange patch burning against the sky

 

Half an hour later swim in the long pool beneath the falls, the direct roaring weight heavy on shoulders and head 

 

In behind the cascade, shoulders, skull and back slammed, bubble froth foam within its thunderousness

 

Like Gauguinesque intuition into the manner of color

 

Water force, a South Pacific awareness

 

A suspension footbridge built by New Zealand ecologists over the Wainisairi River, and back through the swidden plots of taro, cassava, papaya and kava

 

On the trail back toward Matei and the boat pass reef pedestals out beyond the swash, lava eroded by seawater from the bottom, shaped like huge, lumpish, round piano stools

 

Stop in at a little dive shop run by a Dane on the road to Somosomo to ask about sharks and she says the stories of sharks attacks around Taveuni are exaggerated, then proceeds to dismissively detail half a dozen in the last decade, most of them fatal 

 

Unsuccessful anchorage attempt between Yanuca and Yavu Islands inside Budd Reef in twenty meters, dragged and failed to hold with eighty meters of chain out

 

Wanted to land, had heard that only nine people live in the whole atoll, see no one, only a nanny searching for her kid on a ridgeline, could hear both calling to each other

 

Out of sight to one another, with binoculars from the deck able to see both searching in the heavy brush

 

Whenever sailing even a bit offshore in Fiji, the boobies, and farther out the shearwaters

 

Brown boobies, red-footed boobies, masked boobies  

 

At 179º45’W it should be California, Tahiti and Hawaii’s day, but with most of Fiji farther west across the Date Line, already tomorrow

 

Day onto day we listen to a lot of Brahms, Sibelius and Shostakovich

 

Find a CD aboard from the Cape Verdes with Ana Firmino’s Chico Malandro

 

She’s even better than the Cape Verde’s famous Cosaria Evora

 

Nana Matias’s, Pays Sol too, Matias was born on São Vicente

 

Have overnighted in the roads of São Vicente and sailed by Fogo in the morning, an active volcano almost three thousand meters and vividly green

 

Green like the blue of Fiji’s blue starfish

 

Starfish are everywhere in Fiji in clean waters

 

On reefs and rocks a few meters down

 

Fantastic blue starfish with the vivid nearly copper-sulfate blue, a blue turquoise, cornflower, milori blue

 

When diving toward them swim through schools of blue-green blue devil damsels

 

Then the frequent green turtles and leatherbacks in Fijian waters swimming away in blue-green translucence 

 

Longfin batfish with exactly West Point’s colors are always astern of the boat at anchor

 

On the reefs below them, lunar coral mounds with Christmas tree worms, vivid blue and dark yellow, like sea anemone, pulsing, retreating into the coral mass when approached

 

Imbricate layers of sea fans like slanted mansards along banks of barrel coral

 

The hue of each dependent on its depth, the angle of the light, the brightness of the sun or shading of clouds overhead

 

Peale’s pigeons’ woofing, Ducula latrans, as background ambience in Northern Lau to the dramatic circling flights of huge monkey-faced fruit bats

 

Dozens of lesser golden plovers feeding on the low-tide swash at Lomaloma and beyond along the east coast of Vana Balavu

 

Gray ducks dabbling in the lagoons

 

Pacific reef herons everywhere, that when startled go hiding in the mangroves

 

In the Nanuku Passage between Qamea and Vanuabalavu something big ran hard with the troll and as the reel emptied, snugged the star drag too soon, too excited at whatever it was being so big and lost it, the line had parted far out just in front of the rig

 

Off the village of Naiviivii on Qamea, two of us slamming back in the dinghy to the boat inside the reef, more than moderate seas and a stiff wind, the outboard’s fuel line pulled loose, forced to paddle

 

Unpleasant and slightly dangerous in the way many things about ocean sailing are slightly dangerous

 

The South Pacific is a very large place

 

And Fiji’s Laucala is a very small island, a sheltered little port, beaches, with copra groves rising to highlands

 

No village and no economy, just a few Fijian caretakers of what was an American billionaire’s, Malcolm Forbes, preserve

 

Fiji to the Pacific like Portugal to the rest of Europe, or like Swaziland to Africa, but no José Saramago to recount and illuminate it

 

Its identity has slipped from Methodist modesties to full-service pleasure resorts and PGA’s Vijay Singh

 

The first Christians arrived in Fiji in the 1830s from Tonga and Tahiti in their assault on Polynesian culture

 

Southern Lau, islands closed now to foreign boats, are the Exploring Isles 

 

In Northern Lau anchored off The Plantation, Vanuabalavu, hung exactly at 17º10.884S and 178º59.922W, so only a few seconds off the Date Line

 

All of Vanuabalavu with only a half dozen small trucks, an airstrip like a moderate ski slope and in the town, Lomaloma, two trading stores, one Indian and one Fijian 

 

Gauguin copra groves with Gauguin horses grazing on landcrab-pocked hillocks

 

White-tailed tropic birds below the cliffs over Vanuabalavu’s lonely Bay of Islands

 

A big shark inside the reef hundreds of feet below swaying lazily along in the sun

 

Lip-numbing kava drunk one afternoon with a paramount chief

 

Who was not very prepossessing but distractedly friendly in a charming way

 

But that could have been the kava

 

Difficult to go macho or play power or mind games while drinking kava

 

Back on the boat entranced with the reality of being there, lying to in Little Bay, Vanuabalavu, in the pilot house listening to John Adisson’s theme for A Bridge Too Far

Adisson, like Elgar, Holst, Britten, Walton, Vaughn Williams, and the snappy Anglo quasi-martial brightness of Tudor polyphony

 

Kayak off the boat to paddle around Little Bay into its estuary, the blue stars on the coral heads below 

 

Alone in South Sea perfection

 

And then leaving to fly off for Suva, Fiji’s capital, over the Koro Sea

 

At Vanuabalavu’s airstrip the King of Tonga’s tomato red half-century-old Brit two-engined was the only other plane 

 

Tonga’s Crown Prince was over on a visit

 

 

 

Allison Thorpe

First Night – (Penelope's Journal)

 

The sea is back in my bed,

a crust of salt and other women

he refuses to wash off.

Twenty years gone,

and his snore still

trembles leaves, arms

flung wide in ownership.

 

Cup and island returned

to his counting house,

he took a husband's

pleasure, rough

fingers fleeting

up my back.

 

Decades of travel,

and what change?

He is the wind, big

and blustery

then gone.

The huff of power

and possession.

 

What I learned in his absence:

how salt will glitter

the skin like hunger,

how time's warp

and weave lies

so smoothly

in my waiting hands.

The moon alone

can sing the muted sky.

 

 

 

Thinking of Aung San Suu Kyi While Smelling the Lilacs

 

To bathe the boundless air once more,

the skin a joyous parchment,

hair now sister to wind.

 

Free of knitted chains, the hands dance.

Winter's arrest a history,

sun offers our open future.

 

The world has grown wild in our absence:

thistles thick as soldiers in the field,

quackgrass a general nuisance,

 

entrenched roots that require

generations of upheaval to abolish,

but daffodils have rioted the hillside,

 

crocus, loyal their return,

wood violets chant a fragile

poetry among the undergrowth,

 

snowdrops dance milky dreams,

and here—the unruly lilac—

how sweet the revolution!

 

 

 

Mark Young

A Line from Daniel Defoe

 

What we have here is

flavor envy, a seemingly

endless list of people who

believe that warriors &

 

nobles were favored above

the common folk because

their breath was redolent

with chili &/or vanilla pods.

 

 

 

A Bookstall in Babel

 

Correlate hard enough, & there

might be something there that

 

aligns the appearance of the

bookstall for this single minute

 

to the season & the particular

phase of the moon. But even

 

if otherwise the randomness

has an enviable precision to it,

 

takes place always beneath

a large tree in the most public

 

of parks. Never more than a

single book displayed upon

 

a single folding chair. Just enough

time for an exchange to take

 

place between the buyer who

inevitably happens to be there

 

when the chair materializes &

the seller who always stays in the

 

shadows. Money changes hands.

The price is never discussed.