T H E H A M I L T O N S T O N E R E V I E W
Virgens de Guadalupe by Lynda Schor
Issue # 42 Spring 2020
Poetry
Carol Alexander
Agape
You had a dousing stick knobbed with a mantis head
to find a wallow thick in nascent spring
streaky with beginnings, piqued by the sun's swarm,
a crush of pulpy twigs, rotten veins.
The gilled originals of newt and frog fed there
in mossy, lung-less forms, shivery and vague in the demotic pond.
Light phased them into gold though what they were in themselves
you didn't know. Maybe sad monsters or harbingers. Rainbows trailed the hushpuppies, broke over jagged rock.
Who grows nothing from its source contemplates nothingness,
filches from a hedge a bird's egg drab as dirt, you've the morals of a fox,
taking things unexacting and defenseless as the simplest nouns,
shapes akin to fish pearls in this quenchless mud.
A confusion of magic and mystery—
Prospero breaking his stick.
When it seems impossible to love the world enough as it is and will be,
you think of transformations everywhere—
that good relentlessness, a myriad opening mouths.
The Idea of Valley
Laid half-bare, by winter disarmed,
translucence of shirred pond ice.
With necks like the handles of amphorae,
a crushed velvet shine, geese churning urgency,
hardscrabble creatures un-compassed, elapse: pass by.
Want and disbelief, the knocking at hollow trees—
today this city far from a yellow valley abandoned more.
Mooning trucks roll by; rain, the intensifier,
most green, saturates beneath a wave of itself
while a patch of weed bleeds tawny
in the sluice of old snow. A delta of found things,
a vernacular of sweet and rust.
And beyond the horse guard hardens to bronze, season of patina
where the reservoir divides from blackened muck;
the alluvial impulse of this land backing up,
fistfuls of silt, suckers bleeding flesh, bodies made to disappear.
See the bloat of floating scum, hands clasped.
Remember the elementary stroke, breast to ellipse,
lifting you over the river's skin, and how a valley rustles
in the long growing season. How it stays yellow and stays.
Pacemaker
The brain is meant to give in last.
Mad buccaneer, sometime you will run aground and let us weep.
Around a tactful corner, evening staff keeps the log.
Drivers smoke on the path that leads to the convent deer park
and within ashcans, blackened troughs of day-old food, crows camouflage.
A corpus lies shrunken and remote, wouldn't wish to be displayed
for all the chant and incense though Pascal's Night of Fire would please the nuns.
All else outlasts— stained cotton sheets tucked shroud-like,
canned symphony of a radio, a thrum that is the pattern of electrodes,
but what is the intransitive warmth of a sense memory? She recedes into a sea of ice.
Underground, rootless rhizomes sprout from an array of organs;
it's still summer with its frail archaeology of light, its citrus scent and ruins.
Will death weigh so little at the end—
water has no shadow, only a directional, glancing shift.
Tony Beyer
Father again
thinking of him
as I do too often
while there are others still alive
who could use my attention
yet it is his face
behind my face in the mirror
his hands holding
my cup or my book
some of his language adheres
shared with a wan grin
or regulation laughter
among my brothers
his world of brogues
and Gladstone bags
two-bob bets on the double
has departed with him
whatever his regrets were
left behind like his homeland
his promising future
his inconsistent past.
Nature morte
1
a table top many elbows have rubbed
to a sheen or patina like aubergine skin
and on it rough-husked bread and a wedge
of cheese slightly crumbly at the apex
a flask as well half full of amber light
attended by plain household glasses
that fit comfortably in the hand
and a knife and napkin just this minute put down
and so it shall remain now the painter
and his friends have toasted its completion
and left the room a moment a century ago
possibly to walk outside in the cooling dusk
talking together about anything but works of art
which at their least hang immobile on a wall
in the presence of other works and walls
until the eye arrives to waken them
2
when Lazarus returned from the dead
his eyes had changed colour
and his hands were always afterwards
pallid and thin
he carried about him the scent of dry stone
and his gaze seemed somehow
to funnel the eyesight of something beyond him
more powerful and more obscure
those who had known him before
even those who loved him
could not find it in themselves to do so now
silent in the company of his silences
it was as if a tension
like that of a membrane surrounding a gland
had split partly but not opened
permitting too little of what was inside to be seen
because it would come to them sooner or later
everyone wanted to ask him what death was like
but he being healed of the worst of ills
persisted in telling them nothing
nor did he speak again of his rescuer
for whose eventual fate his was a rehearsal
both of them men without fear
whom nothing on earth could threaten
3
once rain water has settled in the tank
its cold feet
bedded in sludge and leaf mould
its upper levels ice-clear
I use a length of old hose
to siphon it onto the hibiscus
high to low
one of the simple miracles of physics
and while there may be bacterial reasons
not to do this
surely nothing that rots can hurt the earth
made up as it is of rot and renewal
hard droughty summers
and long nights scarred by the moon
our place of the utterly ordinary
becoming scarcer
Still teaching at 71
I was already old
before these students were born
so quite recent events
on my time-scale
Bill Clinton 9/11
the Bali bombing
are as obscure as Mafeking
let alone my childhood
just after the middle
of last century
my schooling in the age
of canes and cold showers
a lifetime’s experience
about as interesting
as a garage sale to them
and good on them too
at least they don’t have to put up
with ancient codgers
banging on about the war
or sugarbag underpants
or how many family members
shared the lid of the dad’s boiled egg
their world is the future
I won’t see
enigmatic and unaccountable
as my past to them
I wish they could have met
my grandfather
born in the 1800s
puzzled by the 1900s
who knew better than any of us
how to go about his days
Charles Cantrell
The Last Rehearsal
If leaves could speak, wind dropping
syllables through branches.
If the stars were white spiders
scattered on a black sheet of infinite black
tar paper over tin,
what would you turn to?
If summer could fall apart like a steer carcass
at the edge of a wheat field in a wind storm.
If creatures that maneuver their small bodies
and brief lives could live at weed-root.
If you’d like the months to accelerate so you could see
the plum blossom before the purple blush
of skin right at the green nub of fruit,
what would any of this do for you?
To think that the non-human is close to human
rings of delusion and can be dangerous.
Clouds don’t have sleeves, the earth doesn’t beat
like a heart, flowers don’t stick out tongues,
grass doesn’t sing or bend like the back
of a beloved. It’s the wind, with no hands,
no face, no teeth, which can break you.
No Resolution
after Michael Benedikt
The feelings go up into the air
like birds who know the air
better than we do. What feelings?
Someone’s tears fall in cold air.
Someone needs to know what happened.
The person weeping is wearing a sheepskin coat. Despair
blows around her, colder than mere wind.
Maybe someone hurt her. Up in the air
are the words she wants to choke out. Someone should
go to her and find out what happened. The chilly air
by the roadside near some woods
is no place to linger, especially in the air
of not knowing her full story. What if she cannot say
what really happened or why? Can’t you air
your feelings? you want to say. Please talk to me.
Birds in the woods are singing. They own the air.
Someone better be holding that woman now, whether
or not they played a part in what hurt her in the dark air.
Culvert
after Aron Wiesenfeld’s “Surfing Bird”
The drain pipe is almost three times the height
of the girl standing near the entrance,
facing the dark end.
Why is she here?
She wears no shoes. Just a trickle of water,
almost as still as the girl, from the opening.
Thin dress to her knees. You can barely see
her arms. If water were to rush her way,
would she hear it coming?
It’s a gray and dark world here.
Even the bushes to her right are hazy
as gauze. All I know is darkness
and light aren’t her language,
despite their duality in the world.
The girl’s too young to know that.
Maybe the immensity drew her in.
Maybe it’s hot out, and the breeze
pulled her inside. The iron cylinder
surrounding her is cool. Air moves
from the far end. To be this alone
and quiet and fearless, facing a huge tunnel—
and no way to tell what’s at the other end,
even whatever she imagines may be there: car,
man, log jam, or hundreds of white
butterflies sipping from a stream
that winds its way to the entrance.
In the Woods
When someone left me for no
apparent reason I could figure,
I wanted to understand. I could reduce
the whole matter to a wasp on my window pane.
Would it want to sting me? And why?
From across the treetops past my cabin,
I can see the city lights. I left there
long ago. No hermit like Thoreau,
I don’t grow beans or corn, nor take
long walks in the woods, touch bark
and sigh, or wonder what my boots crinkle
or kill. I visit the city now and again
and always look in a store window
at cashmere sweaters, like the one she wore.
Her eyes are the color of chicory petals
in sidewalk cracks near a barbershop.
I’ve been among wildflowers long enough
to know their fate, perennial or not.
My garden, temporary as it is, is regal
and supreme. The woods inside me are hard
on the outside, but soft on the inside.
What they believe in, I cannot tell.
David R. Cravens
Southerners
Kenny Grahame at five years
lost his mother to fever
was orphaned by his father
then deprived university
by a miserly calvinist uncle
who sentenced him thirty years
(gavel cracked in half)
served in the Bank of England
incorrigible inmates
with pitbulls tied to desks
(for dogfights after work)
the ghylls and wealds
meadows and Berkshire downs
served as his escape—
upon return to the house
he’d recite to Alastair
(his nervous purblind child)
adventures of a mole and a rat
a badger and a boastful toad—
Kenneth’s role was Mole
Alastair was Toad – id incarnate
Rat was Edward Atky
& Badger was William Henley
Grahame’s previous editor
who’d written “Invictus”
future darling of Tim McVeigh
as well as Nelson Mandela
some ten years later
Alan Milne was on the Somme
a putrid wasteland of casualty i
relentless bombardment
& hungry flies on bloated corpses
when he’d ask of new recruits
if they’d read The Wind in the Willows
his litmus test of character ii
& it was the Somme
that nurtured a pacifism
that bled into Winnie-the-Pooh—
a whizz-bang near Mametz Wood
near thwarted Pooh Bear
even before his conception
but Alan escaped the Front
begat a son – Christopher Robin
& bought a home in Sussex
at the edge of Ashdown Forest—
when he and Christopher
(and the boy’s prized bear)
were walking nearby spinneys
& heathlands of gorse and heather
Richard Adams – just west
was taken into Newbury
saw a peddler skinning a rabbit—
gibbeted others stiff and empty
hung from the man’s makeshift cart
& the boy burst into tears
(barely consoled by his mum)
trauma that nurtured a pattern
a motive of retreat iii
& he too’d withdraw to the downs
their woundworts and cowslips
(copses of bluebell and hazel)
before being sent to boarding school
where beaten and beset
by bullies and pervert teachers
decidedly lost in the Wild Wood
Mole and Ratty seek refuge
deep in Badger’s den
from cold and snow and darkness
& vulgar stoats and weasels
(of bolshevistic bent)
where Mole tells Badger
in the warm firelit kitchen
that being underground
begets bearing and security iv
tenders an equanimity—
for what happens up top
will await your return
& once rested and fed
they depart through adjacent crypts
vaulting ribbed of id and ego
to emerge again to conscious
river just within sight
Wild Wood in perspective—
barbaricum outside the gates
the book begins with flight
Mole’s release
up into the world without
yet later that midwinter
tucked in his bunk
he looks round his room
firelight dancing on treasures
(panoply of journeys afar)
& reflects the author’s perspective
in that Grahame’s dreams
were often of a flat
dear and familiar and safe
in the midst of a raucous London
yet carefully sealed away
soft chair by fireside
shelves of his favorite books
a few beloved paintings
always a sense of homecoming
peace and possession
sun and air – adventure and veld
(Seafarer enchantment)
are well and good – vital moreover
for even David Morell
lifted his hero John Rambo
from the first chapter of Pooh v
but an anchoring
(something for to come back) vi
comfort – safety – warmth of hearth
love and unspoiled friendship
are equally of bearing—
for the true sense of hiraeth
exemplified by the families
nestled warmly in their dwellings
that Mole and Ratty spied
on their winter village shortcut
may truly be understood
only by those Grahames
who’ve known so little security
or the Adamses and Milnes
who’ve traveled so far
from the sanctum they’ve known vii
victorian graspers of dogma
& judicious propriety
pushed Alice down a rabbit hole
& the Owl and the Pussycat out to sea
sent Alan Milne to the trenches
& ten million boys to their deaths—
talk of paradise starts
only when something’s been lost
(or in the process thereof)
& in addition to his room
Kenneth often dreamt of Oxford
(a wound that wouldn’t heal)
though he’d avoided it since youth
when he’d floated the Thames—
Port Meadow as merestone
Grahame’s meridian
for past it lay noise and jetsam
motorcar and railroad
dragons’ teeth of oppression
that threatened a landed gentry
(a moribund aristocracy)
factories and steam and combustion
(bearing a building of rooks)
Milne saw the first half of carnage
landscape destroyed by the Western Front
begetting a lost generation
& Adams felt the tractors coming viii
just like in Fiver’s dream—
so he left for the second war
saw the promised peace of industry
turn systematic genocide
nature red in tooth and claw
(fifty-six million dead this time)
thus had Sutch & Martin
taken care to plug the holes
before gassing Sandleford Warren
fantasy as bastion – canton
of both venture and security
assuagement in both
the contemplative or active life
in sinusoidal equity—
anthropos and mythos
each giving way to the other
meden again – escape from the other
each again the soul of the other
Alastair Grahame remained aloft
never withdrew underground
(just like Mr Toad)
nor was the surface a place for either—
for on a spring evening in ’20
at his father’s beloved Oxford
Alastair walked across Port Meadow
& ended his life on the railway—
Adams was born that next Sunday
(down in Wash Common)
& later on that summer
Christopher Robin was born in Chelsea
& upon his first birthday
was given the bear from Harrods
a map of Africa hung on the wall
when Christopher Robin was six
& he and Pooh would follow the Arabs
from oasis to oasis—
this was the year Milne wrote of his son…
when I was five
I was just alive…
but now I am six
I’m as clever as clever
so I think I’ll be six now
for ever and ever
but Christopher Robin didn’t stay six
Christopher Robin got older
& Christopher Robin went off to war
to escape Christopher Robin
& as a sapper with the 56th
(near the border of Benghazi)
he’d gazed in wonder at baby larks
nested by the husk of a burnt German tank
chorography of life and death
a balance unbecoming
suggestive of Cowslip’s warren
for utopia begs holocaust—
flayrah necessitates blood
upon Christopher’s return
much the Hundred Acre was gone
even the ancient beech
where Owl had kept his home—
he’d arrived sullen anyway
reluctantly finishing Cambridge
began to resent his father
& despise Winnie-the-Pooh
felt the books had stolen his name
leaving little in return—
he drifted from his parents
& Alan by ’55 had written of his son…
I lost him years ago ix
one last time the boy came home
to attend his father’s wake
then never again saw his mother
(not even on her deathbed)
for she’d even taken down his bust
had it buried in the wood
so as to never again see his face
Adams too returned from the war
& also come home changed
he’d had a friend called Paddy
& a major named John Gifford—
together they’d pushed to Arnhem
(Gifford and Adams)
when Paddy was ambushed at Oosterbeek—
Paddy’d grabbed a bren gun
(along with some clips)
dove in a ditch like a kern
knocking out rounds at the Huns—
yelling orders the while
for his men to escape through the woods x
(he’d saved most every man)
& with no known kith nor kin
they buried him there in Gelderland
then auctioned off his few things
on arriving back at Oxford
Adams found that his other mates
neither’d survived the war—
& his heart went with the thousand
he withdrew into domesticity
civil service at Whitchurch
would walk the Hampshire downs
& thinking back to that cart
began contriving a tale
that he’d soon tell his daughters
of a destitute band of rabbits
looking to found a new warren
& he made his friends immortal—
Hazel is John Gifford
& Bigwig’s Paddy Kavanagh
they continue to live with their company
in the pages of Watership Down
so for those of us who are lost
or mired in confusion
let us wander worlds that should be
seek nature for redress
be it literature or riverside
or woodlands of wish-fulfillment
of forestborn childhoods never had
where through life’s troughs
I’ll escape with Rat and Mole
to the reaches of the willowed Thames
retreat to Watership Down
with Hazel and Bigwig and Fiver
& scout the Hundred Acre
with Pooh and Christopher Robin—
come with us should you wish
to that enchanted place
at the top of the forest
where a little boy and his bear
will always be playing
but too let’s not forget that child
mired in excrement
& cringing in terror and pain
in the corner of a cellar—
true – the child is under Omelas
but it’s also beneath that enchanted spot
in the reaches of certain souls
of men like Richard Adams
Kenneth Grahame and A. A. Milne—
lest not we exhaust our nepenthe
& forget the charge of good deeds
i “There was a quiet boy in our reserve battalion, fresh from school; the younger of two sons. We went out to France together to join the same service battalion of the regiment, and on the way over I got to know him a little more closely than was possible before. His elder brother had been killed a few months earlier, and he, as the only remaining child, was rather pathetically dear to his father and mother. Indeed (and you may laugh or cry as you will), they had bought for him an under-garment of chain-mail, such as had been worn in the Middle Ages to guard against unfriendly daggers, and was now sold to over-loving mothers as likely to turn a bayonet-thrust or keep off a stray fragment of shell; as, I suppose, it might have done. He was much embarrassed by this parting gift, and though, true to his promise, he was taking it to France with him, he did not know whether he ought to wear it. I suppose that, being fresh from school, he felt it to be ‘unsporting’; something not quite done; perhaps, even, a little cowardly. His young mind was torn between his promise to his mother and his hatred of the unusual. He asked my advice: charmingly, ingenuously, pathetically. I told him to wear it; and to tell his mother that he was wearing it; and to tell her how safe it made him feel, and how certain of coming back to her. I do not know whether he took my advice. There was other, and perhaps better, council available when we got to our new battalion. Anyway it didn’t matter; for on the evening when we first came within reach of the battle-zone, just as he was settling down to his tea, a crump came over and blew him to pieces…”
~A.A. Milne, Peace with Honour
ii “One does not argue about The Wind in the Willows. The young man gives it to the girl with whom he is in love, and if she does not like it, asks her to return his letters. The older man tries it on his nephew, and alters his will accordingly. The book is a test of character … When you sit down to it, don’t be so ridiculous as to suppose that you are sitting in judgment on my taste, or on the art of Kenneth Grahame. You are merely sitting in judgment on yourself.”
~A.A. Milne, from an introduction to The Wind in the Willows
iii “There was no lack of fairly wealthy (and some really wealthy) families round Newbury. Several of these regularly gave children’s parties, and naturally the family doctor’s children were invited. As I was so much younger than my sister and brother, I used to get asked to different parties, for smaller children – alone. Of course, my father didn’t like the invitations to be refused. If it were Ann’s or Mary’s party this wasn’t so bad, but some of the big parties at wealthy houses, among a crowd of rich children who were mostly strangers, were unnerving – quite as bad as a parachute jump was to prove later. I was socially timid, used to solitary play, and nervously uneasy among the rather reserved and self-possessed boys and girls, well equipped to fulfil the roles expected of upper middle-class children in those days. For the most part I got on badly.
One of these parties was for me the occasion of a genuine Freudian trauma, the origin of a behaviour pattern of cracking under stress which has remained with me all my life: I know it well and can spot it whenever it turns up. This was a big party, given by the parents of a boy I hardly knew (he later kept wicket for Eaton), and it was fancy-dress. I went as a Red Indian, though you could hardly have guessed it. The costume, such as it was, was old and shabby and had been lying in some cupboard since before I was born. It did fit, but what it amounted to was a crumpled jacket and trousers of thin, brown cloth, edged with strips of red and blue canvas. You couldn’t wear it with any swank, which is surly the whole point of fancy dress. I could just about get by in it – and perhaps not even quite that. We hadn’t the money for smart fancy dress.
I knew hardly anybody at the party. Most of the children were a little older than I. There were some splendid costumes. I remember a fairy, with wings and starry wand, to take your breath away. There was also another Red Indian, finely attired, with a tomahawk and a head-dress of coloured feathers half-way down his back. He didn’t speak to me.
After a while we were assembled to watch the Punch and Judy show. I had never seen this before and had no idea what I was in for – a series of brutal and savage murders. I watched in mounting panic. Surely there must be some way out of this? Eventually Punch took the baby, Judy exited and Punch began banging the baby’s head against the side of the box,
That did it. I was quite near the back. I got up and slipped out of the room. I didn’t care where I went, as long as it was away from Mr Punch. No one seemed to have noticed me go, and in the hall there was no one about. I went upstairs, into a long, cool, empty corridor with closed doors on either side. It seemed to me that one would be as good as another. By this time I was in such a state of horror that I had the fancy that it was quite likely that Mr Punch would come and get me. Credo quia impossibile est. I could, of course, have been reasoned out of this, but there was no one to do it. Since then I have seen grown-up people give way to fears as absurd.
I opened a door at random. It was a bedroom, with the bed, head to the wall, aligned just to the left of the hinge side of the door. I got between the bed and the door, and then pulled the door wide, to an obtuse angle, till it touched the bed, thus forming a thin, hollow triangle – door, bed, wall. Here I felt myself in a place of refuge, a place of hiding and protection – a womb, of course, as we have all learned to think since then.
‘Aha!’ I kept murmuring silently to myself. ‘Mr Punch can’t get me here! Mr Punch can’t get me here!’ I had no idea of consequences: I mean, any idea that obviously this couldn’t continue indefinitely. I just felt that where I was, I was safe from Mr Punch. That was enough.
I stayed put and never made a sound. I don’t know why, since the calling voices were kind enough. I suppose my fear had somehow extended to include all the strangers in the house. Also, as I think we all recognize, panics and escapades possess a kind of in-built impetus. It is like being on a roller-coaster. You can’t get off. Someone else has to stop it.
Eventually someone – a lady – came into the room again, swung back the door and found me. They were all far too much relieved to be cross, and also, of course, I was their guest. I can’t remember the rest of the affair, though I remember trying to explain my fear. I think I just rejoined the party, which by now had got on to ‘Nuts in May’, ‘Hunt the Slipper’ and similar harmless activities.
But although I was not to realize it consciously for years, something fundamental and seminal had occurred. A behaviour pattern had formed. It might be described like this. First, I knew and accepted that it was possible for me to be genuinely and in all truth driven beyond the point of endurance by something that evidently didn’t bother other people at all (or perhaps something that they could endure). Secondly, I could get out of this by taking solitary action, involving some sort of retreat into hiding; possibly an actual, physical refuge or else an infantile state (illness, breakdown, etc.). Thirdly, if only I could keep it up, heedless of its effect on my standing or reputation, it would get me out of the situation, whatever it may be.
This, however, didn’t turn into a really bad neurosis. My home was much too supportive for that, my family too kind and understanding and the world too full of exciting, happy things. But it had come to stay; and under any relatively heavy strain, up it has been popping ever since; sometimes controlled and pushed back into its cage, sometimes not. Also, the notion of the enclosed refuge has remained as a permanent fantasy. ‘I’m all right: I’m hiding in here.’"
~Richard Adams, The Day Gone By
iv “He won’t know how to shiver in a week or two,” said Hawkbit, with his mouth full. “I feel so much better for this! I’d follow you anywhere, Hazel. I wasn’t myself in the heather that night. It’s bad when you know you can’t get underground. I hope you understand."
~Richard Adams, Watership Down
v ‘“Oh, help!’ said Pooh, as he dropped ten feet on the branch below him.
‘If only I hadn’t—’ he said, as he bounced twenty feet on to the next branch.
‘You see, what I meant to do’, he explained, as he turned head-over-heels, and crashed on to another branch thirty feet below, ‘what I meant to do—’
‘Of course, it was rather—’ he admitted, as he slithered very quickly through the next six branches.
‘It all comes, I suppose’, he decided, as he said good-bye to the last branch, spun round three times, and flew gracefully into a gorse-bush, ‘it all comes of liking honey so much.’”
~A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh – Chapter One: In Which We Are Introduced to Winnie-the-Pooh and Some Bees, and the Stories Begin
vi “He [Mole] was now in just the frame of mind that the tactful Rat had quietly worked to bring about in him. He saw clearly how plain and simple – how narrow, even – it all was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one’s existence. He did not at all want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to come back to, this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome.”
~Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
vii “Walking at night I like to come upon the lighted windows of a wayside cottage and to feel that behind the curtains is another world, a world founded by four walls, a world of sight. I long to peer through the windows and I know that even the dullest scene within would to me become high drama. I love especially, returning home, to see the lights of my own house shining. So, I am sure, did the astronauts feel returning from the moon travelling through black space toward a waiting world. Soon they will once more be a part of that world. Soon I will be home, part once more of the indoor world of light and warmth. Such is a dark night.”
~Christopher Robin Milne, The Path Through the Trees
viii “So during the summer of 1939 Oakdene, my beloved and life-long home, was put on the market … [It] was sold, a few weeks after the outbreak of the war, to a middle-aged couple called Balfour, who could not have been nicer to deal with or to have as neighbours. Mr Balfour, not to mince words, was a gentleman, of the same family as Arthur Balfour, the Edwardian Prime Minister. He was cultured, friendly, extremely loquacious and a pleasant man to deal with. Mrs Balfour was also pleasant enough, but had her own ideas about what she wanted to do with the property. Now, I personally began to feel one disadvantage of moving to the Thorns’ adjacent cottage: you had to stand by – without a word, of course – and watch what she did. And what she did, principally, was to fell the trees. Oakdene’s three acres contained plenty of trees, and several of these had individuality and had in effect been landmarks in our lives. We knew every tree in the garden, of course. I could draw a map, now. I have never been able to understand Mrs Balfour’s motive in felling the trees, for having felled them she did nothing more to the sites. She felled the three silver birches along the crest of Bull Banks, and she also felled the Spanish chestnut – which made even my brother wince and express regret. Then she dug up the circular rose garden outside the dining-room windows: but she didn’t convert it to something else. She just dug it up and left a mess.”
~Richard Adams, The Day Gone By
ix “Farewell, Papa … ‘Well’, you will tell yourself, ‘it lasted until he was twelve; they grow up and resent our care for them, they form their own ideas, and think ours old-fashioned. It is natural. But oh, to have that little boy again, whom I used to throw up to the sky, his face laughing down into mine … ’”
~A.A. Milne, It’s Too Late Now
x “With a kind of wry envy, Hazel realized that Bigwig was actually looking forward to meeting the Efrafan assault. He knew he could fight and he meant to show it. He was not thinking of anything else. The hopelessness of their chances had no important place in his thoughts. Even the sound of the digging, clearer already, only set him thinking of the best way to sell his life as dearly as he could."
~Richard Adams, Watership Down
Steven Deutsch
At 10
When
it’s very clear
and very cold
my mind makes room
for recollection.
Images
hidden for fifty
years crisp
as that first step
on snow
flash-sealed
by an unearthly freeze.
I’m ten
and my dad and I
have stepped into
the silence
of an iced-in
avenue.
The sycamore limbs
mummified
in sheathes of clear
crystal.
Just for today
I am
the only son
and even
that first stab
of arctic air
is reason
to rejoice.
Heartland
I
Some soft
summer mornings
we’d take
our little lane
west, on what
our parents
once called
a Sunday drive.
Roads here
were built
for horse
and carriage
and meander
like streams
searching for
a lost river.
When at times
the early fog
takes
possession
of the earth,
we drive
more from
memory
than vision—
secure
in our
obscurity.
II.
This morning
the fog
is thick
as Burma-Shave
and I imagine
an invading
army
padding silently
over the ridge
on elephants
and camels
to await
the blooding
of the sun.
But here
in the heartland,
we’ve little
left
to defend.
The young
and the able
long for more
than mastering
the s-curves
down Shawnee Ridge
and $7.50 an hour
at Burger
Den downtown.
They seem to know
from birth
that all our roads
lead only
to somewhere
else.
Brian Fanelli
Dylan Cool
You are rolling thunder,
one hand raised, ready to crash upon guitar strings.
You are Judas plugging in,
blast of chords powerful enough to rumble the stage.
You are the hum of big amps,
leather jacket cool,
the husk of throaty blues,
the jingle jangle of a new arrangement each show.
You are lyrical mash-up,
Pound and Eliot on the Titanic’s deck,
Shakespeare in the alley with pointed shoes and hat.
You are protest, the voice of Hattie Carroll mopping the bar,
before the crack of a cane against her skull.
You are Rubin Carter punching out of a jail cell.
You are I don’t give a fuck,
still strumming over the boos,
a raspy prophecy about changing times.
You are a puff of black gray hair
rising beneath stage lights like a wisp of smoke,
one final chord echoing late into the night.
Another Decade, Another Protest at Courthouse Square
I'm back at a Courthouse Square holding a No War sign,
this time in Scranton instead of West Chester,
this time Iran instead of Iraq.
I still wear punk rocker black like I did in college,
but zip up my coat to hide the fanged gremlin
on my T-shirt once the cameras point and shoot.
This time, I linger in back, like a teenager at a dance,
trying not to be seen, while a fired radio host declares,
Don't roll over! Agitate! Resist!
I want to ask him what he's been doing
since he's been canned and how he pays the bills.
At 18 I seized the mic, jumped on benches,
shouted, No War in Iraq!
I hear the same chants almost twenty years later-
Tell me what democracy looks like!
This is what democracy looks like!
I repeat the No Blood for Oil slogans,
but my voice is barely a whisper,
maybe because I've been through this before,
maybe because I remember March 2003
when snow soaked my Converse sneakers and numbed my toes.
No matter the marches, the songs we sang,
the police barricades that kept us to one side of the street like cattle,
bombs still leveled Baghdad by mid-month.
I watched in my dorm room and remember how shrieking rockets
looked like fireworks I watched with my family.
It's winter again, mid-January, unseasonably warm.
The sun feels good in my hair, on my hands,
holding another cardboard sign while a teen takes the mic,
tells us that he's about to graduate, that he fears escalation.
The tremble in his voice reminds me of myself
at that same moment when the news reported the potential
for armed conflict in a country reduced to headlines.
Maybe I'm there for him, like those professors were there for me,
to let him know that he's not alone and when he looks back,
years later, during another rally for another war, he can remember
we stood there, defiant under that January sun,
our voices taking flight beneath pointed courthouse spires.
Aaron Fischer
Expatriate Elegy
(for Ilya Shifrin)
“Am I understandable?” you’d ask every three or four
sentences. Your English got better with each shot of vodka
I downed, though the only Russian I can remember
from those years — nietzschevo, a drinking song’s loud chorus.
“Nothing, nothing, nothing!” we’d laugh and shout
and knock back another, your two-bedroom crowded
as a communal apartment in Moscow,
expat cab drivers, concert pianist, mournful au pair in brown.
I’m better at elegy than friendship. “Why did you disappear?”
you asked at my wedding. Ten years of expensive talk
and I still don’t have an answer. Now you’re a ghost,
a few telltale gestures growing less palpable each year,
a voice that barely cuts through the static.
Sing with me: Nietzschevo, nietzschevo, nietzschevo.
Moonrise from a Balcony in Brooklyn
for Anna Fischer and Philip Kalmes
Slowly, deliberately as a Kennedy half
magic’d from a silk top hat, the full moon
clears the banked clouds shrouding Staten Island,
where the mob once ran
the world’s biggest garbage dump — Fresh Kills,
that irony surely lost on no one,
the gulls stacked up like air traffic over JFK,
wheedling and crying like penitents.
In this green era the trash heaps and hummocks are lush
as lawns. Whatever light the cloud cover allows
silvers nature walks, bike paths,
the blind for watching shorebirds. But the gulls
are up to the same thuggish tricks year-round:
bullying each other to drop their scraps.
Lust for Life (MGM: 1956)
The crows in the Van Gogh biopic with Kirk Douglas
deserve an Oscar for best supporting actor,
bedeviling and battering Vincent at his last plein-air
landscape. It’s great box office,
but it’s not true. His final work: the serene
Daubigny’s Garden. Violet-bordered flower bed,
violet cat, his friend’s wife framed by a blue-rinsed
stucco wall. Nothing throbs or threatens
to change shape.
No. Van Gogh has to suffer
for painting the wagon ruts through the wheat
apple green, the wind’s yellow and rust shimmer.
The crows flap and jeer on cue. Vincent
scribbles a few black glyphs on the canvas, staggers
from the easel and puts a bullet in his gut.
Guide to New Jersey
Archetypal East Coast suburb, without the obsessive
planning that makes Levittown look like a printed-
circuit board from the air. Meat-and-potatoes
architecture — low-slung ranches, split-levels perched
above a garage, a few fanciful, steep-gabled Tudors
fit for a bird watcher or small-time Mafiosi,
north Jersey’s favorite sons. Each week, the bucket loaders
tear down a few more, reclaiming the property
for million-dollar McMansions, starter castles
with balustrades borrowed from a Venetian palazzo,
Endura-Stone columns flanking the entrance —
bad taste on a grander scale than the houses
they supplant — mortgaged, silent-majority brick. Only
their vanishing made them worth a second glance.
Night Piece: New Jersey
This far north there’s not much
dark, where the state’s broken flint
arrowhead would be fitted
to the haft, where
acres of refineries glare
like small cities on
the horizon, joined
by the turnpike’s
dazzling river, flare stacks
topped with flame — cobalt,
yolk, white, depending on the crude
being processed. After
the last customer
goes home, the one who lost
her keys and had to call
an Uber, after the night
crew stows the burnisher,
the walk-behind waxer
in the van, the mall
parking lot is shadowless
as a prison yard. Jersey’s
famed barns glow and glitter
all night — Pottery, Tool,
Dress, Candy, Bed, Furniture,
Music — gaudy boxes of
brilliants. And cobra-
hooded security lights buzz
and flicker, flicker and burn
blue-green outside Whole
Foods and Costco, alchemical
fires doubled in the emergency
doors, while diners serve
breakfast round the clock,
the Tick Tock and Times
Square, counters gleaming,
spoons lying on their backs
at the Alibi, bright teardrops
at the bottom of their bowls
that could pass for stars,
if we could see the stars.
Kara Goughnour
Twenty-Four and, Humbly, Bored
It's noon on a Monday and the winds
are nothing short of monstrous,
the whole world a car-crash swirling,
exhaustion the last thing left on our tab.
To the world, we still owe everything,
still need to lay our humble backs
to mattress a hundred times.
To this world, we are still young things,
opting for every option,
peeling away the searing pain
of teenage grieving.
To the world, we are deserving of nothing,
not a breath we don't pull into our own lungs,
not a gust of belief to sweep our doubt away.
Using Chairs as Tables
Build my dried blood into
a new deck, string candles
above like garland made
of day stars dying in the brightness
of astronomical twilight.
Jump from the cityscape
of the snakeplant’s cross-banded erectiles,
buy my cherry casket from Costco
and bury me in the terrarium hanging
in the glazed window pane.
Craft a toe-pinching tiny home
from the blotting coffin clot
of my bit lip, rip out
every ripened lie and hang it
with the dried lavender to keep.
Using the Wendy’s Takeout Window as a Confessional Booth
I am oval sea-palms
sloped forests the length of secrets
{living in leaves}
licked wild —
my disdain sand-colored,
fine hairs beating,
soft swell of root.
My slouching, sea-dark
shadows tapped and steeping,
back stuck with meat hooks
{arranged oval}
like subjects awaiting benediction
like psalms claimed seduction.
Pat Hanahoe-Dosch
What I Know About Death
The dead rise
suck marrow from our bones
own the seconds after a light is turned out
peel our dreams from our nights
like hunters skinning rabbits
exhale through air conditioning vents
and heat exhaust condense into steam rising
from radiators and windows
even roil in slips of fog on a road at sunrise
burst through the dirt of early spring
as the first coils of tulips rising
filter the sun's glare in windows
drip a full moon's glaze over the ocean
rippling and beckoning in the waves' shimmer
They reach through our mirrors
unfurl their claws deep in our lungs
Nels Hanson
Day to Day
At the four horizons low
clouds edged with light
say gently rain is coming.
The wind blows from West
to East and all fallen leaves
fly for the high mountains.
Tule ponds held luminous
fish where deep vineyards,
flowering almonds grow.
At dusk the Coast Range,
soft outline of a woman
dreaming of sea flowers.
Summers sky draws close
and many stars fall from
the watching Milky Way.
As we sleep the waters
in the brimming cistern
capture a passing moon.
Marilyn Humbert
Shadows of Troy
take me back
to Scamander Plain
the ramparts of sloping stone
back to the barrenness
where Hector’s ghost wanders
below Troy’s scarred walls
and to the shallows
between bones of black galleys
beached on the pebble-shore
let me walk
with shadows of soldiers
silver blades gleaming
in the ruins of Troy
your hand brushes mine
my own brave Hector
chasing our dreams
we found love
near the Dardanelles
Alex MacConochie
Wasp Nest
No nest, a momentary festival
And hum: woodchuck’s body splayed in yellow grass,
Length of a nine-year-old’s hesitant, purple
Shadow distant, one ragged paw and the clotted slick fur,
Headless, flies fizzing at its neck, a blood
Dark bloodless hole the gleaming trap
Frames and mommy, why? Split-rotten peach
Thick with wasps and her warning, don’t
Disturb them. And the madly sweet marigolds
Nod, the rusted blue school bus, a tractor
Whirs in the fallow field and it’s because
The groundhogs want to eat his crops, you know.
We grew up in different regions, call the dead
Thing different names. Great-uncle Sal
Still shakes his head at the kitchen table, white beard
Pulling his chin down, smile gentle but the land
Although some young men work it for him, rent it
From him, even across the highway there (a liver
Spotted querulous jab out the wrong
Window) still his despite the pests he… green
Blank, township soccer and lacrosse fields, now.
Assyrian Panels
1
The lion’s body flows from bar to bar
Extending to be shown contained. Its brother,
Hunted in the gypsum field, shrinks down
To extinction behind a sun-flare mane
And Ashurbanipal, the mighty, magnifies
His power in the power that he keeps at bay
You explain and add: of course it’s been so long
Since I learned all this. I love you when you show me
How you look at things. The words expand my throat,
They hammer at my teeth. I say that’s really cool.
2
The placard calls them winged genii,
Antediluvian sages. A palace door’s
Tall guardians, long scoured clean of paint, with chain
-mail beards and squared-off bodies, planted toes
In low relief. Do I love them for surviving us?
One akpallu brandishes a tasseled mace. The other
Carries his bucket through the garden, touching
Some small device to each open flower. They knew
The finicky, slow task of brushing pollen
Onto pistils takes as great a strength as war.
3
This is my hometown, this is the place
Where I first understood, I thought,
What it really means to look.
Come back, and tucked away between
The fountain and men’s room, one mended
Figure kneels at a sacred tree. Brought out
From Nineveh where, a sign explains,
Iconoclasts would break this sutured image
Of desire if they could. Every fall the storm
Surge rises higher, lapping up the shallow steps
Of the waterfront museum. And where do we spend
Our time and attention, hurting impulse to adore?
Warm light nestles in his pinions and the fountain
Gurgles and clangs when I stoop for a drink.
Bruce McRae
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon
Immortal amaranthine.
Heraldic sable and azure.
Sea-green cerulean.
Mercurial cinnabar.
Flavescent yellow.
Madder yellow,
known as English pink,
that tints medieval manuscripts,
a fugitive colour
made from berries
of the buckthorn bush.
An obsolete colour,
of which the old were fond,
replaced by lightfast dyes.
Made in factories
and opposed to nature.
Such Is Fate
As if a scribble
in a tattered notebook –
that’s who I am.
An odd sock
in predestiny’s bottom drawer.
The goofy-looking kid
wearing broken glasses.
A stolen baby
left on a snowy shore
one Christmas morning.
Found among the bulrushes,
the prince of Nowhere,
a woolen cap my crown.
This pen my golden scepter.
Tom Montag
Three poems from The Woman in an Imaginary Painting
The guard says,
"Do not touch."
Does he mean
the painting
or the woman
in it? He
doesn't say.
I step into
that opening.
*
The light reveals,
but does not speak.
Pigment colors her
skin, but doesn't
share what's within.
The hard line
divides, as it
always does, and
leaves us right
and left. The curves
which shape her
shape our
hope for her.
*
She does not wish
to be made
something of.
The glow of this
moment flecks
her hair with gold-
dust, her eyes with
sky. The soft curves
of this, now of
that, are enough.
If she could
she would sigh.
Mary K. O’Melveny
Lifting Cosmic Veils
At the end of January 2020, NASA ended the work of its Spitzer Space Telescope after sixteen years of receiving images of stars, planets, galaxies and other celestial wonders from its telescope. Using infrared instruments, the telescope operated like night vision goggles, sensing heat radiating from celestial objects. Among its discoveries was that of nebulae IC417, known as “The Spider and the Fly,” several earth-like planets in the Trappist-1 planetary system and the Pinwheel galaxy. The Washington Post, February 4, 2020, E2: “NASA Shuts Down Spitzer Telescope.
I’ve got my eyes on you.
I peered in where no one
has traveled. I stared through
yesterday’s combustions.
The cosmos teases us.
So much history there.
Some of it displeases us—
its violent atmosphere—
but most vistas amaze.
We were watching our past
twist, tease, flicker and blaze.
An artist’s canvas so vast
generations will not
comprehend its visions
until they’re an afterthought.
I’ve recorded collisions
that no one remembered,
seen inside of dust storms,
tracked stars that resembled
spiders and their prey, forms
of fury and feral
interplay that could stop
armies, turn atoms sterile,
cause volcanos to pop
and oceans to appear
where only sand had thrived.
Now no one wants to hear
these tales, see what survived.
My infrared travels
charted new asteroids,
saw planets unraveled,
found pinwheels inside voids.
Maybe you knew my worth,
the truths that I could tell
as I drifted past earth.
Knew it does not end well.
Simon Perchik
(3 poems)
*
You still use rain, breathe in
till your mouth is full
–you can’t jump clear, grow huge
on a sky that has no holes, no Earth
–what did you say, what words
were helped along, holding on to the others
all the way down, facing the sun
though who knows where this thirst
first as ashes, now your own
is kept warm for the whispers
not needed anymore –only rain
as necessary as bending down
comes this close and your voice
more and more feeble, bathes you
lowers you, covers you.
*
You button from the bottom
let these sleeves take hold
reaching across as the silence
that’s used to an old army shirt
slowing your descent into skies
unable to open again though your arms
are already huge, half silk
half the first evening on Earth
–you never see the ground
not because the room is dark
or when was the last time
you circled between your fingers
a single thread that is not white
could pull you back into nothing
nothing! nothing! the nothing
you hear alongside the others
tightening the fit till even the mornings
depend on darkness and cries.
*
What did they underline, first to last
these skid marks never had the time
though nothing you need remains
–the road is used to it, paved
the way rock climbers test for pain
and each handhold eases in more dirt
as if the chalk comes in black
erupts from some invisible callus
that only wants things to move
are important –you blame the Earth
and in its place your arms
for miles with no one left to find.
Claire Scott
Survival
What would happen if we decided to survive more?
from “Dead Stars” by Ada Limon
I have been wondering what
is the message from dead stars would
we want to know what would happen
if we could know could hear if
we could really listen if we
wanted to learn the language decided
to study the stars the seas the earth to
embrace each sentient being in other words to survive
more fully more lovingly more happily more
The Accident
And he knew it was over
not the screeching tires, the sirens, the ER
they would be with him forever
not the TBI, the torqued body, the missing memory
they would last a lifetime
what was over was acting, playing Austin
in True West to a sold out audience in Chicago
what was over were rave reviews in the Tribune
calling his performance sensitive and powerful
what was over was the high after a show
and the desire to do it all again
he took the play out back along with a six pack
and page by page he ripped and shredded and screamed
until the lawn was covered in words
he would never speak
Getting Away With Murder: A Ted Talk
Over fifty percent of murders go unsolved
(e.g. the Smiley Face Killer, Cheerleader
in the Trunk, the Servant Girl Annihilator)
that’s an even bet if you are thinking about it
perhaps considering your Uncle Seth whose
will leaves you a cool million or your neighbor Edna
who lets her dogs use your lawn instead of hers
Only twenty-two percent of trials end
with a conviction on all charges, so maybe
you would be convicted of involuntary manslaughter
which carries a significantly lighter sentence
certainly no lethal injection, swinging noose or firing squad
maybe a few short years with three squares a day
probably worth it to get rid of your calamitous boss
Or you could lure your intended victim to St. Louis,
the city with the highest murder rate in the US
the police so overburdened no one will be assigned to your case
simply offer your Ex a free ticket and a flyer describing
Gateway Arch National Park or Missouri Botanical Garden
where you can meet him with a syringe of Cyanide
that will cause his heinous heart to finally flutter off
Just so you know
Ted Talk delivered by James K. Butcher on June 23, 2020
Barry Seiler
Basic Skills
Up from Ecuador,
Age six, they put him
To work pushing racks
Of designer jeans
In a factory on
The outskirts of Hoboken.
The way he leaned
Into those racks,
He writes, stunted his growth.
He is here to learn
The basic skills. I ask
For five hundred words
Responding to a prompt
Sent by a friend
On the back of a postcard
Of Kafka’s face: Of what
Should a man be properly proud?
His essay reveals deep
Structural flaws,
An inability to link evidence
To ideas, telling errors of expression.
For example: he concludes his essay
By writing: Each week
They gave me dollars and change,
Whatever they liked.
They said They were
Paying me from the books,
From pity cash.
A Late Century Poem
I hear the voice
of Whitman on Napster
Reading a fragment of “America.”
Something about
The adamant of time.
It dawns on me:
What is a dooryard?
It’s late for poetry—
But still—
People go about their business.
They make a living
When they can,
As they can.
The street cleaners sweep
Down the empty streets:
East to the Hudson,
West to the Emergency.
I hear the song of glass on lid
Under my window
As someone lifts the empties
For spare change.
Poetry Class
Stephen Stepanchev, 1915-2017
Once the airplane is off the ground,
You taught us,
You don’t need the runway.
And so I cut, cut, cut
To keep myself aloft.
Years later I learned I could add.
All I needed was a simple conjunction
Now and then to keep the lines moving.
And so it has been: cut and add,
Add and cut until I’ve had enough.
You can make a life of that.
David Spicer
Our Sunday Drives
My sister, brother, and I stayed quiet as the dead possums
on the South Dakota highway while my father yelled
at the windshield, That bald-headed bastard cut me off!
My mother said, grinning, Judge not lest ye be judged.
After church my father drove up and down the roads
in one of the many dying cars he had owned, the three of us
waiting for the moment he’d speed up hills—laughing,
hands off the wheel—then down, as our stomachs rushed
to our throats. For a couple of years we’d look forward
to jumping into the junker, going a different way
than the week before. We always hoped, before heading
back home, he’d stop at the hamburger shack on the outskirts
of the forgotten-name town, where my parents shared a dime
hot dog and we licked our own grape, cherry, or lime lollipop.
Tim Suermondt
Du Fu Was Right
I set myself some tasks
and I finished every one—
the satisfaction, however,
was disappointing, not nearly
as grand as I had imagined.
Later, I set myself more tasks,
finishing not a one—
and how remarkable I felt.
“I’ve never seen you so happy,”
my neighbor said. “What happened?”
“Nothing, nothing, nothing…”
those nothings rolling off my tongue
like lyrics of a hit Broadway show
or a soundtrack of a part of Paradise—
maybe, maybe both, dancing.
What We All Think
Never comes to exact fruition—
sometimes we do come close, sometimes
we don’t come anywhere near
and it can all be gloomy black and white
like Weimar, despite every street adorned
with dance halls and jugs of beer.
But when a woman on the boulevard waves
to you, even if she meant the gesture
for someone else, you can’t help but think
everything, everything will be wonderous
now and—in that moment—be forgiven
for ignoring the men in half shadows
who carry torches and howl like wolves.
Casablanca
Birds fly from the eucalyptus trees
in the hills over the Hassan Mosque
and the modern buildings of business,
smattering of Art Deco to spice things up
and the swabbed sun bathing the port.
Along the quay rappers are performing,
getting the attention of the birds who stop
in mid-air to listen, flying down as close
to the crowd as they dare, flapping
their wings to the beat, the shovel of words.
Wasting Time on a Winter’s Day
I won’t be needed for a while—
empires will still rise and fall without me.
Simmering soup and sitting with my wife
on the couch, watching geese in the white
misted air fly by the window—sloth
of the most beautiful kind. Forecasters
say it might be a long winter. Good.
Reed Venrick
Water Without Borders
Why deny the will of the water? Soft,
Hard, salty, even when our scientific
Time measures lifelines. Do dive
The rainbow reefs miles offshore, only
Winds and waves beyond, where storms
Are birthed inside concentric mandalas
Of turbulence and seasons of soaked calendars,
Hundred year flood plains forecast seas filling
Salt marshes, while lilies sprout in abandoned
Trash and garbage on the trails of jogging
Paths. When blown-down royal palms
Are the only shade on earth, all along
The no-exit Gulf, where the frond limb hangs
Limp and long across the exhausted swing
Of changing winds, and when the twist of a invisible wrist
Turns the water on, crushing condos of Miami,
Where streets turn to sewer lines, and once
Paved I-95 now a canal running an artery
Out to sea to fill the spirals inside Nautilus
Shells. No—we don’t know the schedules
Of the flighty fates, but we know the waters
And tsunamis wait for no human kind, and when
The invisible hand, and the nautilus mind decides
It’s time, the seas of salinity and sublimity will submerge
Not just pines and fishtail palms, but mountains
Inside oceans higher than Everest, and when
The tidelines vanish, and all oceans of the world
Join to become one, we remember the waves rising
Above the last lone palm on a Sahara dune,
So that the beginning of the end may begin again.
Nuit Blanche
Asleep too soon, awake too early,
A nightmare in a holding pattern,
Speaking with Saint Exupery, my co-
Pilot mind—the night is timeless in odd, so
Switch eyes side to side, and unlike
the frantic-change-driven day, you know
This perfection of existence between
Three and four a.m., but the deadly “swishing”
Noise of a fighter early above this island key,
Diving into the inky night, they’ll be over
The Bahamas before I return from the bathroom—
When a breeze jolts my windows, and while
I twist inside the window frame far-away,
I feel the chill fog of dawn creeping in, like
A glades panther, where I lie near the exit
Of this world, connected still to the roll of ailerons,
Yet the shocking knocking that bangs my ear,
Just when I’m I’m drifting off, again,
Clinging to a broken cable, slicing my leg raw,
The silence roaring and blood in my mouth,
A mumble to the careless gods in the clouds,
But only the flashing back to a stall, and
And a sudden spinning fall, nose down like
A nightmare scream—again, what might have
Been and how in time to fill horizontal
Spaces, a lost space to redeem, and
A time warp caught me supine at 3 a.m.
No, I do not remember the path I took
After the aircraft slipped into auto-pilot,
And now, though I forget where I am,
I see I recline on the leeward side, glancing
At my compass once, twice, thrice—true north
Keeps me straight—after all I shifted into
Another plane-line in that crash many years
Ago, and yet between 3 and 4 a.m., I am still
Here in my hammock—hanging on the horizon line.
Erin Wilson
Drift
Wind and the power of wind.
Wind over fields of snow
and wind off fields of snow.
Wind picking up
and drying every particle of snow
every second and blowing snow,
except wind a thousand thousand times wind
drying a thousand grains every second
and casting them across the road.
Wind and the casting of snow obliterating the road
except for the wolf prints I now follow.
Scarf up over my nose. Hat down over my brow.
Only my nose hazards forward before my body,
my gaze but a gash,
narrowly restricted.
I walk through snow.
The claws of the wolf tracks proceed
in the same direction.
Danger, this wolf? Hardly.
One hour ago you fashioned me,
viscous honey.
You rolled me on the marver.
You put your mouth to me,
pulled me into a long ribbon.
Blue and white glass.
One hour ago your heat — elongation.
Blue and white glass.
One hour ago, fusion.
The most elegant of fluted glass.
And then — shatter.
Once we recovered we managed dumbly,
two dunderheads, a duo of dullards,
to wind our mouths once again
around language, the throat's bottle.
What now, someone asked.
Now we blow, now we blow apart
continuously continuously
we blow apart and apart
and away like snow.
In Concert
I'm crossing
the bridge
as they swoop
by me
in tandem,
the first two
spring geese.
There is
still ice
along the river,
but the black vein,
whether
I see it move
or not,
is maneuvering
up the centre,
fluid.
I was in a bad mood
before I saw the geese,
was feeling
the effects of
the annihilation
that inhabits one's soul,
tail-end of every winter,
before the first green thing
invigorates.
But these geese,
they gyre in on
winds
that can't be seen,
and they turn,
winding
themselves
in utter concert
toward the river,
curving,
correcting
and arching more,
bewitched arrows
bent to strike
the target
of this spinning world.
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