Jun '04 [Home] Poetry Feature Sharing Space with Light

.

.

.

Early April: War Funeral in the Heartland ~ Jeffrey Alfier | Collapsed ~ Ryan Anderson | The Stunt Double in Winter ~ Robyn Art | My Father Speaks ~ E. Louise Beach | Wood Delivery ~ Ariele Brooke | Railroads ~ Leticia Escamilla Coward |Our Goal Is to Lend an Aura of Authenticity to the Home ~ Sharon Doyle | Keats, A Hard Sensation ~ Joseph Hart | Hemingway House, Key West ~ Matthew S. LaPierre | The Trickster ~ Joey Nicoletti | D183 ~ Simon Perchik | Early Colonials ~ Sjanna Solum | Mallory ~ Matthew Spireng | The Two ~ Arlene Tribbia | The House Wren ~ Marlene Vidibor Contributor Notes Image: Full-sky map of the oldest light in the universe. Colors indicate "warmer" (red) and "cooler" (blue) spots. The oval shape is a projection to display the whole sky similar to the way the globe of the earth can be represented. Article ~ . ~ Early April: War Funeral in the Heartland Jeffrey Alfier The blue shroud trimming his shiny coffin and your black dress are brushed by a spring breeze that finds your eyes downcast like Andromache, when she saw the future of her city dragged behind a chariot of madness. Some other headstone in the field reads 'Bach,' but who would think that Leipzig cantatas could distill your incoherence of tears when stock futures are up, oil prices down, and the conquered cities drift with looters? ~ . ~ Collapsed Ryan Anderson Collapsed under the thought of one's final certainty as all those passing shall contemplate in bathroom mirrors deep evaluations of the eyes carefully calculating our souls from the lines on our faces into some big scheme of things reflective of decay and ideas — washing over the old to return back the new organized patterns of change constantly moving through what I thought was obvious to tell from a dream but now find it's not as easy to argue one and defend another drifting through some vortex thinkin' about Hume or Buddhism across green scenic surrealism in some car speechless — through the blurry night hours of midnight arguing drunk possibilities in your head convinced women were tempting you with deadly pleasures to trade in love for this babylon fooled to think quick fulfillments were happiness and people were just ornaments — so I left the abstraction of spaces between entangled canvases of trees and lamp post horizons painting stars with collages of radiant white skyscrapers a mess of wires jumbled with roads diving and swerving up and down steep oily valleys of thought rearranging with sentences returning home to the dreary afternoon of deep grays and pale white — the city in the rear view drifting from the green pine along black tar highways scattering nests of trees across fields harvested in the pearl moon motel sign where my days were recorded by the miles between gas stations 'til finally at rest home on the porch gazing off into the distance of frozen carnival lights in the blood red dawn spilling out onto clouds like wine upon trees lining boulevards in perfect rows tamed by the mower — tiny holocausts against flowers where the buzzing of machinery can be heard for miles out here in the country rising like insects devouring the suburbs, leaving only our abandoned cars along the sides of green mossy highways. ~ . ~ The Stunt Double in Winter Robyn Art Because it has been without solace for some time now it has honed its multivalent wants to a scarce and thrifty few: A solid chair; a finer margin to its days. It can remember taking a lover of sorts, long long ago, though it feels itself to be singularly alone and this it concurs with some relish. Oh, it used to know so many things — the principal exports of Guam, how best to collect the dew. Here it putters around the domicile with its view of the chemical plant, recalling its glory days in the capital, its blacked-out, dopey fumblings in rooms beyond repair, that time when it was held beneath the ruinous mantle of dusk. Because it was once one of us, it has a working knowledge of physics, knows to lean into the fall and cover its head against the blast, erstwhile it knows what it is, to you all it bids a fond adieu— a bush in which birds are singing, a window streaked in ash. ~ . ~ My Father Speaks E. Louise Beach Oracle is another word for moonlight through the trees. His moon. Our moon. For years, he held it for me in his hands, blew it out in a final breath. Darkness is a thick, black thing. Dreams filter half-slant through the slats of my sleep. In and out. Light and shade. He says, "I am a stone." He says, "I live in a meadow of grass and stars." Earth is but a scruple of sand. Heartbreak of longing, your truth is a lament. Late night in winter, winds low like cattle in the fields. Coyotes moan. And ice is a silver sliver. Beam over beam, I fall through the center of the well, tumble through silent night, crash through his reflection on frozen water. ~ . ~ Wood Delivery Ariele Brooke for the hearth the truck bed is emptied little by little from the steps and muscles of the male hands and the female hands their arms weighted with long sharp narrow pieces and heavy dense oak cut to the size of her woodstove split logs of maple and ash sleek on one side rough on the rest like men she starts to fill the rectangular frame next to the front door while he stacks wood against the shed she adds five pieces at a time to the round ring on the patio then he helps her fill up the rectangular frame he earlier insisted on filling himself but she told him that California friend once said, "carrying wood is fun" since then for her it has been so even in the cold a wicked wind bears down impersonal still they stack in the dark with only porch light and Christmas twinkling lights around the doorway and a lighted angel until the truck is done and the two closest to the hearth are filled this makes a warm welcome a cozy bed prosperity in bleak winter at least for one more month ~ . ~ Railroads Leticia Escamilla Coward Railroads. Broken alleys. The hitchhiker. The bridge to the city. The highway deciding everything. ~ . ~ Our Goal is to Lend an Aura of Authenticity to the Home Sharon Doyle A special rusted finish can be applied to give your walls that timeworn look. Then try for a cluttered coziness. (It's just too hard to adhere to that clean line Feng Shui theory, don't you think?) A perky gingham for the sofa, red and white perhaps, and some thistles patterned on pale green pillows; a small plant here or there but not the ones 'they' all grow, and not the tropical ones that look so gaudy outside Hawaii, and also not cactus (bad vibes indoors). Exactly off center on a prism table stand a French sapphire soup tureen with matching Tiffany ladle, and four egg creme glasses flown in all the way from the Bronx. Or, for a successful exercise in monochromatic composition, you might want to do it all in gray, don't you think? ~ . ~ Keats, a Hard Sensation Joseph Hart I was sitting at a table With my forearm on the surface; And I saw the objects near me, And I felt the things I saw. The typewriter was blue And with nausea and love I saw it; and the table, Square, impermeable, hard. The flowers on the table, I the living room, the sofa, And the windows, and the edge of The piano in the room I saw, and felt in sensing. In this consciousness, contentment; And I heard the traffic passing Out of doors, and it was evening So as usual the cars Seemed to make a sound of darkness. Then I saw A photograph of Keats on the edge of the piano And it was a hard sensation Unresembling all the others; In a sense, another thing. For the photograph had meaning That was personal to me. And for a moment I believed that I Would rather see the paper That the photograph had come in, Sent from London long ago. ~ . ~ Hemingway House, Key West Matthew S. LaPierre Cats siesta on the veranda like Pamplona revelers. The house is a few steps from the southermost point of the United States, mile zero on Route One, but is cooled by an ocean breeze easier on a hangover than a Bloody Mary. Each wall has photographs: Hemingway holds the skulls of two kudos with curled horns, Hemingway and Dos Passos compare tarpon, Hemingway stands next to a marlin larger than the fish Santiago fought. Out the back door, past the first swimming pool on Key West and a garden where beloved cats are buried, are the stairs up to Hemingway's office. There's an onyx head on the wall, woven baskets, African drums, wall-to-wall broken-spined books. On the writing table: more books, a deep sea fishing reel, and the typewriter, black and heavy as a wildebeest's head. ~ . ~ The Trickster Joey Nicoletti I used to see him in my sleep: the round mouth, drinking oleanders from a goblet of smoke. Whenever I lost something, I blamed him — Chuck Mooney's Tomb of Dracula action figure, Grandpa Joe's magnetic Bingo chips, my broken-spined catechism book. But this morning as I check my pockets for keys I hear his laughter falling in drips from the showerhead. His fishing hat lolls in the bird bath outside the curtainless window — my lips curl as if I were passing a kidney stone. ~ . ~ D183 Simon Perchik Disguised as mountainside — all wing though the sky can't let go and all evening updraft — the sun thins out becomes red then black dead on the ground, choked as every climb is made from dirt keeps its hold till the air takes root and you drift without moving or water — you hound this darkness by mining it arm over arm and around each stone your arms held in picking up speed — the sun dangling from your teeth and the distance that has forgotten how. ~ . ~ Early Colonials Sjanna Solum New Englanders had knowledge to espouse Pure beauty in the building of a house. In planning, they took time to pause and study Just where the rising sun, rotund and ruddy, Would cast pink light on clapboard walls, and west: What windowpanes sunset would gild the best. In planting trees about a house, just how The winter sun might stencil naked bough Upon white walls, they did not care nor heed — But planted for the shade of summer's need, And yet an artist's sure, unhesitant hand Would make no changes in the way they planned. ~ . ~ Mallory Matthew Spireng They will find me, frozen, unable even now to move but this little, ankles crossed to ease the pain, arms stretched out as I try to drag myself back from where I've fallen in the dark, rope broken, Sandy calling out as he falls away. But will they know what we have done, will they find the camera that shows — or might if it has not broken? Can I tell them, here alone in the dark on this coldest of mountains with no way to move but this little? Or is it just in my mind? Have I moved at all, or is it that strangeness of thought that beset us giving illusion its sway? Will they know when they find me if I found the way? ~ . ~ The Two Arlene Tribbia I've seen them twice on my way home in the night's soft middle holding at the dark edges of the road, bushes and trees I believe they are two, brother and sister, so sweet and slender and new yet to slippery nights I see them again: the deer hover inside the lit headlights of my car watching with innocent eyes my heavy car on the road home and I wish they know togetherness always for I know what it is to lose a brother to the light ~ . ~ The House Wren Marlene Vidibor Au jardin de mon père Les lauries sont fleuris Tous les oiseaux du monde Vont y faire leur nids (French Country Song) Awake, I ponder sleep In dawn's earliest light Awaiting those first notes Warbling clearly close by my window As I seek the color of plumage Which eludes my peering eyes The song is delicacy defined Where could such a bell perch At dusk I bathe in the afterglow of day The sweat of gardening cleansing my pores My dogs lie at my feet Dreaming chipmunk trails and squirrel holes A twitch in the cherry tree turns my head The wren's foothold Sways the closeby branch While dulcet winds emit chimes The wren is singing, his throat bursting into a trebly tremble at every verse of his song Singing his heart out for procreation Singing his heart out for building a home Singing his heart out for the time of year to sing one's heart out. On the morrow he takes her to visit A small bird house just right In the midst of a white lilac They enter and exit He perches and sings Twigs appear in his beak They enter and exit, more twigs in their beaks But no, the nest is not to her liking, perhaps too close to the ground One day he enters a feeder He exits and sings He enters and eats Twigs appear in his beak again He enters the feeder No longer eating He is sprucing up the feeder for eggs Feeder turned furnished room Alas the other birds prove to be a noisy and nosy lot This nest is too close to their dining room Finally flying upward He discovers a chink in the siding of our castle A knothole in the knotty pine timber High above the din of deck High above the dining birds High above the mower and glowering dogs Under a clear view of the southern sky The third nest is built He perches and sings Home at last In the early dawn, landing Atop our bedroom's open French window His gift is revealed once again The gift of pure tone of a tuning fork He sings of his happiness Their fruitfulness Their contentment And ours ~ . ~ . ~