You would recognize this:
how the zigzag wind snaps each suspended leaf
into gorgeous violence. From the threshold
of wicker chairs we let those tremulous parts
of ourselves shimmer and float, dusk the complexion
of my lost sister's face. Know ten things but tell
only nine, the Taoists like to say. Because they must
our labs push the wet-triangles of their snouts
through a snarl of vetch. Sudden charity, the calculated
strike -- if pressed I would argue against the idea
of deciding what we trusted, even though it failed us,
is altogether wrong. To the north a hawk circles
and uncircles. Feed corn awaits the next thunderburst.
Like you, we're mostly exhausted, somnambulists
without legs. Hours slump and fall away. Pressed apples
won't preserve a lake yet we drink on the chance
of orchards in the throat. Another leaf, another
scent the faithful can pursue. Across the road
and over the hill come the muffled shouts
of parents, their cleated daughters. What follows
is something like the rapture of aloneness,
so many alabaster begging bowls held out to the sun.


~ . ~

Ash
Eamon Grennan

Silence, the grave neat and tidy for once. Later,
a glass of Powers in the bar, sitting with absence.

Blue aster, he says, yellow rattle, thyme, trefoil, sea strife --
to fill the gap. Hearing the unleashed whistle of an oystercatcher,
ears a funnel for whispers and claspings, salt rumors,
depth-charges to where light has winged the skin
of her wrist: Deep breath now, she says, now go under.

Resting on a bench beside the dead boy's willow,
he hears the ice crack -- thump of a heart turning on itself
and stopping. Under her tongue he imagines taking
the temperature of the soul -- where it lurks in some
honeycomb corner, tiny and final as a full stop.

But to live in exile from that breath, all those
rowdy instruments of joy dumbed at once: two faces
fleeing from the mirrorglass.

Birdshaped -- the colour of turquoise and smoky topaz
and grainy with burial abrasions -- this
miniature bottle blown to hold Roman perfume
had to be broken for use, perishable and everlasting.

And only this morning her words
were after-images on the ghost of ash, as near to nothing
as you could imagine -- till a light gust out of nowhere
ruffled suddenly the remains of what remained
of them, and blew every last trace, maybe, away.


~ . ~

A Phrase from Homer
Glenn Shea

And at the end, before he died,
what struck him, last
of his mortal thoughts, was the phrase
he'd read in Homer, the warrior
with his throat pierced
by a spear: "And his eyes then
filled with darkness." The tide
of black, the old poet precise
about even that. Then the darknesses
behind him and before him met,
and he was gone.


~ . ~

The Odds of Winning at Love
Aren't in Your Favor
Christine Delea

Lots of things in life are easy, like getting hit by a train.
The boys of my youth did it all the time. Too much beer or grass,

too much bravado or dare, and the commuter trains rushing by
every twenty minutes. No need, even, for luck.

Or birds singing. We hear them and easily add metaphors,
personify the high-pitched tones they instinctively make

to communicate our own desires. These days, even getting rich
is simple. And staying alive? A snap. Things that routinely

used to kill people in the past are now routinely dispatched.
We have become efficient, but I can tell you what is difficult.

Leaving the shower when the water is just right, when the steam
has become so heavy on the wall tiles that it drips

into puddles on the floor and the mat. The stall has become crowded
with every ex-lover, not touching you, barely breathing,

just hanging onto the faucets and soap shelves, watching you,
wondering what you'll do next -- which shampoo you'll choose,

which song you'll sing, and when you will decide to leave the water
and face your current life, the one they aren't a part of.


~ . ~

Directions
Michael T. Young

Beside me on the train a man is reading in Chinese.
He turns the pages from left to right,
skimming characters from right to left, and top to bottom.
I read in the opposite direction, in English,
observing how our contrary motions
mirror each other's gestures of comprehension.
Our heads tilt in a slow nod or shake;
our eyes cross figures in the air
writing a tenuous language that seems to say
there is no backward or forward,
no behind or ahead, only movement
from character to character, from stop to stop,
in books, on trains, in memory -- a turn, a switch,
a pattern like the recollection of the wind
quilting the water of a lake, a remembered place
where this grand gesture of air
sweeps over the surface, and reaching the shore,
without pause, passes on, losing itself
in the maple trees at the foot of the mountain,
only the smell of spring leaves lingering.


~ . ~ . ~

Contributors Notes
(reprinted from Rattapallax #6)


Robert Minhinnick's Selected Poems was published by Carcanet in 1999. Seren published his second collection of essays, Badlands, in 1996. In 1984 he founded Friends of the Earth Cymru (Wales). He is the editor of Poetry Wales.

Thom Ward is editor of BOA Editions. His poetry collection Small Boat with Oars of Different Size was published by Carnegie Mellon. Tumblekid, a chapbook, was issued in 2000 by the University of South Carolina Press.

Eamon Grennan teaches at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, N.Y., dividing his time between there and his native Ireland. His most recent books are Relations: New & Selected Poems (Graywolf, 1998) and Facing the Music: Irish Poetry in the 20th Century (Creighton University Press, 2000).

Glenn Shea was born, raised, educated in Connecticut. He is the author of Find a Place That Could Pass for Home (Islandia Press, 1994). He has read his work in venues ranging from Harvard Divinity School to Shakespeare & Co. in Paris.

Christine Delea, who lives in a suburb of Portland, Oregon, was born on Long Island, N.Y., and has a doctorate in English from the University of North Dakota. A chapbook, Ordinary Days in Ordinary Places, was published earlier this year by Pudding House Press. Her poems have appeared or will appear in A Gathering of Tribes, Heliotope, Petroglyph, Raintown Review, and Washington Square. Two of her poems have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, and one won an Academy of American Poets University award.

Michael T. Young's collection, Transcriptions of Daylight, was published last year by Rattapallax Press; a chapbook, Because the Wind Has Questions, was published in 1997 by Somers Rocks Press. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in many journals. He lives in Jersey City.