From Cyanosis
IV.


This is the night, and in its dark folds
Her scattered skin shines starry blue
Each reaching its pale light through
The dark swaying cloth that holds

Each adrift, glowing itself out
Against the immeasurable sightless
Bounds, as if to flee its own brightness
Into another glow, and its timid doubt

Winks and waves, as the sudden wave
Of leaves is swept along with hair
And the dress dark sways. With fright

The blue pale fingers shaking crave
To lie holding, with her body bare
And framed with darkness. This is the night.

VI.

This is the night; she sits clothed in lamp glow
Alone, distanced, blued, hand held to her ear
She speaks, and into the phone she can hear
From its blue glow, the vapors of an echo

That responds to her the words she grasps
Through the light at her ear, the shield
To preserve, safe and concealed
From the gnashing silences. Gasps

Cry out from the black boiling brine,
And she cannot help but turn
Against the glow of her shelled light

She sees nothing, but lets a voice remind
Her of the sea and the gasp is the churn
Of a darkened wave. This is the night.

From Perennials

X.


Haven’t you grown tired of passing away?
When your blossoms whither behind your ears
Become brittle and fall, mutilated, our fears
Rise anew. It is this, then, that we wish to say.

Hold yourself still, would you stop if we did
If we ended this constant chase through empty
Spaces, as if our panting would make it be,
Make something grow in your wake, as you hid

Behind graying bark and withering leaves,
What is left: these bare outlines of limbs to reach
Up to the paling sun, and hibernal roots clutch

The azure frosted ground. We forget this much:
When you leave, when we stop, you will not teach
Silence, only what the wind clack of branches grieves.

From  Études

Saint Stephen:


This is the place he stood alone. See the faint stains
Like faded roses wind scattered across
The stones? This is where he waited for the first to toss
A stone. But as he noticed when the light wanes
The face of God smiling where the sun had grown

They stood there all shadowed eyes
And he, with his back to the walls was alone
And he saw each one holding piles of stone
That looked to him against the pink skies

Like petals. He smiled, there, and they gathered piles
Of them for him. Reds and pinks and purples cupped
In their trembling hands. And their eyes, he knew were smiles
Like the colorful petals, and he knew too the sky would erupt

With petals all around him. Here he waited, and saw the first one fly

It met the setting sun and dissipated, then slowly as if a sigh

Fell through the air, and more, and each felt soft like a caress, he
Laughed softly as they fluttered around his head, to see
That this was a wreath, and they fluttered around the place he would die.

Death

My father’s back was turned

and I was young.

The blueberry’s cranberry

color backlit by sun;

white flesh squished into

my lifeline’s crinkle.

I tasted it, the tartness in my

glands a sting,

an impatience in my

July mouth.

My father’s back was turned

and I was young

and hasty,

just 10 and bookish

in the old man’s garden

plot, to see the berries

and the rhubarb

while the

whitecorn ears got boxed

for worms.

My father’s back was turned

and I was young

to gardening and garter snakes,

the green kind, along

the July fence all curvy

against the straight.

I was young, my short hoe for

beanweeds making me

right-handed in the sun

and thirsty,

a parchedness of nose

and cotton-mouth,

a copper taste like bloody

teeth in apple bites.

Eye contact in the slither second’s           

parallel, the passing motion

ended by the blocking force of steel

blade justice for the apple-giving trick

they said he played on me

or would have.

Preemptive justice

in the garden,

fresh blood on juicy

blood meal making

cakes, the tool-shaped tongue

a crooked glisten.

Thinness, in both our girths

and psyches, instinctual

betrayal of our reason

for a taste of something

clean and earth-grown,

both our chances blown.

I kept my limpy victory

in a painter’s bucket’s

brackish water until it

smelled like something new

and different, white flesh

turned grey and rotted

with the water, less color

to the snakey skin,

more ugly fumes

to make my father

come back out

next week,

take Sunday’s naptime

up with burial,

stern looks and grunts

of anger and disgust

at sonship’s slippage,

Death’s triple knocking on his

hands and eyes and nose.

laundry

there are socks and socks and socks to
roll into so many
single units--
infinite egg-white
elastic terrycloth, it seems
like two-thirds of each
load is made up of socks
and some are tainted
tinted with overuse but
washed--
to extend the fantasy they
promised upon emerging
so perfect and
bright teeth-white
softer, then
like the inside of buds and
clinging neatly in
pre-destined pairs

the machine swallows them up here
and there for laughs
never in even numbers
so that everyone might have a mate for
each folding--
a good joke, if you're not
an odd sock

and sometimes they wont roll
and holes always end
up underneath the big-toe spot,
and they stretch into shapes that
fit differently on different feet,

and each step's an effort because one foot is bunched and the other is
suffocating and
forget
running because there is no destination that can ever be arrived at that will
ever be able to fix
socks that have been through so
many cycles

-asia

The Vacant Lot

Long moments

pass

in miniature.

Little ticks of

soundless time.

It is just

a summer

afternoon

lazy and hot

in the shade.

I am nervous.

The wind

pushes my hair.

I encircle

the pole I lean on.


-Nathan Brand

The Bull Whisperer

My father rode a red 1952 Ford tractor with a bushhog
always in the back, rusty and tearing through grunting
shrub stumps and grass. He loved it so much, the sore
he felt in his neck and knees, putting it to rest at day’s end.

One fall day my father was shaving the dusking hillside,
admiring the smooth tan of the sky, pat-patting the struggling
Hemlocks on the back as he wove his monthly pattern over
the underbrush, atop the Ford, his chariot,

and my father spotted through the trunks a vague lone cow
rested in a heap at the pasture’s edge, swollen but breathing.
Easy girl, he eased up. Death and birthing, the prediction
similar in animals—they separate from the rest of the herd,

that being their habit. Where my father’s fingernails rubbed
the unflipping ear, that was the center of his 67 acres. She was
to calve soon. He remembered how to assist. It was serene,
the auburn dark, the autumn thick-body companion. That moment

the bull lifted its heavy tractor body, faced my father
gathering himself, all he could do in the evening separation was
whisper easy big boy, ease away and on to the sitting Ford, easy
and the true owner, of the cattle and their ways, named him

the bull-whisperer.

- J.S.

In the Beginning

For those of you in Sabrina Mark's class, I found a great Creation Myth poem by Dylan Thomas. I've recently become engrossed in Thomas's second-nature verse-thinking. He has an, I think, unparalleled handle on poetry. He wrote in a crowning world of free verse, but his vast lexicon-of-a-mind allowed him to find novel uses of rhymed verse. Dylan Thomas has forced me to think long and hard about whether free verse indeed frees poetry from some kind of formal fetter, as it were, or from a worthwhile responsibility. - John

In the Beginning

In the beginning was the three-pointed star,
One smile of light across the empty face;
One bough of bone across the rooting air,
The substance forked that marrowed the first sun;
And, burning ciphers on the round of space,
Heaven and hell mixed as they spun.

In the beginning was the pale signature,
Three-syllabled and starry as the smile;
And after came the imprints on the water,
Stamp of the minted face upon the moon;
The blood that touched the crosstree and the grail
Touched the first cloud and left a sign.

In the beginning was the mounting fire
That set alight the weathers from a spark,
A three-eyed, red-eyed spark, blunt as a flower;
Life rose and spouted from the rolling seas,
Burst in the roots, pumped from the earth and rock
The secret oils that drive the grass.

In the beginning was the word, the word
That from the solid bases of the light
Abstracted all the letters of the void;
And from the cloudy bases of the breath
The word flowed up, translating to the heart
First characters of birth and death.

In the beginning was the secret brain.
The brain was celled and soldered in the thought
Before the pitch was forking to a sun;
Before the veins were shaking in their sieve,
Blood shot and scattered to the winds of light
The ribbed original of love.

- Dylan Thomas

first attempt at story-of-my-life

I must have been in there when I

pawed my way out that first time—

blind, fluffy and flat-faced and

somehow still offered

sweet cream in exchange for the luxury

of stroking me

 

I cant quite count that, though,

as I sit here, now—

lap full of sharp hard bones and lean muscle—

because that was long before I knew that those belong

inside me

I’ve left the flap up and

lost it to the wilderness…

 

I’d love to claim that it was

During the mad dash to escape the snickering flames that

Pulled my first attempt at independence

Down to the charred, soggy butt

Of a rather funny joke

 

But I know it happened before that,

Because the cat was

Just a kitten then,

Breathing frightened ragged whimpers from

His flooded litter box

 

And I wasn’t even the one who

saved him

 

could I have lost it to her?

She rescued him, sure,

(she plunged back in to that third-floor tempest

and clutched him to her chest for the

rest of that hang-nailed night,)

but she had already

traded me

for an easier kind of mind-bending

 

no,

couldn’t be that—

I noticed the hair caught in the hinges before

I retracted my claws and

Showed her my soft underbelly

 

I know!

The red era—

The night when I saw how much I could slash to bits

With a single flick of the wrist

(hewasstitchedbackuplikeateddybear’ssplitseam,

tiny Xs marking the spot where

his blood

shot forth to spare mine)

 

no, no.

how unfair of me.

He would never have let it slip past him.

 

I rub the delicate arching spine,

The rumble so close it

seems like its rolling out from within

Where I used to feel it

 

Maybe I should inspect the moments when

Pleasure lulled my careful guard…

 

I once stroked strings that

Rang just right

Lapped up the perfect harmony

To my melody

 

I once chased

Pesky inhibitions into a

Hot spotlight and batted their battered carcasses there,

Applauded like a gladiator

 

I once taught myself the

Fluid science

Of sharing a shadow with

Another shaking body

 

And leapt, unfettered, from high to higher ledge

And licked all wounds with pride

And never

Never

Never

Squandered the gift of a long stretch of nighttime

 

I am still here—

Petting compulsively as I fret and he

Uncoils and stretches,

Ready to empty my lap again and take with him

My skeleton

Sinews

Motor…

Maybe he is gone for good, this time,

Or maybe

He’ll climb back in if I just

Tick one off and

Purr in honor of the eight that remain.

-asia

William Stafford- The Farm On the Great Plains

Alligators

I confess your body
is distracting,
physical with mine.
I am afraid of your Smart

don't mark me
with your idea of me
stop your Kind--
forget me.

Please,
my meat is deep and wide
populated by alligators
chameleoned by
distance,
flesh, and
lies.

don't get so excited
I'm not so Diamond as you think.
what
do you think?

get close
feel my coarse,
dirty pores

better off unencumbered
by your Dote
couldn't be bothered to fake
my Fake.

(Claire Stephens)

the sonogram

The Sonogram

In the sonogram, found at the bottom of the stairs, our hands look like smudged snow.

But in my mother’s room, Mica wore one crumpled wing where my fingers grew.

His melted softly in the dark with my mother,

And I was born leaving, folding my hands into wings for ever.

The snow came always after that, falling even into my sleep.

Until I found the locked attic, where all the shorn wings I reached for in the dark were.

With Mica’s hands, I buried them in the snow.

And mother, for ever asleep at the bottom of the stairs, filled all the empty rooms.

(Anna Morrison)