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)