Mar '04 [Home] Poetry Feature First Green is Gold

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B The Experimental Plane ~ X-Ray Visionary ~ Ian Kahn | Ghazal ~ Sybil Kollar | Arnold's Meadow ~ Deena Linett | A Box of Fresh ~ Michael Morical | Golden ~ Van Gogh's Self-Portraits ~ What Do You in an Empty Room? ~ Stella Padnos | Truth Ghazal ~ On Desire ~ Margaret Peters Schwed | Jacalope ~ Mary Austin Speaker | A Look at the Moon ~ Inspiration ~ Stephen Stepanchev A Morning ~ Sally Bliumis | Chibalaya ~ Early Naughty & So Modern ~ Patricia Brody | the bird watchers ~ Denver Butson | At the Stoplight ~ Robert Klein Engler | Lucy Dillard ~ Paul Espel | Advice ~ Andrew Glaze | Almost at the Corner ~ Shelley Hainer | The Burning Girl ~ Kythe Heller | The Art of Sleeping ~ Michelle Herman Contributor Notes The Experimental Plane Ian Kahn It will not be in vain, the slippery melting icicle filmed, Sped up, and playing. All the burning chickens that energize That rampant equation which equals our hairy metropolis So that our exports, our ink, our plums, grow subcultures. That the west winds touching our mountaintops can sustain A team of refugees for their masterfully extended lifetimes I give myself the purpose of seeking pleasure in this pool And why we must clash I don't fully understand but when It happens the energy expended is almost always rapidly Replaced by the ripple of its expenditure and the rain is A sign that this must grow and proceed. The lines of our Flag are a glowing spectrum of lasers, and no one has Ever seen us. Crinkled, crumpled, spangled, and down. The blue dragon squadron streaking across the sky. For this we broke out over the fence and crossed the dunes. Like a knight who has dreamt of a princess Sitting on his face, my life is doomed and All the richer for it, throughout the duration of this operation. I hear you drummer, drum on! We seek to sense, Carrying our seeds in our core, Sailing past all but the most sumptuous, Though bombarded, heralded, adored like a babe in a soft Blanket one minute, the next thrust into battle. The vacuum shark who feeds on dust gives you a glorious Ride my French maid and the question arises: Will for you I burn all other plays? You who saved me on the seas. ~ . X-Ray Visionary Ian Kahn We wait. The train I am thinking of is oceans away. I come out the door to a distant choir of bagpipes. Then it is only flight that brings me back Into the world of sixteen million fishbowls. I sit on a cream cloud and admire the triangles, The petals, the crystals. Purple, lavender, black, rust. The woven landscape's in stereo, Pulsing aura turquoise horses, golden lambs Spraypainted with the shepherd's graffiti. See-through dresses, heavy wool coats, Floating numbers. We push our bangs out of our eyes Dressed in opalescent butterflies, Made up of lace like letters, they say. ~ . ~ Ghazal Sybil Kollar The past tracks me under a hunter's moon      I move warily listening for its sour breath Dark viscous patterns coil through my hair      I am back in the shed of hip-boots and bait The sound of water slapping against rock      There is the lingering smell of rotting fish It is the shadowy hour of rising mist The red canoe is tilted on its side I pass through a thick cover of reeds Perhaps a Sybilline omen would have foretold this escape The soft, patulous earth molds my footprints Leaving behind a string of tiny, open graves. (Prior pub.: The Literary Review) ~ . ~ Arnold's Meadow Deena Linett The mown span's a rockewn incline, matchless, imperfect: tall dry stalks, wind-blasted trees and plumy grasses, rotting fruit. Cultivated iris beds line the western edge and in their cycles roses, alllium and lilies, everything exclaiming. A century-old apple tree, small copy of the great world-tree, sets out globes of red and gold composed of memories of wind and snow and sunlight. In ponds of greeny water dark as amnion, koi marked like Saint Bernards before they're mammals flash black and white and gold between the water-grasses. All day the light on bark and leaf and water. Little tracts of scum smudge images of cloud astride the wind-scored surface like wishes or intention and never come ashore. ~ . ~ A Box of Fresh Michael Morical On my 17,000-dollar glass- enclosed porch, I can't clean the windows anymore. Spray and wipe; smear the grime. Used to have nothin' but what we stole— too much fun to sleep. My elbow grease has dried up and the sun's distorted. Can't clean my windows anymore but I hold this rag— too much hurt to sleep. In the last pitch black before dawn—I may be the last one who remembers— the baker would leave a box of fresh on the grocery's back stoop. You could bite into that smell—especially if you'd missed dinner. We'd snatch all the donuts and quarts of milk from the neighbors' boxes— changing victims daily. Why'd I design this room, this view of a pond in the woods when the glass gets speckled with bird shit and I can't clean my windows anymore? I doze, wobbling on the edge of my chair. As the sun came up, we'd wash down our glazed with milk and jump on the Pennsylvania— trains crawled back then— and ride just to go. Our guts were full. We fibbed about ladies in the bordello when we didn't know the basics of plumbing. There's a French window the sparrows missed; when I remember to look through it, the sky in the reflecting pond—no boats—settles my storm till I don't need to clean the windows anymore. We'd ride as far as Columbus. ~ . ~ Golden Stella Padnos He loves her because her fading has begun. Her eyes amber in winter and growing gold. Her neck is the beverage sucked out. The topography of arms deserting itself, mountain ranges over rivers. He loves her so her disappearance will not be shocking, so when he wakes up and doesn't see her he will see the pattern of loss: side view growing crisper, pupils turning to whites, the imprint on her pillow harder and harder to find. ~ . Van Gogh's Self-Portraits Stella Padnos Every month he sits in yesterday's flesh, looking for a new version of himself. All painted eyes display disbelief that he is anything but a canvas surface. In some he wears a straw hat, as if the earth overturned on him alone. Sometimes he's right. His eyes unpeel each mirror and burn each portrait until he stops and starts over. His colors are realer than anyone. Light slaps through water, lands dizzy on his cheek and mouth, but I still can't see what he's saying. How long will his paint be the only to hold his heart? Oils not mixing with anyone. He is the only one he can't capture. ~ . What Do You Say in an Empty Room? Stella Padnos Let's choose the walls we will avoid facing and what color they will be. What will we cushion ourselves from the earth with? We walk on marble, wood, and linoleum. Our light comes from plugs and bulbs. How will we shade the brightness when we're dark? I see outside myself clearly through a spotless window. I clean and remove all traces of myself. Do we want our insides out or our outsides in? A porch with walls? We have no view. The coffee table is for cigarettes. The bookcase is for show. The luxury of one thing — one color, one person — everywhere. What will I share and what stories are for the attic? What do we save for never? How will we present the skin of our lives — the surroundings that seem so real until we move out of them? I don't know what to write, John. I cannot write a gun, nor a knife from the kitchen. My mother keeps anything sharp off the table. I dreamt that you were a burglar, John, stealing from yourself. Before that, on the subway, I saw a child becoming lost. I asked you for comfort. You held out a gun, and on top of that, my eyes shone. ~ . ~ Truth Ghazal Margaret Peters Schwed My lashed brother, I couldn't know your silence was revealing. At the time, My own words, so beautiful, so blind. You, healing at the time. Look at truth: a rose cultivated in a tub. (Tonight we guard each bloom. Each open heart. But then the thievish moon you caught, stealing at the time.) Scent is falling like a shadow in your garden. Where I live, March alone Brings the peepers out. I never see them, only hear their pealing at the time. What happens when a word is spoken? How warm the dark is Or how cold. Our embrace, its parenthesis, left me reeling at the time. What can be taken back? The lemon. Even the word 'lemon.' But not Its yellow oiled rind, not everything one knew of lemon and was concealing at the time. What is the case is not enough. Or perhaps yes, for the colder joy of saints. I saw you happy in your garden; you were kneeling at the time. Other explanations failed. At last it is said that war will be justified By post-war justice. No one saw the crack begin to cross the ceiling at the time. At your throat, just here, I place my signature pearl, this gem Not stone but lovely nacre shed from irritation, unappealing at the time. ~ . On Desire Margaret Peters Schwed 1. Nothing could have held her this first season. The young bitch breaks easily through the screens knowing I am this only, her obedience to the call impeccable. Yet a long time later when we find her trotting on an unfamiliar road, ear torn, paws bloody, body thin, mud-spattered, her muzzle lifts as if she also knew And I am more than this. 2. It's not desire that turns the whip-thin branches red but light. Nevertheless, such a red, or lavish purpling— and at the wagging tips such swollen buds… No, this March wind rocking possessively in the treetops, stripping the unresisting garden from its frost with tongues of rain and a steadiness of purpose that opens soil, cannot be innocent. 3. Look how the widow reveals her strategy, sticking to the present tense: He is, he is, he is… How else could it be, the longing of the living for the dead? ~ . ~ Jackalope Mary Austin Speaker She was sick of being in her body. It slumped, its weight was lump and heft. In her body, she was unwilling mechanic; she polished gaskets and spun levers full of grease, hammered spoon-shaped parts to fit their coverings. She wrote, Dear so and so, My body hurts. Its feet have decompressed and no longer fit inside their shoes. Everything is loud: the satellites whir, the flowers open and close, and I am here to tell you, the humidity in this town is unbearable. There is no one to call late at night. Now, a jackalope— there's a body. Mythic stranger in the desert, harbinger of good luck, Each year it wins the high jump. The envelope was sealed and sent to a large city in the Southwest. Upon finding the jackalope in her bedroom clattering inside the mirror she exclaimed Finally. Her tools fell to the floor with as small a sound as they could make. Her feet began to thump. Her hair itched and disappeared. She jumped lifted gravel from a deserted parking lot, and rained it down on the empty spaces. Nothing could stop it. ~ . ~ A Look at the Moon Stephen Stepanchev Reflecting a far-off, foreign fire, The moon, I imagine, hungers for young men As she lingers palely on the fire escape, Feeling a fever she can't escape. Does she, like Eos, swoop down for her man And carry him off to an airless lunar cave For blood transfusions? Can she speak to him Without sound waves? Do her vine-like hands Amuse him with their insincerity? Her thin moonlight barely casts a shade. She pulls a little, and the suicide rate goes up. I see a skull bombarded by meteors, Pockmarked by celestial smallpox, scars To read and misread. The morning blunders in. She shuffles off furtively, the air burns blue, And the volcano on the horizon erupts with news. (Prior publs.: The New Criterion; Seven Horizons) ~ . Inspiration Stephen Stepanchev About inspiration the Old Masters Were never wrong. How well they understood Its dependence on hard labor! As Maestro Segovia Once said, they painted angels climbing up Jacob's Ladder, rung by rung, though they had wings. (Prior publs.: Poetry; The Poetry Anthology, 1912-2002) ~ . ~ . ~ [A]