POEMS of SIX POETS
(Fall 2016, Volume 4)
(Fall 2016, Volume 4)
Jonathan Edwards
Nun on a Bicycle Now here she comes, rattling over cobbles, powered by her sandals, the gentle downhill and the grace of God. Now here she comes, her habit what it was always waiting to become: a slipstream. Past stop signs, the pedestrian traffic at rush hour, the humdrum mopeds, on a day already thirty in the shade: with her robe fluttering like solid air, she makes her own weather. Who could blame her as the hill sharpens, she picks up speed and smiles into her future, if she interrupted the Our Fathers she’s saying in her head, to say Whee, a gentle Whee, under her breath? O cycle, Sister! Look at you now, freewheeling through the air conditioning of the morning – who’s to say the God who isn’t there isn’t looking down on you and grinning? Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
Nels Hanson
Because Disc blades couldn’t crease the soil because no rain had fallen, rich loam turned dry, hard as stone. Red fire ants built no sloped hill of sand, amphitheater with grains dug from the deep shaft, stair to hidden queen, captive aphids milked for honey, because no rain fell, loam turned harder, dry as stone. The swift arrow Greek archer shot hit the sun and falling to earth snapped in half because no rain, loam rich but arid, impenetrable as stone. Free gophers now are prisoners, dull claws unable to tunnel for light because no rain descends, ground dense as granite. Because air is dry richest soil turns hard as bone with ready seeds encased like flower and bee in glacier ice, no stem piercing sky of loam. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
David Morley
Hassle The mush savo kek se les the juckni-wast oprey his jib and his zi is keck kosko to jal adrey sweti. The man who has not the whip-hand of his tongue and temper is not fit to go into company but Mike is Mike is Mike, and all’s thrown from horizon to sky when his whip-hand’s wired by White Lightning and Rye. That is how we imagine him. Unfit for human society. Mike thinks the planet’s one long bloody hassle. Constellations spinning in the wing-mirror of his van whether police cars or pole stars Mike’s heading home to the full beam of a haulage depot, the sump and spill of his caravan site, to the tilted mirror of a bottle, the windscreen smash of hangover, to the oil chamber of solicitors’ chambers, the handbrake turn of high court, wheel spins of reporters. The exhaust of exhaustion after hours haggling and hustling over access to his children. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
Rachel Nathanson
Elegy for the Casualty of a Thunderstorm It was face down in a puddle. Severed from its stem. Four petals sprawled symmetrically. It was a compass. A soft shade of fuchsia pointing everywhere. It was the splash of color in a grayscale photograph. The tongue of the saltwater surface catching raindrops. A decapitated flower. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
Charles Thielman
Bones Sliding Apart In Loam Perhaps truth is twine-bound and you deliver it walking sideways like a crab. Or, truth is a ravine thick with chokeberries, with chameleons standing at mid-depth, watching the sun set via shadow creep. No, it's the pregnant mouse rope-dangling in salt fumes as it climbs, climbs onto your ship, soon to populate your cargo as your clerks fixate on commerce. Perhaps, truth will be in your fingers as you fill your lungs, to blow past saxophone reed that sole, long and low, note as the curtain drops and you haven't the time to process. Truth was in the bartender's glance as he wiped ashes from formica grain when you stood near that exit trying to chat up the tired waitress, your stanzas running on and on, unpunctuated, breathless. Or, perhaps, truth is in the birch saplings planted up the riverbank weeks after the spill clean-up started and before I drove to this lake flickering in a theater of stillness. One set of truths frames a shimmering mirage, wishbones snapped short litter moist loam. Another is a handful of stones ready to be tumbled into greater beauty, each one large and heavy enough to hold a door open for any wind. This day turns on a bed of nails, goddess songs becoming night winds through spruce Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
MarJo Thomas
Grandma Hill The morning we walked barefoot into the F. W. Woolworth Company five-and-ten-cent store, I kept my eyes on that bun, that gray, defiant fist of hair that swaggered left and right. And when she marched us back to where they kept the cloudy tanks Of guppies and goldfish, I knew something awful was happening inside her again-- The way the spring must have tightened up inside Aunt Hilda’s grandfather clock just before that last terrible chime; or the way Dad’s murderous electric saw hummed that day it cut off the first joint of his little finger, left hand. So when she snapped off the cage door and began scooping out cockatiels and parakeets, I just stood back watching, wondering what she might be like with her gray hair undone. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |