POEMS of SEVEN POETS
(Fall 2017, Volume 5)
(Fall 2017, Volume 5)
Katie McMorris
The Traveling Carnival, Circa 1915 When the money and the alcohol both run dry, squandered by those who spent their nights in their makeshift tents seeing ten and raising fifty, all that remains of the traveling carnival are the bones of the Ferris wheel, rattling against the October air in tune with the Halloween skeletons. Gone are the seats where feet teetered and hands clung to metal rods, where lips met in silence as they swayed and prayed that their faces would not be the next headline declaring: two dead in freak accident. And the man with crooked fingers who stood with one hand in his pocket and the other on the crank now lives with his mother somewhere out West, and he’s probably still wearing that same baseball cap. And people will come, expecting horses and ring toss and the woman who read fortunes and always said death was in the future. Instead, they will only find a few lingering bottles and fiberglass animals with their heads cracked open, home to squirrels and grocery bags caught in undercurrents whipping against what used to be a carousel. But they’ll still hear music, seducing them from somewhere behind the overturned organ, spinning a waltz and inviting them to dance closer to the broken horses. They’ll touch those horses, unaware of faces hidden in the shade, of the bodies sneaking near them. Unaware of tomorrow’s headline, declaring: two dead in “freak” accident. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
Charles Theilman
Family Farm Hot wind a coarse brush through black manes and cut hay. Dusk absorbs sunset's plaited gnosis into its deep blue wings. What survives this season turns its back to the sky, rests on dark arms and lets dry yellow stones fall into buried deltas. Lantern glow on wire coil, hooves plant crescents in loam while bales, lined up at arm's length, release their last green to starlight. Wagon, rein and halter, sweat crusted necks to sun-burned hands, sky a promise of more dust, of hot yellow light edging the shadows of five oaks. The swing-set chains and seats sway. The kitchen window becomes one beacon. Peer inside dark blue dusk. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
William Conelly
Forgiveness When words have passed away, leaving behind sad furrows, and we lie down to sleep on dark, eclipsing worlds, in our grave silences, the heart’s first precepts start to ease and mollify what language pressed apart, so we may turn at last, from spheres beyond this pall, and lightly touch before the darkness alters all. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
Linda Wojtowick
Personal Ensign We left Cape Disappointment on a Sunday with a cobbled zeal, smelling that last night’s aspirations from a rocky fire. The jagged shore fell away and the crew began to sing. Their mouths opened and gulls came. Mournful, and unexpected, since they were leaving what was a known cursed place on that day of their Lord. But they are young and stinking and prone to song. No storms now, no rain. My ship had a name once but I’ve forgotten it. Willfully, of course. It was something biblical, a woman with fins. Tonight, though the damp ropes swell and teem, our sails make a decent show, flapping leavened, bone-colored, against curdled stars. I cannot soothe the screaming child-hearts of my men. Big fish rip like tired cloth in their oversized, fatherless hands. I’ve come to hate the sea, its devouring salt. The endless flat horizon of it under the fatty sky. My flag’s crest has leeched out in punishing sun, beaten to a silk by wind. I keep dreaming of the desert, of shifting weals of sand. Of the rock and blessed heat. Out there, just a glimpse of wetness would have value, have possibility. The ring of a dream pond up ahead. Of late I am chiefly concerned with oasis, and rumors of oasis. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
Natalie Crick
Birds at the Burial Near the riverbank where we Buried her, I light a candle And wait, patient as a hunter Detecting what the beast will do In the next moment. Someone, somewhere, will see it. Barn owls celebrate Over their cathedral of bones, Screaming skies clawed with crows. The man asleep on his lumpy mattress Has a head full of ghosts and Sad, erotic dreams. Gulls rise, small white banshees Worshiping the sun Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
Maxfield Lydum
Lip Stick Car Contrary to popular belief, Wild times abound when you cruise the valley in a Mormon Mary Kay car. See that car slice through the fog and leave lip stick stains on your asphalt check? It’s heading to the chandelier town near the river where high school girls walk 7 white huskies kids shoot hoops. Mormon Mary Kay squeals stop and dumps contents into the glass delicate night. Out comes pearled beauty of the night lip stick kisses and tight red dress dripping with intuition. But who can say why she doesn't come home to a bright chandelier? Who can wonder why she’s lonely in the Cadillac? Where can she go if her heels snap on the concrete? It’s really an urgent question. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
James Brooks
A falling star The stars were never really falling down, And what we saw in lines across the sky, And too, these words from left to right in sound, Require of myth what motion does of time, And if dependent, each upon them each, On time and other symbols to our past, Then neither line, nor word, in whole or breach, May stand, nor anything of love may last. But neither to the instance of a flower, Nor in between the wounding and the pain, Nor in the dim translucence of an hour That we have marked together as the same, Does time or myth require, nor you, nor I, Too much to move itself across the sky. Summer 2017 Sonnet Prize winner. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |