It starts like this: a man, thirty-two, a woman, thirty-one. Youngest kids in their families. Three of their four parents alive. His father recently dead. A slow, quiet hospital coma. Then: a long, hot cross-country trip in a Jeep with no air-conditioning. Conception in her parent’s house. Everyone’s first grandchild. Newspapers, journals and magazines will … Continue reading
Tag Archives: 2009
Fall 2009 / Issues / Poetry 2009 / Volume 40
Afflicted — Raul Clement
Doxycycline, Ciprofloxacin, Ranitidine — the names remind me of distant stars whose light I will never see or else just what they are, wishes instead of cures. The doctor sticks a gloved finger up my ass with one quick motion. Not quick enough. It is cold with jelly, like the finger of an alien, an … Continue reading
Fall 2009 / Issues / Poetry 2009 / Volume 40
Dali’s Dream — Ellie Grossman
Find me in the morning, in sun and heat; know me in midday by hunger, in nighttime my moon and yawn. You can hold a piece of me in your palm, or feel my presence in your chest. I will let you paint my portrait and hang me out to dry beside the Pyrenees’ golden … Continue reading
Fall 2009 / Issues / Poetry 2009 / Volume 40
My Mother’s Bones — C B Follett
Inside her skin my mother’s bones are crumbling into shards. Only taut skin seems to hold her skeleton together. In her tenth decade the body is in retreat. In June, she fell first one way, then the other banging against everything she had against everything she owned landing on a hip porous as pumice. No … Continue reading
Fall 2009 / Issues / Poetry 2009 / Volume 40
Fleda Brown Removes “the parade” From Her Poem — C B Follett
no fife, no drumbs, no merry piccolo, no crepe paper wound thru bike wheels, no anal drum majorettes, no lemonade in a silvery thermos with flaky green torso, no glittering trombones, no yappy dogs, no nasty smelling snake bombs, no pinwheels of spinning stars, no cap pistols with the delicious scent of cordite, no lady … Continue reading
Fall 2009 / Issues / Poetry 2009 / Volume 40
Autumn Furlough 1943 — Jeanette I. Winthrop
Uncle Dave is home from the war to take my brother and me to Revere beach where we claim our childhood in happy wandering. We search for shells in the crusted sand, count our footprints until we find, half-buried, a lobster trap we want to dig up and lug through the subway. Uncle Dave says … Continue reading
Fall 2009 / Issues / Poetry 2009 / Volume 40
Art Appreciation — Alison Hornbeck
I love nothing quite like I love your hands when you’ve just returned from drawing class, the pads of your thumbs smudged dark, charcoal dust settled in the lines of your knuckles, a few dark and careless storm clouds obscuring the otherwise sunny maps of your palms. There is mystery to these impermanent marking, these … Continue reading
Fall 2009 / Issues / Poetry 2009 / Volume 40
Crows — Justina Cline
“why have you gathered?” I yell, and the crows scream back as one, Harsh cries from above me, Dark birds are calling. They call some more– And more of their kind come, One missing black wingfeathers, He alights, and flies off into The dark of the coming night. The murder of crows Takes flight– Away … Continue reading
Fall 2009 / Issues / Poetry 2009 / Volume 40
Animal Dreams — Jane Medved
The world with its cause and effect is repeating itself like a large cat measuring the hours of its cage. The watermelons are back. The elephants use them as bowling balls on their way to the zoo. Their tails burn my fingers like cheap string. Trees crash behind them, then sink and blow away. Their … Continue reading
Fall 2009 / Issues / Poetry 2009 / Volume 40
A Small Gathering of Light — Eric Paul Shaffer
The sun has yet to rise, but the silver sky has extinguished the stars. Haleakalâ is black against the rising light. Maybe someone should say the mountain before dawn is darker than the mountain at midnight under starlight. It is. Last night, stars hovered at my fingertips. If there is fire, it is beyond me. … Continue reading
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