( Apple Valley, Minnesota )Vicki HudspithWingsfor Victor I don’t want you to think that I think too much of myself so I modestly fold my wings. They tickle my sides, airbrushing their secrets swishing like breaths against my inner ear. Their downy warmth cocoons me hidden blankets that weigh me down pinning me to the bed of your expectations. I wrap myself in them tighter and sweat it out finding that feathers don’t do well when wetted with sweat and that pinions that have pumped Pyrenees heights will atrophy nonetheless. When I finally show you that which I use to soar to elevate to launch myself aloft they are crumpled and disarrayed broken in places where you mistook them for linens and tucked them in – specifications made up with army corner precision to your expectations. You suggest laundering and tailoring these dirty useless things if not entirely throwing them out and you generously offer to refurbish-furnish-finish and decorate for me. I contemplate how much these bedraggled wing-blankets mean to me think about cutting them off, tying them together like a rope to lower me over the edge of this unexpected precipice; realize that I am accepting escape where once I rejoiced in flight marking the fine distinction and make of them a Super Hero’s cape before I take the plunge.
( New York, New York )Ward KelleyApril 1Though this is the day of fools And I may be fooled again Into believing pranks of the heart I would not hold the sky in judgment For the rain it brings or exhale the breath You released into my lungs in an alley of graffiti and brick As the fabled night presses against your favorite truths Which others tell you are lies Since I do not read from the book Which soaks in the depths of stillness I am counted on as easily as a sleight of hand Forgotten phone numbers or lost golf balls At the bottom of a game called hope On sunny days, a window opens for five minutes Admitting your memory An illogical screen on which We humans evolve, shaking hands Without closing the covers of the dictionary Marked to reveal the secret lives of the ancient poets Who traveled from town to town as casually As a blown newspaper This is the heart that pulls you toward time Buoyancy in the disguise of tomorrow Convinces you to photocopy my sighs This day for fools is a day for love Not the pragmatic gray sky which absorbs my light heart These five minutes are the gift of sight Language without resignation This day has not come to terrify An hour is all it represents In each human act, we honor what we love I swallow fire So that I may breathe the monsoon season again And caress the air with an open palm Because you once walked there Behind fatigue are smoky adjectives That describe me as sorrow Please forgive me this juggernaut of raindrops And the luxury of a world without lies For here I am again Not a debutante or even a doctor’s daughter Now I can tell you what happens when the sun sets And darkness folds its softened wings around a day It is the end of the last sentence in your favorite book I am not the trouble of angels I became an angel, as children without adults must do We warm to light bulbs in a world without fire Lit by an open window’s reflection If you allow me, I’ll take your hand Someday perhaps I will let you take mine For here is the force of a door banging wide A misinterpretation of shadow As hunters from a land of light become fearful That darkness will not comfort them through night Speak to me of sandwiches and colors that match Unwind the world from its spool of secrets Tell me it’s only bread and butter with sugar on top And let me claim the air Tell me what food was prepared for you How you slept How you know the things you know Before the inhalations of evening close
( Greencastle, Indiana )Arianne ZwartjesWhat the Ghost Thinks TodayThe ghost kisses the top of a woman's head, dutifully, and thinks he understands why a woman would find happiness in this. He thinks he knows how the blood rushes through his veins, or how breath pulses through his lungs, but like any other dead person he understands nothing at all, but only thinks he knows something about the physical world. He has tricked himself into being alive. The woman underneath the kiss could tell him much more about this trick of life, but she has learned the more you tell a ghost, the more he takes this knowledge in a completely false direction. For instance, she knows the flow of blood through veins matches or mimics the breath of the robin's chicks outside the window, nesting within the oak . . . to Nature everything is metaphor, but the ghost would want to turn this knowledge into a song, or worse, a poem.
( Tucson, Arizona )Melanie FaithToaddifference hangs in the air, spilled almost unintentionally into conversation, children laughing telling stories until out it tumbles and there it is on the table, a green toad no one knows what to do with, everyone wishes would disappear: we all manage not to shriek only by subsiding into silence. Evacuation instructions to escape a difficult conversation: be silent laugh a lot pretend you did not hear.
( Mercersburg, Pennsylvania )Duane LockeSecret DrawerEveryone has his secret drawer. This was mine.—Charles WrightA place to store what isn’t from what there was: nothing left, bottom of the bureau. My nighttime needs, the collection of what never came keeping me a vigorous non-company. As those who hold a wake, neglectful of spirit’s passing, so too the body dormant I cling to a scrap of paper in my own hand labeled “promise, past.” The snapshot blur from a starless early evening, flowering bodies under the veil of one great white whirl; the card, as a check uncashed, three-years post- dated, embossed with the pink, curlicue love letters naming me Mother, signed with your name for the child who wasn’t scripted there; the theme-song jewel-cased anthem of anniversaries, uncelebrated time’s passing we never danced, but the specter still sings, “At Last.” Tucking away the trinkets of a closed drawer closing, I open to slow-swaying dreamless sleep, not-meant-to-be.
At Kinvara Harbour, Co Galway by Fred Johnston
( Galway, Ireland )
( Tampa, Florida )Rebecca HintonAstymelosiaAstymeloisa carries scissors and sways, A thousand black butterflies fly between thorns. I have a nostalgia for yellow roads. The voice of the sky falls like broken glass On the green-gold fields of autumn. In April I flew like Ariel, her eyes, amethyst. Now the gullies are vermilion, have no red waters, Edges of cormorant wings clipped by clouds I long for the spread of black end feathers.
( Arizona )"I ask the artist"I ask the artist mold me what is there ? you taste salt in the wound hands in the ivory you hear wolves wolves growing in tree lined darkness what are you ? I show him the key the manifest leaves along the nightfall path
II - A Wrinkle in the Trees
III - Becoming a Fish
IV - Closer to the Cosmos
Featured Poet - Eleni Sikelianos
Sikelianos Feature, Page 2
Afterword - A Poem by Nell Maiden
Contributors
Current Issue - Summer 2003
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