THE OUTSIDER Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down today. Nothing gold can stay. — Robert Frost — S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders Snide comments about the nature of […]
Jane Munro | IT’S WINTER THE GODS LOVE
IT’S WINTER THE GODS LOVE high and wind-swept where rivers begin and snow whirls like Sarasvati circling Brahma, his lust growing five faces to keep ten eyes on her but that comes after mountains moon, sun, an ocean of stars after darkness and light differ in winter, the gods shed headgear and garlands, sandals and […]
Sarah White | PAGE FROM A LOST NOTEBOOK
PAGE FROM A LOST NOTEBOOK It wasn’t a comic rhyme for someone’s birthday, but a serious poem, my first… ………. …two major classes of cardiac fibrillation, in praise of my brother—then young and strong—sitting hunkered, ………. atrial and ventricular— over a guitar, beside the campfire. ………. the rapid, irregular, unsynchronized contraction of muscle fibers— “Jumbled […]
John Wall Barger | THE SWANS FLEW OUT OF THE SUN
THE SWANS FLEW OUT OF THE SUN like scorpions of the air, like locust. We shot & they fell like laundry sacks. Bad idea. More came. White plumage blocked the sun, like weather. Like one bird. We watched the swarm from our parks & balconies. We shut down the city. We shot with antiaircraft guns, […]
Jan Jorgensen | AT WATER’S EDGE
AT WATER’S EDGE Let still water be your mirror and noonday clarity frame your face breathe according to the slow rhythm of butterfly wings—closing, opening let water trace the outline of your body as you slide through it— notice past infiltrates present— cup the water, redolent of leaves, in a curve of cheek, blow it […]
Stuart Ian McKay | AN INDENTATION IS ALSO A WHERE
AN INDENTATION IS ALSO A WHERE fires in the interior once gave ash that stormed over mountains. a glyph of troubled carbon …. vicarious on the wide green leaf of a sunflower proved there was no defence for a july of bleak material. back then ….definitions parsed moments of our falling into them until even […]
Jami Macarty | NOR’EASTER
NOR’EASTER The house on Atlantic Ave ………. teeters on the embankment’s ………. edge— ………. a feather could send it crashing. The black-blue sea there’s no stopping ………. kicks in the door, strangles shore. House’s floor: water’s feet. Walls: sand and froth. Salt: a tarnished coating. Wind: a burglar wrestling shutters ………. whistles a tune about […]
Sean Howard | SHADOWGRAPH 141: TO TRACE OUT A SHALLOW FIGURE
SHADOWGRAPH 141: TO TRACE OUT A SHALLOW FIGURE (poetry detected in douglas osheroff’s nobel physics lecture, 1996) news to them! ‘worlds just waiting/to be discovered.’ (school: children passing.) ‘the lower we go, the cooler we get…’ (the arctic circular.) when i married my results… beckett, ‘waiting the verdict!’ big fish, god caught/in one mind. (the […]
Carol Moldaw | KAKAPA BAY
KAKAPA BAY As if at the near edge of an expanse of blue chemise, froth scallops the lava collar bone of a rock point. Past the slate roof line of the house below us, the air is all fan snap, palms batting off wind. Across the water, behind a light haze, Haleakala visible atop Maui. […]