Oberlin College Press

Contents

Jane Cooper: A Symposium
Jan Heller Levi		"Practicing for Death": "Ablaze, Scared Child!"
Marie Howe		"In the Last Few Moments Came the Old German Cleaning Woman": The Story the Surface Cannot Say
Philip Levine		"Holding Out": Endurance
Jean Valentine		"The Flashboat": Dreamwords
Thomas Lux		"The Blue Anchor": The Fragile Human Settlement
Martha Collins		"The Green Notebook": Seamless, Nameless
Kazim Ali		"The Winter Road": Recomposing

*****
Jan Heller Levi		Jane, Staying
Arthur Sze		The Ginkgo Light
Judith Skillman		The Never
John Gallaher		& Generally the Future Is Uncertain You Can't Say No to the Weather
David Baker		1st My Children
Dore Kiesselbach		Aubade
Myronn Hardy		Making Stars with Jacob Lawrence
Alejandra Pizarnik translated by Adam Giannelli		The Understanding
Joanne Dominique Dwyer		Please, Come In
Bob Hicok		A few things In these times
Angela Ball		My Three Sons
Peter Jay Shippy		Arena Rock
John Hodgen		Cross-Country Girl on the People Mover
Sylva Fischerova translated by Stuart Friebert		Like
Nicolas Born translated by Eric Torgersen		That's Where He Learned What War Is He Says
Olivia Clare		Waterhouse's Saint Eulalia Stradivarius
Marianne Boruch		Those from the garden, orphaned back I can do the cat thing, really the dog thing The screech owl's little horse
Kevin Prufer		On Mercy
David Dodd Lee		Tachycardia
Wayne Miller		Identifying the Body
Franz Wright		The Problem Gunter Eich Apocrypha Intake Interview
Linda Bierds		Salvage
Nava EtShalom		Troubling the Body Count
Fady Joudah		The Ghost of Doing

THOSE FROM THE GARDEN, ORPHANED BACK

Those from the garden, orphaned back
to woods and meadow: wild geranium
or columbine, wild rose
with its sweet snare. And wild

carrot, its one tiny black
inkling, off-center--lace made
by a queen, where blood left its mark,
I like to think my mother

told me in that hospital
half-light. Out of her distance of
under and over
briefly, talk of time and time again,

the crooked way someone held himself,
this face or that. I had such fun
with you guys, she looked up
the long moment, into us.

--Marianne Boruch

IDENTIFYING THE BODY

At first, I pictured his thoughts
resting in there--like coals,

which properly blown on,
could be brought back into fire.

Against the doctor's directions,
I touched his cheek; then

I knew the body was useless.
Every side of him was forever

turned inwardly away. I knelt
by the cold gurney, my face

near his hand. His last cigarettes
had filled his clothes

with smoke. That smell
was as close as I could come

to hearing him speak.

--Wayne Miller