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CONTENTS
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Carl Phillips |
Bright World |
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Angie Estes |
Elegy On Yellowed Velvet |
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Eric Torgerson |
After
Gaeton Picon |
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Marvin Bell |
Ulysses,
Too, Was Sometimes Down at Heart |
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Fred Marchant |
A
Place at the Table Looking-House Stanza |
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V. Penelope
Pelizzon |
from
The Monongahela Book of Hours, xi |
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Christopher
Patton |
Tammuz.
Ishtar. |
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Karl Krolow |
There's
The Spring Emptiness Difference |
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Rebecca
Kaiser Gibson |
Global
Warming |
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Martin Walls |
Reformation |
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David Barber |
Houdini
Sutra |
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Elizabeth
Holmes |
Pregnant
and Far Gone Not Me, I'm Not Dream Babies |
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Bian Zhilin |
The
Railway Station Dressing Table |
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Bob Hicok |
Lettuce To Roanoke with Johnny Cash |
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Thomas Lux |
To
Help the Monkey Cross the River, Flies So Thick Above the Corpses in the Rubble the Soldiers Must Use Flamethrowers to Pass Through Myope Uncle Dung Beetle |
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Guy Goffette |
The Chair-Caner |
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Michael
Chitwood |
Spanish
Needles, Beggar's-Lice, Cockleburrs Saved |
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Greg Pape |
Red
Moon |
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Michael
Waters |
Balthus |
Franz
Wright |
Did
This Ever Happen to You Sitting Up Late with My Father, 1977 Publication Date Scribbled Testament |
Stefi
Weisburd |
Chassez,
My Dear |
Raymond
Queneau |
Ideas |
Kevin
Prufer |
Mechanical
Bird Prayer |
Charles
Wright |
Scar
Tissue |
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Poetry 2003: Three Review-Essays |
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David Young |
Romanticism
Rediscovered (Stanley Plumly, Argument and Song: Sources and Silences
in Poetry) |
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Pamela Alexander |
An
Invasion of Flowers, A Shambles of Dogs (L. R. Berger, The Unexpected
Aviary; Eric Pankey, Oracle Figures; James Galvin, X;
Heather McHugh, Eyeshot; Michael Teig, Big Back Yard) |
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Martha Collins |
Translation
as News (Aharon Shabtai, J'Accuse; Saadi Youssef, Without
a Country, Without a Face; Mahmoud Darwish, Unfortunately, It Was
Paradise: Selected Poems; Venus Khoury-Ghata, She Says; Ca
Dao Viet Nam; Huu Thinh, The Time Tree) |
Oona's nails are pink as abalone.
But she won't shake hands. Everyone's holding
cell phones, happy as clams,
in clenched grins. I'm calling
my twin ear, she says, they say,
to hear myself. My onion,
my own Vidalia, Slim Him says,
my yellow butternut, my sweet
potato, he laughs, specializing
in vegetable
speech. Oona's smile curls
like crazy. It's always fifty-three
degrees
below, Slim says, geothermally. They
are sinking in snow, knee-deep.
The hemlocks
wear hulky snow jackets. Groovy
says Oona, out of date, she's in
duo-
folds. It's impossible, anymore,
to say what's natural. May as well
wear feathers and skin. She's been
plucked, pruned, and brushed herself.
Oona's got a mood on.
If anyone can be anyone, we must
all
be one tree, she says. Her outfit
quivers. The white fox, clenching
its own tail in its own jaw.
--Rebecca Kaiser Gibson
TO HELP THE MONKEY CROSS THE RIVER,
which he must
cross, by swimming, for fruit and nuts,
to help him
I sit, with my rifle, on a platform
high in a tree, same side of the river
as the hungry monkey. How does this assist
him? When he swims for it
I look first up river: predators move faster with
the current than against it.
If a crocodile is aimed from up river to eat the monkey
and an anaconda from down river burns
with the same ambition, I do
the math, algebra, angles, rate-of-monkey,
croc and snake-speed, and if, if
it looks like the anaconda or the croc
will reach the monkey
before he attains the river's far bank,
I raise my rifle and fire
one, two, three, even four times, into the river
just behind the monkey
to hurry him up a little.
Shoot the snake, the crocodile?
They're just doing their jobs,
but the monkey, the monkey
has little hands, like a child's
and the smart ones, in a cage, can be taught to smile.
--Thomas Lux