of light, hardly enough to see sparrows
in tattletale air, clouds
dirty as bootscuff and bundled with winter,
hail on the window,
a cold cant of pistol and steel.

::

Between us and the slow fall, the news
just keeps coming—red waves
of oil wash ashore at Biloxi
and pelicans sink in the muck,
honey bees die from colony collapse,
children flare up in the crosshairs,
so many too quick to forgive
our recklessness, greed,
our mistakes, the stellar wreck
we’ve made of this world.

::

But on the moon’s desert, there’s water
and lost dogs do return home.
To survive flood waters,
frogs hitch rides on snakes.
Song bursts open in shopping malls
and neglected art is found.
The sun grows stronger, its winter edge
carving cold panes into gold.
We still create myth, practice magic.

::

Between us and the slow fall, we live,
sometimes with grace,
sometimes without,
and in the elephant hour, the grey
skin of air before dawn,
I tell myself no more, no more
will I waste the big, soft-eared days.

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Susan Elbe (website) is the author of Eden in the Rearview Mirror (Word Press) and a chapbook, Light Made from Nothing (Parallel Press). Her poems appear or are forthcoming in many journals and anthologies, including Blackbird, diode, MARGIE, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, Salt Hill, and A Fierce Brightness: Twenty-five Years of Women’s Poetry (Calyx Books). She lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

based on Underwater C-Scape (Anemone), 2006, Pae White
Electro-luminescent wire in a plastic container

Buzzing at the glass, honey
with the sting still in,

a river’s strong green, fire
following a tree-line,

blue prairie wind whistling through.
Kneeling inside, helpless

in the hands of good-time gods,
their hocus-pocus,

held rapt by this weather, we are lit
with lightning and no rain,

our eyes, the stubs of burnt-out stars,
no escape from our reflections.

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Susan Elbe (website) is the author of Eden in the Rearview Mirror (Word Press) and a chapbook, Light Made from Nothing (Parallel Press). Her poems appear or are forthcoming in many journals and anthologies, including Blackbird, diode, MARGIE, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, Salt Hill, and A Fierce Brightness: Twenty-five Years of Women’s Poetry (Calyx Books). She lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

We were thrilled to have the opportunity to edit an issue of qarrtsiluni. It was both challenging, in terms of volume and time, and highly rewarding.

Our hope was to focus on and highlight health — both the radiant, full-bodied, energetic variety, and the various ways health is impaired or depleted. We struggled to balance the issue, hoping to equally include pieces that celebrate the joy we experience in health and that explore the grief in our disease and dying. We were continually surprised at how difficult this was, as the majority of submissions we received focused on ill health.

We wondered why the focus seemed more on our dis-ease than on our vibrancy. Is it that we use writing to, as Gregory Orr says, “(sing) the pain back into the wound?”

Gregg Levoy, in his book Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life, says that writing is really only the mode of transport. “The true calling is whatever we hope to draw to us through our art, what we want it to bring to us.” Perhaps all this writing about our dis-ease is meant to bring wholeness to us.

On the other hand, the visual art we received was much more focused on the positive aspects of health. There were many photographs, paintings, and mixed-media pieces full of harmony and joy.

We have no answers, only more questions. Art in all its forms holds much mystery.

We thank all of you who submitted. It was an honor and a pleasure to be allowed into your aching hearts, your quirky minds, and your love of life and this Earth.

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For bios of Susan and Kelly, see the Call for Submissions post.

for Francisco Alarcón
August 7, 1994

I, myself am not bird,
my bones, not hollow
easy flutes for song.

I, myself am not snake,
my skin not silver
husk that sloughs me new.

But I, myself am the green
voice jabbering
down the fields. My palms

push sky, reek of sun
and I cadence
the night with whispering.

I, myself take to ice, brittle
with rime, shimmy
in dry wind — chicome, chicome.

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Note: Chicome is the Nahuatl numeral 7. In Aztec mythology, Chicomecoatl (“Seven Snakes”) was the Aztec goddess of maize. She is sometimes called Goddess of Nourishment, a deity of plenty and the female aspect of corn. Her symbol is an ear of corn. Source: Francisco X. Alarcón. Other sources say that Centeotl, the Corn God, is the provider of the Spirit Soul (Teyollia) for days with the numeral 7 (chicome). There is a lot of crossover between Nahuatl and Aztec mythology.

Susan Elbe (website) is the author of Eden in the Rearview Mirror and a chapbook, Light Made from Nothing. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in many journals, including Blackbird, diode, MARGIE, North American Review, and Salt Hill. Her work has also been widely anthologized, including in A Fierce Brightness: Twenty-Five Years of Women’s Poetry (Calyx Books).

With Kelly Madigan Erlandson, Susan is the editor of qarrtsiluni’s Health issue, currently accepting submissions through November 30.

The accelerating street was wet light
and we were, impossibly, on ledges
talking down the suicides,

disarming the shooters on their way to school,
the night’s echolocation
giving way to

the heart’s,
and though a signal is not an answer

sometimes even a glimpse of the Divine Yes
is enough,
the quick of it
almost mocking

a life laboring to break
bewilderment’s code.

What if we took in the street preacher?
Silenced the fortune teller?
Laid off
each sure thing?

Maybe all we need to remember is how
to call the sun up
or pin down the moon.

Maybe we’re merely steps
away from nowhere.

by Susan Elbe and Ron Czerwien

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Process notes

The process began one evening while we were browsing the fiction display at our local Borders Bookstore. One of us suggested that some of the book titles might make good titles for collaborative poems. Ron chose the title from that list and also submitted the first line. We then composed the poem strictly via e-mail. Early on Ron asked if we should offer edits during the process, but Susan felt we’d lose the energy of the exchange. So we simply continued to alternate lines. The varying line lengths and freer use of white space were Susan’s ideas. Ron followed her lead. Susan’s poems are replete with words that are surprising but never arbitrary. Ron offers as a good example of this her use of “echolocation.” Ron’s post-modern leanings stretched Susan’s approach.

Our biggest stumbling block was sticking with it. Our busy lives and other work intruded, and we constantly had to prod each other to come back to the collaboration. There were long periods when both of us struggled to come up with the right line, one that would not only carry forward what came before but also lead towards a felt, though always unknown, conclusion. The poem even includes a line Ron appropriated from a poem by Rae Armantrout, who he was reading at the time of the collaboration. Oddly enough, all of our lines survived editing! We each thought very carefully about what psychic gift we were sending the other person. Susan loved anticipating what the next line from Ron would be. Both of us think it’s important to collaborate with someone whose work and sensibility you enjoy and respect, but having different styles makes it more interesting. We hope to do more together in the future.