Archive
The View From Within
(Click on image to view at larger size.)
by Tricia Anne Baar
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What is Broken
there is a crack
in the green moor edged
with white limestone
the air it breathes
out is cool it is
deep fresh and you may go
through it by tunnel in
breathing darkness to deep
basin caves which are
theaters of mime in gold-brown
rock which have mounds
fantastic built drop
by limestone drop over
aeons and when your thought
stands back thousands
of years you see
this roiling stone
dreamscape is cover for ancient
catastrophe for gargantuan
rock-fall
the bleeding and the moan now
stilled the splinters
smoothed and high
many feet high
above your head there is another
earth-crack and the sky is blue and on the moor a lark
is singing
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Grafted
Two parallel saplings grow to the side of a path :
…………………………………. on the right a flaking gray pole : to the left
scarred white bark. Three feet up they lean in
…………………………………. grapple graft in a bulbous striped cyst so
meaty it could burst with a prick a unified thing
…………………………………. the cross piece in the letter H androgynous
yet able to disentangle into two selves with one
…………………………………. difference : white continues in a direct line
above gray’s roots while gray persists unfazed
…………………………………. above white’s lower trunk. Intolerable?
Bizarre? If you dare dispute biological truth plot
…………………………………. the parabolic equation leave two Us co-
joined : one upright one upside down axes flipped
…………………………………. leaves mixed in the sap’s slippery switch.
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Translations
I. Fear
bleating….broken….bare boned
skin held together with epoxy…..with ligatures
what wants to pull apart when the body is no longer of service
what falls into disuse as soon as blood stops circulating
(the mass spread before we could catch it
we’re sorry
maybe you need some time alone
here’s someone you can call
they should be able to assist you)
II. Isolation
lament for the ICU
lament for the gathering sky
lament for masturbation
lament for holidays
lament for morphine
lament for making no sense
lament for aphasia
III. Choking Hazards
swollen tongue….cotton rags
too many syllables in the throat
breath held in the chest….fluid into lungs
medical implements used for the going-over
IV. The Body
what has gone unnoticed for years
what has given us no reason to complain
where is the ripcord….the safety manual
why can’t the dismissal be temporary
the weight of weight
final acts….an untidy separation
V. Removal
before going under
we all laugh the drunken laugh
of the soon to be sliced open
Winter Cedars
These solitary things —
……………………………wretched statues
……….fragments
…………………………….of the waxing moon
For all this to happen
…………………………….becoming landscape
myself
………………….my mouth
in prayer
………………….To attach myself
ghostly…….terrible
………………………….to the tall cedars
by Jeffery Beam
Between Season
Spears of new jonquils push through black
mulch beside sweet-green hair of garlic,
nets of shivering rosemary and sage,
leafless stalk of a prickly old climber.
I turn a palm of dark crumbling winter
leaves into damp soil, mix in crushed eggshells,
coffee grounds dried in a ceramic bowl
from a week of mornings. In the latent
garden ferns send furry runners under
cover to network with iris tubers,
bulbous elephant ears, blind-white onions.
If I poke the lean edge of my trowel
into earth, decaying smells of birthing
rise from what lies beneath that skin to mine.
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November Impatiens
Frozen/thawed,
they dangle from a large
porch planter’s edge,
yesterday pinks and reds heaped
high after long summer, mild fall, delayed
cold, reduced overnight to nothing, no twinge
of color left, limp stems you cringe,
coming and going, to glimpse, but once inside,
forget. My father calls to say
my mother is in the hospital, knee
given out three hundred
miles away; morphine-tongued, she babbles later about my
broken-legged father’s meal delivery schedule, my brother’s anger, my
husband, out of town again.
by Wendy Vardaman
Last of December
Cottonwood flames, cherry parallels fire —
out of the crack and hinge, quiet whistle
over the grate: a comfort to know the dead sing
even as they pass into the new year.
by Todd Davis
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qarrtsiluni 