Archive
Cathedral forest
by Steve Wing
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Steve Wing lives in Florida and has been a frequent contributor to qarrtsiluni. More about him can be found here.
[Every green growing]
Every green growing flowering thing
is filling the air—Dame’s rocket vanilla
blends with honey-suckle, the tang
of waterleaf, the siren call of lily-
of-the valley, and below that note
the breath of last lilac blooms—breathe,
breathe, and even your own out-breath
adds its minty zest as the cherry trees
and pagoda dogwoods rain down
their pollen, as the wind stirs the mix
with some slight promise of rain—
only a month ago there was snow,
early dusk, the lake ice-locked—
now this rush, life calling to life to begin.
Robin Chapman’s most recent book, The Eelgrass Meadow, will be published by Tebot Bach this fall. Her poems have appeared recently in Alaska Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, and Bosphorus Art Project Quarterly. She is recipient of the 2010 Helen Howe Poetry Prize from Appalachia.
Calculate
And if I will raise hands empty of stars,
forgive me.
And if I am through being fed by the rain,
wound round limited material need,
forgive me.
And should I come to the river where questions
are washed away under waternymph murmurs,
of fearful mechanical measures of wealth,
forgive me.
In wind and windfalls; in the imperatives of words;
in front of distant thunderheads, of empty stars
considering their way from me; those moments
you wanted wrapped round the flesh are flesh,
forgive me.
Silence by little silence fills my windfall nest
fortified with shadow for the mud. I am
out of starlight, empty of rain, a calculation
rattled on the riverbed, where the wrong jewels
flash their must-have figures. My sleeping stars,
forgive me.
Andrew Bailey lives and works on the south coast of England, has published poems in journals online and in print, and was a winner of Poetry Review‘s Geoffrey Dearmer Award. A first collection, Zeal, is forthcoming from Enitharmon Press. One of the original editors for the Poetry Archive, he has also worked for The Poetry Society, Poetry International Web and a handful of fringe theatre companies.
You Are Here to Receive This Prophecy
You are here to receive this prophecy,
I am so certain of this I would wager life on it.
Get open, fast. Get to the highest point
available, that hill, for example. Even better,
the tree on top of the hill. Clamber up,
go on. Do what the branches do, reach up,
tilt your face to the clouds. Now you wait.
Prepare to hear. You never know what the voice
will sound like, perhaps not a voice. Maybe
like a current of electricity sizzling, sparking,
or the snap of knuckles cracking. A slide whistle
or kazoo—don’t laugh, it could happen.
How would that look, God talking to you,
you laughing it up in a tree on a hilltop.
Be a lightning rod, an antenna. Reception
can be active, you know. Think of a dancer
being lifted, all her muscles tightening
around her bones. She is lighter for how she
lifts herself, gets smaller, more powerful.
Call the message to you, show you can
be trusted to hear and hold it. Don’t even think
of coming down from there, you just wait.
You stay up in that tree, listening. The words
will come to you, they will, they will.
Hannah Stephenson is a poet, editor, instructor, and singer-songwriter based in Columbus, Ohio. Her writing has been featured (or is forthcoming) in various online and print publications, including the Huffington Post, The Nervous Breakdown, MAYDAY, Stymie, and Escape into Life. For more of her work, visit her daily poetry site, The Storialist, at thestorialist.com.
Notre Dame interior
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Adrian Thompson is teacher from Birmingham in the UK. In his spare time he enjoys taking photographs, making music and being silly.
The bells done rung
by Shann Palmer
Watch the sun walk the sky while
below shadow waits to takes us in,
its long tongue lapping up hope.
A man who pays attention wears a hat,
carries an umbrella, holds his heart
in a righteous place, how steady he runs.
The song said ‘you gotta serve somebody’, well
here comes the new god, same as the old—
Don’t let him catch you, don’t look back.
Sun’s not like you with your work undone,
his job’s secure till heaven rains fire, you can’t
get close to that, let go and live a-humble.
Shann Palmer (blog), a Texan living in Richmond, Virginia, hosts readings, workshops, and open mikes in Central Virginia. Published in print and on the web, she has recent work in Short, Fast, and Deadly, Lingerpost, and Redheaded Stepchild, and poems forthcoming in Poetry South and the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature.
affirmation
36″ x 36″ oil on canvas
In her mid-40s, Carol Beth Icard enrolled in the visual arts program at Berkshire Community College, where she says she joyfully immersed herself in drawing, painting and art history classes: “I felt like a tight bud unfurling in the sunshine of my education. Following graduation I attended a weeklong class in Italy. My heart cracked open, colors flowed out and revealed a new path.” Read the full bio and resume on her website.
“One Nation Under Me”
— GOD
(on a highway billboard)
Whose? The Cooper Mini cutting me off asks my bumper
to “Coexist.” Stay in your own lane
my fist-horn exclaims. Once when I was cradled
my father pressed a Manischewitz-soaked cloth
to my tongue. Generations circled me, the Rabbi
slowed his hand and breath. I was sculpted to be defined
by what our ancestors ask of us. There is a wall
we love so much we kiss it. Is this why I inherit
barbed wire? Why my grandmother suffered her first stroke
shortly after my uncle’s shiksa wedding beneath a crucifix?
How easy it is to whistle across state lines
when the radio sings such indistinct songs.
At the truck stop cafe the TV is muted, though
dark teenagers throw stones through a cloud of teargas
and they remind you of thieves. My first sensation
was a scalpel. I’m driving to D.C. to learn
what makes my family history fathomless or
miraculous. Never forget this starkly-lit exhibit:
chest-high piles of black shoes, pocket watches,
gold teeth. God makes choices and I refuse
to be one of them. We ask past prophets
to write laws so we won’t have to later. Every man
and his son shall cover his head before
your eyes. Grandma raised me to avert my stare
when anyone darker slunk by, which must be why
I thought only some of us could ever be seen.
God makes choices and sometimes we are not cruel.
Still I pray for safe parking. All day at the Holocaust Museum
fortunately I learn the final solution to the Jewish question
is another question, only kinder. God makes choices and so
will you, I remind the infant my father carries. Generations
circle my living room. The oldest tree in the yard
leans its shadow against the curtained window.
Brent Goodman’s debut poetry collection The Brother Swimming Beneath Me (2009 Black Lawrence Press) was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and a Thom Gunn Award. His second book, Far From Sudden, is forthcoming in 2012. A recipient of two Wisconsin Arts Board Fellowships, his work has appeared in Poetry, Diode, Green Mountains Review, Puerto Del Sol, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Pank, Devil’s Lake, and elsewhere. Brent lives in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, where he’s a professional copywriter, assistant editor for the online journal Anti-, and a certified Reiki Master teacher/practitioner.
“I Heard Their Wings Like the Sound of Many Waters”
In the dark, in the deeps of the night that are
Crevasses of a sea, I heard their wings.
I heard the trickling of tiny feathers
With their hairs out like milkweed parachutes
Floating idly on the summer air,
I heard the curl and splash, the thunderbolts
Of pinions, the rapids and rattle of shafts—
Heard Niagara sweep the barreled woman
And shove her under water for three days,
I heard a jar of fragrance spill its waves
As a lone figure poured out all she could,
Heard the sky’s bronze-colored raindrops scatter
On corrugated roofs and tops of wells,
I heard the water-devil whirligigs,
I heard an awesome silence when the wings
Held still, upright as flowers in a vase,
And when I turned to see why they had stilled,
Then what I saw was likenesses to star
Imprisoned in a form of marble flesh,
With a face like lightning-fires and aura
Trembling like a rainbow on the shoulders,
But all the else I saw was unlikeness
That bent me like a bow until my brow
Was pressed against the minerals of earth,
And when I gasped at air, I tasted gold.
Marly Youmans (website, blog) is a poet and novelist from the Carolinas, currently living in Cooperstown, New York. A collection of poems entitled The Throne of Psyche (Mercer University Press, 2011) is her eighth and newest book, and she hopes that if you like this poem, you’ll want to have a copy and read more. Forthcoming are five other books, including two books of poetry: Thaliad, a book-length poem forthcoming from Phoenicia Publishing in Montreal; and The Foliate Head, forthcoming from Stanza Press (U.K.).
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