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Friday, September 12, 2014

Eye Eye Eye

The Sand Speaks                            Sandra Beasley
I'm fluid and omnivorous, casual in
my eternity. I'll knock up your oysters.
I'll eat your diamonds. I'm a mutt, no
one thing at all, just the size that counts

and if you're animal small enough, come;
if you're vegetable small enough, come;
if you're mineral small enough, come.
Mothers, brush me from the hands

of your children. Lovers, shake me
from the cuffs of your pants. Draw
a line, make it my mouth: I'll name
your country. I'm a Yes man at heart.

Let's play Hide and Go Drown. Let's play
Pearls for His Eyes. When the men fall
I like the way their arms touch, their legs
touch. There are always more men, men


who bring bags big enough to hold
each other. A man who kneels down
with a smaller bag, cups and pours, cups
and pours, as if I could prove anything. 

********************************
from The Desert as Garden of Paradise             Adrienne Rich

11.
What’s sacred is nameless
moves in the eyeflash
holds still in the circle
of the great arid basin
once watered and fertile
probes outward through twigbark
a green ghost inhabiting
dormant stick, abstract thorn
What’s sacred is singular:
out of this dry fork, this
wreck of perspective
what’s sacred tries itself

one more time

********************************

Drought                                                       Felecia Caton Garcia
Try to remember: things go wrong in spite of it all.
I listen to our daughters singing in the crackling rows
of corn and wonder why I don't love them more.
They move like dark birds, small mouths open

to the sky and hungry. All afternoon I listen
to the highway and watch clouds push down over the hills.
I remember your legs, heavy with sleep, lying across mine.
I remember when the world was transparent, trembling, all

shattering light. I had to grit my teeth against its brilliance.
It was nothing like this stillness that makes it difficult
to lift my eyes. When I finally do, I see you
carrying the girls over the sharp stones of the creek bed.

When they pull at my clothes and lean against my arms,
I don't know what to do and do nothing. 

********************************

Selfless                                                                   Forrest Hamer
When he found himself falling, and he was falling
into love (so, THIS is that feeling of being,
he said to no one in particular),
he opened his eyes and saw him who was looking
back, and each one witnessed
the other less a self than before and
more, and more, but more.

I say to you, the self is promiscuous—most anybody will do;
any body, too; world and worlds—


Know this: falling-apart, fragments-assembling one:
no one in particular is fallen for you, too. 

********************************
Something in My Eye                            Allison Smythe
The world is writ in Braille but our hands
are tied behind our backs with finest cashmere.
And yet somehow we know:

Rivers wait for no one, mountains do not mourn,
there are no circles under the eyes of the ancient
hills nor will the silent canyon remember

when you walked it. Between spank and breath
the orchid of mortality is delivered, an unsigned
card pinned to the stem, the memory

of a kiss. The world is repeatedly stained
with ink spilled at twilight. When even dumb
cities bloom without regret like gladiolus

before they wither, what does it mean to wear
flesh, to learn the name of the dark
birds assembled on the wire like beads

on a rosary, time always running out
like a lover sprinting for the bus, the first


drops of 10,000-year-old rain just beginning
to darken the lapel of his fine woolen coat. 

********************************
Lullaby                                                         Amanda Jernigan

My little lack-of-light, my swaddled soul,
December baby. Hush, for it is dark,
and will grow darker still. We must embark
directly.  Bring an orange as the toll
for Charon: he will be our gondolier.
Upon the shore, the season pans for light,
and solstice fish, their eyes gone milky white,
come bearing riches for the dying year:
solstitial kingdom. It is yours, the mime
of branches and the drift of snow. With shaking
hands, Persephone, the winter’s wife,
will tender you a gift. Born in a time
of darkness, you will learn the trick of making.
You shall make your consolation all your life.

********************************

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