The Sand
Speaks
Sandra Beasley
I'm fluid and omnivorous, casual inmy 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.
I don't know what to do and do nothing.
********************************
Selfless
Forrest Hamer
When he found himself falling, and he was fallinginto 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
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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