Archive for July, 2008
Thursday, July 31st, 2008
“Fable Telling How Night…” by Marty McConnell
Marty McConnell
FABLE TELLING HOW NIGHT
INVENTED HERSELF OUT OF SOUND
nights I was afraid of the moon
or spiders or the janitor
who was always whistling
I’d cross the long hall
like a river, like Jordan
in the song, toward the bed
where my parents slept. I’d stand
by my mother’s head for seconds
though it seemed my whole life,
perched at the hem of their
paired [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in Poems by Tim
Wednesday, July 30th, 2008
“Sycamore Canyon” by Teddy Macker
Teddy Macker
SYCAMORE CANYON
for Vaughn Montgomery
The dead doe on the Pacific Coast Highway
was lying on her left side. She was almost
the same color as the dirt around her.
Whenever a car passed—it was Sunday
and people were driving the coast—
the fur on her neck would rise in the wind.
Her eyes were dry and [...]
2 Comments » - Posted in Poems by Tim
Tuesday, July 29th, 2008
“Love Song with Plum” by Diane Lockward
Diane Lockward
LOVE SONG WITH PLUM
I take what he offers, a plum,
round and plump,
deeper than amethyst purple.
I lift the fruit from his palm.
Like Little Jack Horner, I want it in a pie,
my thumb stuck in to pluck
out that plum.
I wanted it baked in a pudding,
served post-prandial,
drenched in something potable,
and set on fire, to sit across from [...]
2 Comments » - Posted in Poems by Tim
Monday, July 28th, 2008
“Spin” by Alison Townsend
Alison Townsend
SPIN
I don’t remember if the bottle was a Coke or a Fresca,
just that the glass was cool against our hands
in the warm, empty tool shed. Where we’d gathered
after swimming all afternoon at Debbie Worthman’s
eighth grade pool party, everyone’s skin damp
and blue in the shadows, the boys’ chests bare,
the other girls wearing cute, peek-a-boo cover-ups
that [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in Awards, Poems by Tim
Sunday, July 27th, 2008
IF NO MOON by Moira Linehan
Review by Marcus Smith
IF NO MOON
by Moira Linehan
Southern Illinois University Press
Crab Orchard Series
1915 University Press Drive
SIUC Mail Code 6806
Carbondale, IL 62902-6806
ISBN: 0-8093-2761-9
2007, 80pp., paper, $14.95
www.siu.edu/~siupress
Moira Linehan begins her debut collection, If No Moon, with a telling passage from Seamus Heaney’s “To a Dutch Potter in Ireland”:
To have lived it through and now be free to [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in E-Reviews by Tim
Saturday, July 26th, 2008
“Being Jewish in a Small Town” by Lyn Lifshin
Lyn Lifshin
BEING JEWISH IN A SMALL TOWN
someone writes kike on
the blackboard and the
“k’s” pull thru the
chalk, stick in my
plump, pale thighs.
Even after the high
school burns down the
word is written in
the ashes. My under
pants’ elastic snaps
on Main St because
I can’t go to
Pilgrim Fellowship.
I’m the one Jewish girl
in town but the 4
Cohen brothers
want blond hair
billowing from their
car. [...]
4 Comments » - Posted in Poems by Tim
Friday, July 25th, 2008
“The Gravedigger Thinks Of” by T.S. Davis
T.S. Davis, RN
THE GRAVEDIGGER THINKS OF
The gravedigger sits on the backhoe smoking a cigarette.
It’s quiet beneath the trees that partially hide him
from the scrum of mourners beset by grief, regret,
their weeping faces wan and pinched and grim.
The gravedigger waits until the last one leaves,
then yells to signal his men to lower the box,
and turns the [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Poems, Tributes by Tim
Thursday, July 24th, 2008
Essay: “A Kind of Gift” by T.S. Davis
T. S. Davis, RN
A KIND OF GIFT
…I resign’d myself
To sit by the wounded and sooth them, or silently watch the dead…
I dress the perforated shoulder, the foot with the bullet wound,
Cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so sickening, so offensive,
While the attendant stands behind aside me holding the tray and pail.
I am [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in Essays, Tributes by Tim
Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008
“Prayer” by Keetje Kuipers
Keetje Kuipers
PRAYER
Perhaps as a child you had the chicken pox
and your mother, to soothe you in your fever
or to help you fall asleep, came into your room
and read to you from some favorite book,
Charlotte’s Web or Little House on the Prairie,
a long story that she quietly took you through
until your eyes became magnets for your [...]
5 Comments » - Posted in Poems by Tim
Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008
“A Poem for Valentine’s Day” by Aseem Kaul
Aseem Kaul
A POEM FOR VALENTINE’S DAY
I swore I wouldn’t write
a poem today.
Instead, I decided,
I would do my taxes.
So here I am, receipts
scattered across the floor
like forgotten letters,
stacks of dates that refuse
to add up, and a heart
that keeps trying to
calculate just what the last
year has cost it; how much
it can get away with;
what, if anything, it [...]
