Archive for June, 2009

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

“DANCING AT THE DEVIL’S PARTY: ESSAYS ON POETRY, POLITICS, AND THE EROTIC” by Alicia Suskin Ostriker

Review by Moira Richards DANCING AT THE DEVIL’S PARTY: ESSAYS ON POETRY, POLITICS, AND THE EROTIC by Alicia Suskin Ostriker University of Michigan Press 839 Greene Street Ann Arbor, MI 48104-3209 ISBN 978-0-472-09696-1 2000, 136 pp., $14.95 http://www.press.umich.edu I devour books like this. I live across the world from Alicia Ostriker and my education barely [...]

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Monday, June 29th, 2009

“Not Everything I Do Is Magic” by David M. DeLeon

David M. deLeon NOT EVERYTHING I DO IS MAGIC Consider, Sally: the way the sun shines laterally below stormclouds. And the clipped exuberance of green. And there’s everything that passes by in a single still moment, there’s the messy kanji of branches, the superscript of birds. There’s that warmth that someone you don’t mind sitting [...]

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Sunday, June 28th, 2009

“Breaking Babies” by Christine Gelineau

Christine Gelineau BREAKING BABIES Nobody breaks ranch stock the old way now, leaving those youngsters wild till two or three then snub ’em down, cinch ’em up, and pow, spring to the saddle and set ’em free. They’d sunfish, crow-hop, leap and roll, frantic to lose the catamount hooked to their back. The cowboy had [...]

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Saturday, June 27th, 2009

“Cottonwood Blues” by Thea Gavin

Thea Gavin COTTONWOOD BLUES           Somewhere along Highway 395 In the pasture over west— when cottonwood shimmer fills the air the lizard in me wants to rest up on a silvered fence rail; there, twitchless between red dirt and sky, I’d blend into the wind-carved wood, let the dark birds circle, [...]

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Friday, June 26th, 2009

“Mahler in New York” by Joseph Fasano

Joseph Fasano MAHLER IN NEW YORK Now when I go out, the wind pulls me into the grave. I go out to part the hair of a child I left behind, and he pushes his face into my cuffs, to smell the wind. If I carry my father with me, it is the way a [...]

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Thursday, June 25th, 2009

FEAR by Pamela Garvey

Review by Rebecca Ellis FEAR by Pamela Garvey Finishing Line Press Post Office Box 1626 Georgetown, KY 40324 ISBN 978-1-59924-236-1 2008, 27 pp., $12.00 www.amazon.com If only I could’ve pinned the angel down. But the angel is winds sweeping through fingers like sand, each grain gliding coldly up the arms into the frantic heart, then [...]

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Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

“Dark Coats” by Trent Busch

Trent Busch DARK COATS Bright as a red dress on a drab street to the eye I was once to the stopped moment when she, as I, saw others in a mist of dark coats going to and from work or at Christmas time in and out of shops alone trying to find right presents [...]

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Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

“Expiration Dates” by James Best

James Best EXPIRATION DATES There was a peeling little grocery on the corner of Rice Lake where my brother worked between fifteen and seventeen. A nothing much happens place in a town too big to know anyone. Robbed once, and solved and nothing even close to scandal. Sometimes the owner’s son would smoke pot behind [...]

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Monday, June 22nd, 2009

“At a Party on Ellis Island, Watching Fireworks” by Traci Brimhall

Traci Brimhall AT A PARTY ON ELLIS ISLAND WATCHING FIREWORKS The man next to me sings God Bless America even though he knows the Statue of Liberty is unsafe to enter. He sings my home, sweet home, and I bless fireworks breaking over our heads. Bless three islands held apart by tunneled water. Bless bridges, [...]

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Sunday, June 21st, 2009

“Farrier” by Cal Freeman

Cal Freeman FARRIER A barn cat’s complaint set to the pitch of curdled milk, the poem for Bill is no good. Bill, it gets no better: a stone so useless it refuses to skip or sail or barter against the wind’s heft. Your words sprayed like gravel across the moat and landed somewhere in the [...]

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