State Fair Fireworks, Labor Dayby Maryann Corbett Look up: blazing chrysanthemums in roseshriek into bloom above the Tilt-a-Whirls,hang for a blink, then die in smoky swirls.They scream revolt at what the body knows:all revels end. We clap and sigh. Then, no—another rose! another peony! break,flame, roar, as though by roaring they might makethe rides whirlContinue reading “State Fair Fireworks, Labor Day by Maryann Corbett”
Category Archives: states
ellwood beach, 1991 by Scott Ferry
ellwood beach, 1991 by Scott Ferry climb the 2 x 4s up the eucalyptus seesaw up to a platform 20 feet high then a friend grabs the twine (a tail attached to the thick umbilical cord pulsing 60 feet above) and throws it up and i reach out and snag the rope then i placeContinue reading “ellwood beach, 1991 by Scott Ferry”
The Shoe Tree by Mary Langer Thompson
The Shoe Treeby Mary Langer ThompsonFor Paula I don’t think I’ll ever seethis tree full of shoes again,but I have a photographshe sent, branches laden with tied-togethersneakers—maybe one pair was hers,and she slipped awayfrom that rented room in the mountainsto add to it—that would be like her—secretly flinging a pair of good shoesup into theContinue reading “The Shoe Tree by Mary Langer Thompson”
Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock by Galway Kinnell
Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock by Galway Kinnell 1 I can support it no longer. Laughing ruefully at myself For all I claim to have suffered I get up. Damned nightmarer! It is New Hampshire out here, It is nearly the dawn. The song of the whippoorwill stops And the dimension of depth seizes everything.Continue reading “Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock by Galway Kinnell”
Iowa by Robbie Klein
Iowa by Robbie Klein It never completely gets dark on those back roads. There are stars, deceptively few. And velvet consumes and velvet erupts: the softness is the leaves and the dirt paths and stables and skin. And eyes. The dark places, the secret places: abrupt, always, fleeting but indelibly there, like a muscle memory.Continue reading “Iowa by Robbie Klein”
Kid, this is Iowa by Jeffrey Bean
Kid, this is Iowaby Jeffrey Bean everything we are is here—my dead grandmother as a girlhunting fireflies in tiger lilies,me throwing walnuts at gas cansby the barn, stomping mud puddles,my sticky hands lifting an appleto my mouth. Here are dogwoods and hills of corn that lead to more hillsof corn and more corn until theContinue reading “Kid, this is Iowa by Jeffrey Bean”
Fairbanks Under the Solstice by John Haines
Fairbanks Under the Solsticeby John Haines Slowly, without sun, the day sinkstoward the close of December.It is minus sixty degrees. Over the sleeping houses a densefog rises—smoke from banked fires,and the snowy breath of an abyssthrough which the cold townis perceptibly falling. As if Death were a voice made visible,with the power of illumination… Now,Continue reading “Fairbanks Under the Solstice by John Haines”
A Walrus Tusk from Alaska by Alfred Corn
A Walrus Tusk from Alaskaby Alfred Corn Arp might have done a version of it in white marble,the model held aloft, in approximate awe:this touch cross-section oval of tusk,dense and cool as fossil cranium— preliminary bloodshed condonableif Inupiat hunters on King Island mayfollow as their fathers did the bark of a husky,echoes ricocheted from roughed-upContinue reading “A Walrus Tusk from Alaska by Alfred Corn”
Letter from Shuyak Island, Alaska by Helena Minton
Letter from Shuyak Island, Alaskaby Helena Minton To my grandmother I liked to sit at your dressing table.Whiskey-colored perfumes smelled of dust.The photograph beside the mirror showeda serious face, a man in pince-nezwho died the year I was born. Nights, lying on the fold-out couch,I was surrounded: mahogany, Chinese lamps,and paintings of forestsboxed in by bigContinue reading “Letter from Shuyak Island, Alaska by Helena Minton”
Hokusai in Iowa by Dan Campion
I no longer remember I am here there being no mountain and I at its foot reading the sea-level poems about me to Grant Wood whose denim bib rustles like a skiff’s sail perhaps waves in dirt and tassels really are like waves of the sea so long as we do not think about whoseContinue reading “Hokusai in Iowa by Dan Campion”
POETRY and PLACES 