|
|
|
Back To Blog Entries
| Complete poems reviewed in previous blog
by myhandsarestars at 3/25/2008 11:59:43 PM
2008 March 25 Poems from Potomac Review issue #43
William Wanderless
"Twilight Visitation"
Outside the children whistle, whoop, and shriek,
loft sticks and pebbles skyward., clap their hands,
exuberant and aimless, I assume.,
until my stricken window shocks them still.
In hushed, downcast procession they approach,
enclosing in a melancholy ring
their crumpled victim, sprawled upon the lawn.
Contriving rites fit for an impromptu
funeral I rush to join them, yet conned
by flase calls and counterfeit moths, the stunned
bat still stirs, lurching to his feet to screech
his indignation. Penitent we beg
ascension of this sneering little god,
this marvel of articulated dark.
William Jolliff
"Rebecca Reads for Keeps"
She sits darkly, shadowed by a book.
Each flick of her eyes pulls a phrase
out of itself, into her, and she stops,
licks a corner with her finger, goes on.
The story will never be the same--
not once she's done, once she's chewed
each semantic glitch, divided the intent,
pressed the author for a hard account.
There'd better be a really good story.
And if it's sad, there should be not doubt--
no mystery--why. She'll live with misery,
but there has to be a reason. Or reasons.
If that pale author knew what a drubbing
his prose was due, phrase by phrase,
page by page, he might think twice
about fudging on his final revisions.
Jesse Graves
"Late Summer Woodcut"
Man is in love, and loves what vanishes.
What more is there to say?
William Butler Yeats
We waited until nearly sunset before
we picked up our knives and went out.
I watched my uncle's fingers
through the late brink of light
working over the rough cedar stick
with a black-handled Barlow,
the blade no wider than his thumb.
Purple shavings curled away toward
the grass and into the folds of his jacket.
Their scent reminded me of a toychest
filled with mental airplanes, each one
marked with an allied flag on its wing.
He showed me the test of a knife,
razing hair along the back of his hand.
Each of us knew the terrible truth,
what happens when it gets in your lungs,
how the menace multiplies and eats through.
We needed a long talk about the disease,
chemistry and radiation, what to believe
before the cool August dark drove us inside.
Starlings flocked to the trees behind us,
their wings beating heavily as a thunderstorm.
I took their whistles and clicks for song,
listening for a message, some secret release.
Our breath fogged the air and to see it
come to life, a presence right before us,
amplified the settling darkness--
this is all there is, all we are, without it, nothing.
A smooth circle suddenly took shape
at the stick's slender end and each flick
of his knife revealed a deeper stroke of color,
the heart of the wood emerging.
|
|
|
|
|
 |