Poems
Monika Cooper
Assumption
Windy and chipped she stands,
The last great goddess,
Her painted smile chapped.
Her leaded dress
Peels blue and white, about her wrapped.
So all earth's gods decay
When mortal holds change hands.
A white bit of her face
Falls to her feet. Alone,
What does a goddess think
Turning to stone?
Why does she smile? Her cheek turns pink
And sunset comes to grace
The high abandoned place.
Does the last goddess cry
When no one brings flowers
Or lights her a candle?
With all her powers
Gathered back under her mantle
Receding into sky
How does a goddess die?
Untitled
And then the falling rain,
A herd that passed through in one day, two nights:
Nudged by a shadow, shepherd of their train,
Who screened the two great lights,
They grazed in peace on creeping feet
And left the grass they trod more sweet.
Meekly they nosed and mooed
The little herdlings of the heavy sky,
Who strode above the tender mulching brood.
Skirts of divinity
Across our faces and our rooftops swept,
The hems of heaven passing, while we slept.
Daniel Janeiro
St. Sebastian
Trembled by the muscle's clustered grip
On each shaft's head, the sprouted wood began
A bird wing's measured beat, as if to fan
The crisp air with the lifeblood's giddy clip,
Pulsing the measured rhythm's rise and dip,
And flapping the awkward scaffold of the man.
It wasn't according to the archers' plan,
To place, symmetrically, two at each hip,
Two buried in the ribs, and the last two
Odd-angling from the shoulders. Nor could they
Deny the strange result: With each drawn breath,
The white plumed arrows, arced in just that way,
Fluttered, grotesque with grace, bearing, in death
The youth on terrible wings, too wildly true.
Amos Johannes Hunt
Zucchini Cabaret
I thought the thing was fully pitched:
its kicked up limbs had gone knee high,
daring themselves to show some more,
and fanned out hands extended curled
come-hithers on all sides.
Yet, when my full eyes made so bold
as to roll down the long green shanks,
a flower crackled into sense,
burst out in tongues of ruddy gold,
in golden tongues of red foretold
a fresh extravagance.
Between Fields
Somewhere beyond the soy, invisible,
the highway thrums and pops its basic song,
making it heard how distancelessly full
the world can be, already is out there.
Above the road, the red-winged blackbirds, long
accustomed to our wires, are ready now
to occupy whatever strange new air
that shallow flood of music prophesies.
They circle out, exploring, choosing how
to drop their chacks and chucks into the sound,
how they most profitably may devise
the loamy bed of their ancestral sky,
how make for generations hence the ground
melodiously bear their ancient cry.
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