Flurry*

Jim Gilbert*

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 17:38:43 -0500

THE WINTER RAINS

The green roof
Can't hold back
The winter rains
The ceiling leaks
Above the stoked
Wood stove
The droplets
Falling in cadence
Upon the hot iron
Hissing
Winter saves no one.

Chrissy Kolaya*

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:38:39 -0500

IN THE BELMONT

I ride the elevator to the top,
to the empty ballroom,
and though any minute now
I could be discovered,
I watch the lake coming back to life
slowly and inside me,
the great thaw.

Susan Solomon*

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:38:36 -0500

INSIDE AND BELOW

I thought back to an eastern December,
when I was six and walking to school alone.
I looked down at the gutter
into a sparkling, frozen puddle. It held a small section
of newspaper page, its print visible through the ice.
I knelt down, possessed
by the black letters under winter glass,
silent sounds I did not yet
understand.

Do you know the sound
of a frozen lake moaning,
breathing to life in the spring?
In the Minneapolis April,
the tones boomed deep and hidden,
like a whale song secret
under a cracking world.
An ice crystalline exoskeleton, scorpion-shaped,
glittered diamonds on the sand in the sun.
It melted beneath itself, its heart
dripping to death and to life on the shore.

Patricia Kirkpatrick*

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:38:32 -0500

SPRING

after Hsiang Hung (1940--)

When snow melts
the river opens.
I walk there every day, certain
I will see you.
I see tulips, narcissi,
a willow standing near the water.
Birds I have never seen before.
Your name runs ahead of me
like a furrow in earth.

Amanda St. John*

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:38:22 -0500

BIRCH AND MOON

At dusk, the park clears out.
A wide strip of gauze snags
on the finger of a birch.

Then comes the moon, squeezing
his smiling head into the night.
His light spots the birch.

She raises her limbs above her head
the gauze waves in the wind.
She lowers her limbs, drawing a fat circle
“Moon,” she gestures.

He stays all night.

Michelle Meyer*

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:51:37 -0500

SOFT SPOTS

The top of a newborn’s head.

Grandma’s ego.
No one tells her the ham is dry.

The bruise on my thigh from running into the chair
Again.

My heart.

Swollen wisdom teeth breaking the skin.
An adult form of teething.
(Is it any wonder why babies cry?)
The relentless kink in my neck. The passing
of time–
Old bones brittle.

The plastic bird on a post, stuck
into the frozen ground by a gravestone, wings
Spinning Wildly
in the cold blowing wind of winter as if in a panic.
Unable
to fly away from the inevitable end
of its plastic life.

Wendy Vardaman*

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 19:30:09 -0600

AFTER SNOW

On sunlit days
like this it shines,
so much light bouncing
off the ever-white
surface that it seems
itself the source,

the origin, of light,
each multi-faced flake
a weighty word
unheard, fallen
from the always-open
mouth of God.

Lee C. Thomas*

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 19:29:58 -0600

RESERVATIONS

Once a week at lunch with coworkers
from Japan and Malaysia, Hong Kong and Korea.

Once a week over beers with the guys
after volleyball at the Y.

Once a month at a potluck dinner party
for old pals and new neighbors, mismatched

platters and plates on the table, open
wine-bottle wishes dripping pink on paper

napkins already stained with the tears
of some last-told joke or whisper.

We crowd together at my table, take comfort
in the buttress of a sweatered arm

against arm, chairs wedged up to bookshelves,
candle-lit faces in the Minnesota night —

We are in our thirties
and pausing to eat.

The bread someone learned how to bake,
a salad of pears and warm

chevre, desserts we don't think
we should taste. We're passing on

one thing after another: the parmesan,
the butter, the promotion.

We're buying houses
and trying to get pregnant.

We're due for a raise
and need more insurance.

We are hairless
from the chemotherapy.

We're stocking the cupboards.
We have surgery scheduled.

We are without a country
and waiting

for a green card or the next election.
We're carrying divorce papers

and a pen in the side pocket
of a messenger bag.

We're moving again.
We're rethinking our investments.

Margot Fortunato Galt*

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 19:30:13 -0600

CARDINAL POINTS

Only in heavy snow do they appear
on bright days; otherwise, at dusk,
in small flocks, the males garnet-studded
against grey cuffs of snow,
their mates, the color of clay
except for red pincers of beaks
which cantilever hunger
off pine boughs.
How I love these birds of fading light,
their calls sharp and cracked as
descending cold, their summer beauty
reduced to a flutter of wings,
their search like my own,
when only by dint of memory
can I find the sustenance
I am looking for.

F.J. Bergmann*

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:30:05 -0600

[UNTITLED]

five inches last night
horses rolling in fresh snow
make monster angels

Anjie Kokan*

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 11:00:44 -0600

CONVERSATION HEARTS

Hey, Cutie Pie, maybe I don't  and maybe I do. Even if it is true love, I'll wait, will you? But in the sweet talk,  blow the hugs away and let's just kiss.

Sandra Lindow*

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 11:00:39 -0600

LEAPS TO THE MOON

Above and beyond the rotting
watermelon rind and banana peels
in the mulch bin,
Venus and Jupiter closely
flank a brilliant crescent moon,
a configuration that won’t
be seen again for another sixty years.
I will be mulch for moonbeams then
so for now I stand coatless,
transfixed by bannered purple-teal sky
while the breath of December
fills me to my bones.

Catherine Jagoe*

Tue, 9 Feb 2010 11:00:36 -0600

JANUARY 6th: EPIPHANY

I wake to a vitreous world
exquisite, pitiless,
glazed in glare ice
that sheer veneer

all glitter and crystal
no green victuals here
winter has seared
the fat off the land

its maw yawns, yearns
to maul us, bite
after frosty bite,
man-eater

it has tasted blood
last night a sleepwalker
who strayed out barefoot
died, all blued

and it is stalking me
I’ve seen its paw prints
on my windscreen’s
damask, deadly spoor

Michelle Meyer*

Sun, 7 Feb 2010 11:00:28 -0600

SOFT SPOTS

The top of a newborn’s head.

Grandma’s ego.
No one tells her the ham is dry.
The bruise on my thigh from running into the chair
Again.

My heart.

Swollen wisdom teeth breaking the skin.
An adult form of teething.
(Is it any wonder why babies cry?)
The relentless kink in my neck. The passing
of Time–
Old bones brittle.

The plastic bird on a post, stuck
into the frozen ground by a gravestone, wings
Spinning Wildly
in the cold blowing wind of winter as if in a Panic.
Unable
to fly away from the inevitable end

of its plastic life.

B.J. Best*

Sat, 6 Feb 2010 11:00:47 -0600

SELF-PORTRAIT WITH SNOW SHOVEL

i contemplate the driveway like a grim
story problem: so many trillion snowflakes,
so many inches per hour, so many cubic feet

of cold. let x be january. let x be
the sodium song of the streetlights,
cloistered like god in his hot little globe. the winter

sucks into my toes like a fountain pen,
the ink dangerously yellow and numb.
the shovel is a silver goose, flying through the ice

of this atmosphere, and my back an old xylophone
the muscles no longer want to play.
let x need no explanation. let x

be my wife’s car at six in the morning,
blue as a new saw blade, cutting the gloam
as she drives away—slowly—to work.

Karl Elder*

Mon, 1 Feb 2010 14:36:20 -0600

THOUGHT

Think of your whole life
shoveling snow—that mountain,
vast, while it lasted.

Alixa Doom*

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 14:29:59 -0600

CEDAR SNOW

Cedars bend close to the earth
with heavy armfuls of snow
as if it has become a burden
to hold up so much silence.

Large mounds of light recline
on the darkness of cedar. Ferny fingers
break through a background of snow
like an x-ray of silence.

Layers and layers of silence.
The cedar is pregnant with snow and
the snow is pregnant with cedar.

Looking at the cedar’s new shapes
defined by the weight of the snow I think
now we are down to the very bones of cedar.
They lean into one another
like a ghostly village,
cedar touching cedar
on a new level of intimacy.

I begin to feel larger
walking around inside cedars
where it has been snowing
forever.

Robin Chapman*

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 09:32:38 -0600

WINTER TREE CUTTING

It wasn't their argument or the crack of branches
or the snort of the power saw bucking
that he later remembered

but the sight of the tree's balletic turning,
stalled, shifting, so that it came
toward him in a stopped time,

and then his head was pinned
to the ground, one eye dangling on his cheek
reporting a winter snowbank.

As he watched the snow stain red, his wife
cut the tree away, stuffed a mitten into the place
where his cheek had been, took his hand,

walked him a mile and a half out of the woods
while he saw the whole way
that he was about to run into the ground.

At Marquette they rehung his face
in stainless steel eye sockets, bolted
his jaw and new denture plates to a metal frame.

He looks his old self again in the mirror,
except for his nose a little snubber
and something odd about his eyes

as they flicker, trying to recall why his wife
had wanted to leave him,
and why she was with him now.

Athena Kildegaard*

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:32:46 -0600

WINTER LIGHT

Light pulls the world
across the day's skin.
Is that roof line
or contrail? House cat
crossing the snow
or cloud's shadow?

At night—calm
as falling snow—the luxury
of stars.

Sharon Chmielarz*

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 09:32:42 -0600

SOMEDAY THE SUN WILL DIE

If it’s true, my god!
125 quadzillion suns.
(Birth control, anyone?)
(Or: how big is the Mother?)

I’ll never
comprehend, I’m back
to Sunday School times
when I couldn’t conceive

where heaven was.
Beer anyone? Forget the day
Earth will become
its own sooty gravestone.

Lord! 125 gazillion deaths.
Isn’t it enough, after one
human loss, to roll out of
bed on a January morning

and face the sun? I don’t look
Egyptian, but I think Re.
I think High Noon. I think
worship the hearth’s fire.

Tim Nolan*

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 09:32:34 -0600

NEW YEAR’S

I resolve to get a handle on my
personal matters, including my weight

which I will increase this year
with the Krispy Kreme diet which

all the celebrities are trying out, ballooning
up in Malibu so they can float

like fat kites above the beach.
And money—I will spend it all

without worry, down to the last cent,
the final zero on the bank statement.

Then, I’ll borrow to go to the movies,
buy that 40-foot mobile home, the boat,

buy the spare boat for those days
in the summer when I don’t

want to use the regular boat.
And smoking—I’m going to switch

to Gauloises or Players’ Cuts or
Camel Straights. I have not been

smoking enough, and I spend
too much time between cigarettes.

This year, I will light them
one from another and be in a cloud

of beautiful blue smoke from Winter
into Spring when all the buds come out,

right through Summer and Fall
when we used to burn the leaves

in the gutters, and we thought of
those ceremonial deaths with the souls

rising like incense to the blue sky.
This year, whenever I think of doing

something nice, think of buying flowers
for my wife or a little china tea set

for my daughters or a Hank Aaron
baseball card for my son, something

I know they will like, I’ll think
better of it and buy something for myself,

Something to go with the spare boat—
a depth finder—so I can watch the school

of fish below in a sonar cluster, the way
the Northern Pike looks like a bold dash

on the screen, and I will be so
happy floating on the choppy lake,

alone with myself, fat and content,
smoking, might as well have a beer

or one of those little airline bottles
of Crème de Menthe, tasting like cough

syrup, so I shake my head
as if to clear my mind, but my mind

cannot be cleared of the daily thought,
the constant belief that I’m having

the year of my life, the abandoned year,
the careless year, the one that can’t be

touched, the year that must generate
all those new and hopeful resolutions.

Raul Sanchez*

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 16:10:03 -0600

WILD DAME

Plastic head band
Tiger colors
Held the wild mane
Of the dame
In the leopard skin coat
Wearing jaguar spotted
High heeled boots
Marking footprints in
City jungle snow
Covered sidewalks

Ethna McKiernan*

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:41:36 -0600

MY CHILDHOOD HUSBAND

My childhood husband, I loved you first at 10
when you picked me for the kickball team
and bucked me on your new red 3-speeed
over half the town.

At 13 your height caught up to mine
and your shoulders grew wide. Hair sprouted
from your soft cheeks, and you moved three parishes
away. I buried an empty matchbox in the yard.

Seasons scattered; we turned east, west, put on
our adulthoods separately. I married first, then you,
then you again, then me. Children, stonework, poems,
gardens, cancer, houses, travel, years.

Tonight I look at all 57 years of you,
remembering how we’d memorized
each other’s souls those summers in the treehouse.
Come to me, love; every day begins and ends here.

Alex Lemon*

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 12:03:26 -0600

OPERATION: GET DOWN

It is very
Common
To have

A cave within us
            To hide

Away in when it all
Seems hopeless. To cry

Tears of mostly blood.

To feed on the day
Dream in which

Side-mirrors shear off
Of your car
            As the walled road
                        Narrows.

To swerve might make…

There is a Saint for the down
& out. A rock is a rock

Is a rock & redwood
Trees grow out
Of our chests.

It is horrible & right
In this place. Dum

Spiro, spero. We’re all in
This shit together.