Moving

Constant is the graveyard slanting up behind
the house in a wash of sunlight or in winds
that lash this coast where spruce bend,
lose branches, remain. Father had no words
at the airport but when we moved to the brim
of this country I saw his tears in sea water
splaying down the crevices of cliffs. From
Greenland icebergs travel to dissolve here;
their centuries' wisdom is salt I lick from my lip
in a fog. Constant is the moon's yellow eye
on water rushing from a campground pump
into a small, steel bowl I carry to our site.
With each step water sloshes out of bounds,
takes moonlight with it, finds strange ground.
- Barbara Nickel

Sunny Days Following a Death in Late Winter

A sun invasion.
The ground snowed under, but
this onslaught of light û
sudden, unbidden, I'm not
prepared for it.

Soon the air will be
sweet at open windows,
the watermelon smell
of melt.
No stemming it.

Now only the light
assails, itself
more than enough. Where
can I hide, too soon
besieged by spring?
û Robyn Sarah

Speech

When I had teeth, no accent at all
was safe from me. I'd Irish
groined and turd and tank-you
Lard. I'd Scotch the ballads where
those drowning lords were richt laith
to weet their cork-heeled shoon.
I'd do Canadian if I knew how,
but settle now for American, its
boo-jhwah Appalachiania
that drawl y'all git from The Tee Vee.
Still I'd like to report my love-life hasn't suffered.
In flagrante, I moan like a heifer at stud,
a moose with no teeth, a cleft-palate dog.
Thank God I can croon the word Love
û Michael Harris

Dragonflies, Those Bluejays of the Water

Il turpilochio e la bestemia invade la bocca dei sciochi
Her end of the bargain was jacked up in the air
riding out, waiting for the wind to drop,
steering a straight line for his blue trailer
till safely grounded, ready for a loop ù
the long tailline, called "trailer" as it tapered
from the shoulders like bamboo, doubling up
waist on in a U, and starting forward
past where he had her locked into his place
for horns up on her full two-jewel faceà
Stuck that way, they had coptered over water
for hours, looking for a bed to land on
and connect the proper lines. The right one.
Something buoyant and well-graded: a streamer
steady enough to take her weight and his,
and fine enough to let her poke her trailer
up a loophole in the mesh. Some weedwall:
dense, good for riding out a swell on, and dull
as weathered copper from storing up the sun
so from below a trout's splick eye would miss
their fast bronze lines against the slower ground
of clear skywater. All in all, the A-1
of weedpatch. Central, but safe out of the way.
Safe as the bigger twigwork a bluejay
will land on just to spread his trailer end
and shake his busiest blue noise down
into the busier noise of green all aroundà
Chasing up and down river till then. Racing
against stiffest winds. Taking curves,
dives, drops, reaches on take-off, and hovering
with a great rattle of rice in their wings.
Looking for a bed to ride on àThose wings
and spiny forelegs must have been battered stiff
by every kind of twist in wind on deck,
while she slipped her steering end into U-curves
under the floating fabric; and battered stiff
from trying out so long, racing for solid
hours between beds, often landing just to check
and take off again. Nine times out of ten
something in the bed blocked the way solid.
She'd arch and strain her whole fuselage
dipping it under again and again
(sometimes rocking the fabric apart, stage
by stage: water splashing up all around her
and priming the air with a rainbow)
trying to be up and around where his began.
And he'd be doing a standstill solo
in the air, wings pitched at forty-five degrees
from her lock-in sockets, and doing ninety
to keep the whole thing balanced. Then off again
when it wouldn't work. She with her sounder
ochre butt, he with a longer, more pliable
end of sorts. Nicking along the surface
patrolling the margins of leeway grass,
scaring up gnats. Using their multiple
scopes, and zooming downwind at top speed ù
legs out straight ù they could put some lusk gnat
in their baskets with a simple dropkick.
And cruising along, gizzards full, they'd unstick
sometimes ù and give up. Just like that. And she'd
go hustle for other dragon, blue dragonfly.
Then both again, for some stable green mat
with a custom-made cut-in, like V or Yà
Finally made it, and the spot was a find:
my ashtray. Saw them through the smokeline,
landing over the stemhole (where the V-line
joins up) in a lilyless waterlily pad, close
to where I was dunking in the shallows
like a touristàA most subtle machine
against a roost of smoke. And all that streaming
lost in so much busy streamlined fineness.
A marvel. Their beautiful trapeze stunt
plated in a hundred thousand different dyes
made a blunt
in my smoked-up biosphere,
got me swearing for a dry cigarette.
Exact, compound ù all speed, grace, and desire ù
full of dragon fuel and funky blue fire,
always forward, never backward, and no sweat ù
a true oneness of parts. Honi soit
qui mal y pense.
As a whole
much more truly quotable,
more strictly independent and severe
(though less essential, and with more art)
than an elephant with one-storey shoulders
and bouldering mind, swinging
a rubber boomàThen that rattling
in the air after their come, like the safest chopper.
From Mountain Tea & Other Poems by

Peter van Toorn (First published by McClelland & Stewart, 1984. New edition forthcoming from VThicule Press, fall 2003.)

Barbed Wire

Consists of two tight-twisted, separate strands
Conjoined as one: and not unlike, in fact,
Our own familiar silver wedding bands,
Though these are loosely woven, inexact,

With wide interstices, so that each makes
A circle of ellipses. Tightly caught
At random intervals, two little snakes
Of wire are crimped into a snaggled knot,

That four short ends, sharp bevel-cut, present
Unsheathed ingenious fangs. And when in place,
Stretched taut, or strewn in loose coils, may prevent
The passage through some designated space

Of beast, or man. You got used to the stench;
The mud was worse than being under fire,
My father said. A detail left the trench
At night, to get the dead back from the wire,

And no one volunteered. They stood, to view
Our brief exchange of rings and vows, for both
Our fathers had survived that war: and knew
Of death, and bright entanglement, and troth.
û by Richard Outram

Sweet Basil

To make them last, I planted them in sunlight
in a half-filled drinking glass.
This way, according to a friend, they'll stay
what we call good
for days. Which means, I guess, stay green û and maybe even

grow a bit
before the smallest, top-most leaves
give in, at last, to letting go (of what? go where? Go bad we say
when we don't knowàthe body going off
somewhere we can't

yet follow, not yet
gone, and us, still not quite ready to have
done with it, no longer able to make
useà). And yes, it seems
this is the way: late afternoon, day two, and still

these stiff twin tongues
unfurl from every seam, as if the broken
body's news has yet to reach them
from below. How can't
they know? Or do they simply
disagree? I keep a photo of myself, at twelve, just then
beginning to grow proud û my body
among cousins in the bathtub, facing straight
into the future. The water cuts us
at the waist. Regardless

of its government, these slender
tendrils keep on drinking in
a kind of after-half-life in this glass,
where light above, and light below
meet half-way up the stem.
û by Suzanne Buffam

Telegram From The Celestial Players' Agent

Hey you, down there on your glitzy roof garden,
we like the way you stand above the city.
Our intelligence is sketchy, but that six-figure
contract you just signed for an option year?
Think it can't be topped? Don't snigger.
This isn't a crank letter. It can't be burned.
Which isn't to say it won't self-destruct
the moment you're through reading this.
Now listen up. We're not going to dither
over a measly seventh zero to your salary.
We'd like it if you played in the hereafter.
You choose the position. A bigger ball park
requires larger-than-life personalities.

If you can pitch, you'll smoke them.
Very few have faced real-life heat.
They're mostly angels with bum arms
who got hypnotized by newsreels;
pre-war footage of the Yankee Clipper
rounding third base to wild applause
appears to have bamboozled them
into playing a team of phantom souls,
ex-minor-leaguers from Double-A
who packed it in for church suppers,
six kids, swing shift at a tire factory.

You could quell persistent rumors
that games are being thrown for a share
of angelic prestige, bogus omniscience.
These pious Double-A types have a plan.
A little of your customary swagger
would go along way towards rekindling
pep among our season ticket holders,
who mostly just sit up in the stands
shaking their heads at the level of play.
Don't think there isn't maneuvering
going on among those shift foremen
whose object is to become messengers,
winged minions, chuckling ennoblers.

All the more reason to assert yourself
should this assignment touch a chord.
If you bring all your skills to bear, angels
will be made to see that dropping out
of our celestial fold for a life of running
base paths and falling for real women
isn't what their opponents say it is.
And our seraphim listen credulously,
return moon-eyed from post-game
smokers with only one thing in mind:
descent, shucking of immortality.

Don't let another angel change places
with one of these aw-shucks types
who keeps flubbing easy ground balls.
We're flexible and can offer a cut
of the gate plus exoneration. What,
you thought no one was watching?
That nasty hit-and-run in Philly
escaped no one's notice up here.
Sit down. Take a load off. Give this
an hour of your time. Don't gibber.
Your case isn't so out-of-the-ordinary.
There have been some stellar talents
whose behavior was more egregious.

We understand that drunk you hit
had no family. You had four kids,
a concert-pianist wife, good friends.
All this before your Hollywood fiasco,
that ill-advised foray into celluloid.
Your third divorce broke something
in your child's view of the cosmos.
We look at both sides of the coin here.
You're not such a pariah. Chin up.
Those Shriner's Hospital visits
racked up points as did each homer

you hit for Muscular Dystrophy.
We see it. Stop staggering. Sit down.
You've got sewing machine leg.
These things filter to the top.
We don't like it but we're in a fix.
We need to re-establish hierarchy.
Only angels can deliver messages,
mediate between realms, adjust
the paths of jinxed archdukes
so they don't ignite another war,
not washed-up Double-A players
with stuck-on wings and smiles.
Think it over. Send us a cablegram.
û Peter Richardsom