BY ANGELA SORBY Cote d’Azure, 1981 Paloma Picasso stands on the high dive wearing a black maillot. Below her, the photographer forgets the holy spirit’s ascension as he plunges into concentration: Paloma is vital—her perfume flies off shelves all over France. Above the photographer’s bent head a moth unspools its thirty hours of life, extending … Continue reading DOVE AND DOVE
Category: Poetry
Violence, Double Sestinas, and Barbie: An Interview with Denise Duhamel
Denise Duhamel is the author of seven books of poetry, the most recent of which are Two and Two, Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems, The Star-Spangled Banner, andKinky. She is a recipient of a NEA in poetry and currently teaches in Florida International University’s MFA program. Denise was kind enough to agree … Continue reading Violence, Double Sestinas, and Barbie: An Interview with Denise Duhamel
DEAR BLACKBIRD II
BY JANE SPRINGER Dear Blackbird, The only thing that made sense was to fall in love with a carpenter who could build a house upside down out of straw & standing on one foot— afterall, a scarecrow is just remnant stuffing for old clothes—it took a man like that to make of me, something new. … Continue reading DEAR BLACKBIRD II
DEAR BLACKBIRD I
BY JANE SPRINGER Dear Blackbird, The first summer after you left rolled in as a white & fine grained fog. The question became not: Where had you gone—but one of location, nevertheless, behind what curtain: The little farmhouse, its sputtering truck & tin shed. The field where trysting lovers met. The dissolution of it all. … Continue reading DEAR BLACKBIRD I
AFTER MY NEPHEW READS MY POEM ABOUT THE COW WHO GOT STUCK IN A TREE
BY CARLA PANCIERA “I remember that cow,” my nephew says. “She’s the one we pulled out of the mud with the tractor.” “No,” I say. “She got stuck in a tree.” “The one who got electrocuted from her water bowl?” “Different cow.” “The crazy one who dropped dead in the milking parlor? Heart attack?” I … Continue reading AFTER MY NEPHEW READS MY POEM ABOUT THE COW WHO GOT STUCK IN A TREE
IN DISCOVERY PARK
BY SONIA GREENFIELD The hummingbird follows me through the park and it takes a certain ear to hear her. You say you wish I lived more in my body. If you call me light-boned, I’ll try. Grass fields and tree patches roll down to the water in a palette of wheat tones, and the water … Continue reading IN DISCOVERY PARK
GAINSBOROUGH PAINTS MAN INTO ROCKS
BY SETH ABRAMSON The only way to paint a boulder in the surf is as though it were alive: cooling the moving flesh with colorlessness, then down to its verb, then evolving to an unknown beauty in the reeds, where its remarkable lifetime may be no more than that thing—which could stand for anything—we catch … Continue reading GAINSBOROUGH PAINTS MAN INTO ROCKS
MY SON THE HOUDINI
BY JOHN C. MORRISON After breakfast I chain his wrists, ankles, lift and lay him in a casket, kiss his forehead, padlock and plunge the heavy box into the icy river. A minute later, I panic peel away shoes to dive in and he rises soaked, shivering and beaming on the rocky shore of the … Continue reading MY SON THE HOUDINI
DEGAS’ HORSES
BY DEBORAH CASILLAS Degas’ horses were wrong at first. At a gallop the legs blurred beyond the eye’s seeing. Even Gericault painted them bounding like a deer. It was only prancing, rearing, walking, that the artists got right. Then Muybridge made his photographs, a series of cameras clicking as the horse passed so the exact … Continue reading DEGAS’ HORSES
TARRTHAIL!
BY DENISE DUHAMEL Paul said, “It was John’s idea to call the movie Help! And I think from the things he said, that was his state of mind at the time.” The movie was originally going to be called Eight Arms to Hold You which is also a plausible name for a Beatles movie. The … Continue reading TARRTHAIL!
