W. Dale Nelson - Nancy Henry - William Doreski

Carla N Giammichele - C. E. Laine - Virgil Suarez - Alana Merritt Mahaffey

W. Dale Nelson

Maps Of Our Country

We read

in Clark’s bold hand

"bad road."

Peter Fidler’s

rivers branch

like the limbs

of the tulip tree.

He believed

he had found a passage

to the sea’s great ships.

The library

rubber-stamps

their knowledge,

wanderers

to disappointment.

We trace

the short portage

from peace,

the sketch

of what seems

to be quicksand.

We have arrived

at breakers,

at meadows

"full of buffaloes"

where the Indians

live underground

in winter,

at mines

of bright stones

under perpendicular

New Mexican

mountains.

It is an astonishment,

a garden,

a wonder.

The sea breaks

on sand.

"Bad road,"

we read

in Clark’s

bold hand.

.

W. Dale Nelson was a reporter and editor for the Asoociated press for 40 years. He is the author of two non-fiction books, The President Is At Camp David (1995) and Who Speaks for the President? The Whitehouse Press Secretary from Cleavland to Clinton (1998) both publishd by Syracuse University Press. His poems have been published by Massechusettes Review, Yankee Magazine and The New Yorker.

W. Dale Nelson - Nancy Henry - William Doreski

Carla N Giammichele - C. E. Laine - Virgil Suarez

Alana Merritt Mahaffey

Top of page

Nancy Henry

Death of the Old Dog

It is time for the old dog to slip down

beneath the grass, to taste the sharp iron

of earth on her broad lolling tongue,

to yield the sap of her eyes to the blind worm

and her thick brown pelt to the cold roots

of the twisted Northern Spy behind the barn.

Her deep moans will shudder in its branches

with the wind that rattles the storm door

as she once did, let me in

to my coiled rag rug by the fire,

let me in.

She lies down there to be sipped up by the dewy grasses

to be swept, a colored dust-cloud,

painting the high sweep of canyon wind,

to be dropped from a hawk’s lizardy talons

becoming hawk, wind and all,

the clear substance that they swim in,

the slow honey amber of memory and light.

Nancy Henry* works as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Maine handling child abuse and neglect cases. She is a recipient of the Atlanta 2000 International Merit Award for Poetry. She has been published in Oxford Poetry, Sacred Journey and an upcoming issue of Atlanta Review.

W. Dale Nelson - Nancy Henry - William Doreski

Carla N Giammichele - C. E. Laine - Virgil Suarez

Alana Merritt Mahaffey

Top of page

William Doreski

On The Roof

As I m pointing up the chimney

the altitude sways and ripples

like successive waves of mountains.

 

If only I could walk this tall

through the world I’d start to believe

in the laws of physics, the clash

 

of matter in cosmic dimensions.

But only twenty feet from the ground

I recall my firefighting youth

 

when at the great blaze off New Street

I mounted a hundred-foot ladder

and played water over the ruins

 

till dawn revealed a blackened shell.

Then peering down in sudden fright

I realized how impossibly

 

high and unsupported I was.

Climbing down with limbs as numb

as bratwurst I blushed because Ann,

 

who lived right there on New Street,

watched with frank adoration

I lacked the courage to return.

 

Now on the roof with blue jays,

chickadees, and titmice rattling

in the pines I can taste the smoke

 

and hear the burnt rubble hiss.

Ann surely has grown children now,

a carpenter or plumber husband

 

with his own business, a house

in a woodsy subdivision.

Does she recall the Polish Club

 

where we danced till midnight, then walked

two blocks to New Street while trains

uncoupled at the Bigelow mill

 

and winter stars rattled like dimes?

I finish mortaring the chimney

and creep down the ladder like

 

a woodpecker down a pine trunk,

a reluctance come over me

that s nothing like fear of heights.

William Doreski teaches creative writing and Literature at Keene State College. His poetry has appeared in Atlanta Review, Barrow Street and Birmingham Poetry Review. He has published four books including Suburban Light (Cedar Hill, 1999 and Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors (criticism, Ohio University Press, 1999).

W. Dale Nelson - Nancy Henry - William Doreski

Carla N Giammichele - C. E. Laine - Virgil Suarez

Alana Merritt Mahaffey

Top of page

Carla N Giammichele

City Tree

Yesterday a tree took flight.

Right here, along my city street.

It whispered its unhappiness,

and lightly stretched its many

arms-almost imperceptibly,

at first—

but did you see the back and forth

the light the dark the undersides

of twitching leaves through summer heat as—

(brilliant tree!)

it groaned, then heaved?

Momentum built, and soon the sky turned pale gray—

while wondrous mouths

were catching silt—

and I was there, consumed—

a burning page on drifting air

as I watched its trunk rise up

its roots aloft

—up through a cloud—

—I thought—

what dusty dreams the city keeps,

how brave, how bold,

this city tree.

Carla N. Giammichele is freelance writer and editor living in Washington D.C. She received her political science degree from Birmingham University and law degree from The Washington College of Law at American University. Her work has been published in WordWrights! and forthcoming in New Zoo Poetry Review.

W. Dale Nelson - Nancy Henry - William Doreski

Carla N Giammichele - C. E. Laine - Virgil Suarez

Alana Merritt Mahaffey

Top of page

C. E. Laine

Waking Savoldo

Stepping gently
on fallen leaves
that do not crackle
as they should
beneath the naked
sole of my left foot—

I listen to this
absence of sound
as if it were
expected.

All the colors
are oily, as if
brushed by Savoldo
or Botticelli, but
inside my eye lids

Chilled breeze
from the window,
cracked open, even
in winter; only
my face emerges
from thick swaddling
of flannel and feather.

I reached for you—

found your vacant
pillow, scented
like your skin
and all the places I
press my face
to breathe you in

—and I hear a crackle

dry leaf crumpling
beneath my bare foot

C. E. Laine is a web designer and editor of the online magazine Verse Libre Quarterly. She lives in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley and her publications include Kota Press, The 2River View and The Critical Poet.

W. Dale Nelson - Nancy Henry - William Doreski

Carla N Giammichele - C. E. Laine - Virgil Suarez

Alana Merritt Mahaffey

Top of page

Virgil Suarez

The Flea Market King

My uncle Jorge collected trinkets, refuse, broken

down appliances, everything he could sell

at the super swap meet on Sunday, so Mondays

 

he cruised the streets in his beat-up van, through

Coral Gables, Miami Springs, Coco Plum on trash

day where always, as he told my mother, he found

 

what Los Americanos didn’t want, or grew bored

with, then tossed out to the curb. The gringos threw out perfectly good things which he, Jorge,

 

immediately threw in the back of the van and drove

on. At 2 p.m. he stopped to rest under the shade

of a mighty banyan to have a cold beer and a siesta.

 

He did this for twenty years and my father always

asked him how he managed, and my uncle simply

told him it was the best job for an exile, it kept him

 

moving on, moving through, and besides you need

a good eye for what is thrown out: you know the old

saying: one man’s garbage is another’s art, or some-

 

thing like that-and that’s why my uncle Jorge squirted

fresh lemon juice into his eyes every morning, to keep

them sharp, focused, on the look out for the next big

find. He lived up to his name: El Ray del Pulguero

Virgil Suarez* teaches creative writing and Latino/a and Caribbean Literature at Florida State University in Tallahassee, FL. He is the recipient of the Pushcart Prize, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in Poetry as well as an award for the best poem from The Caribbean Review. Poems of his have recently appeared in Blue Mesa Review, The Chariton Review and Crazy Horse. He is also co-editor of American Diaspora Poetry of Displacement from University of Iowa Press.

W. Dale Nelson - Nancy Henry - William Doreski

Carla N Giammichele - C. E. Laine - Virgil Suarez

Alana Merritt Mahaffey

Top of page

Alana Merritt Mahaffey

Chopin Funhouse

At first I thought I’d apologize

for ruining the Chopin record

you let me borrow

by leaving it in the hot sun

in the back of a Buick,

but I spun it just for kicks

and it wasn’t so bad.

Sort of reminded me of those

old wooden roller coasters—

each rotation of the warped

record jerking me around the

coaster’s curves

slow then fast.

 

If you would forget I

left it in the car, you

could carve up a good story

about the time you loaned

your favorite record to

Icarus, who

tucked it under wax wings

and how carelessly

he flew it by the sun,

how it was melted

and misshapen

by the heat.

 

The violins now

bounce like notes sliding

down funhouse mirrors, if

you would see (like me)

symphonic clowns and

big-shoed conductors,

rubber noses buried

in pages of music.

Each mazurka loops

like the pull of an

ancient merry-go-round

beast, drives upward

then drops while

notes turn rhythm around.

 

Step right up:

You might even like

Chopin better this way.

Top of page

Alana Merritt Mahaffery teaches writing at Garland County Community College, and is associate editor of the Arkansas Literary Forum. She received the Mark of Excellence Award from the Society of Professional Journalist in 1997. Her work has been published in Agnieszka’s Dowery, Grasslands Review and Long Line Writer.

W. Dale Nelson - Nancy Henry - William Doreski

Carla N Giammichele - C. E. Laine - Virgil Suarez

Alana Merritt Mahaffey

Top of page

Beauty for Ashes Poetry Review �1996-2001

�A Creative Ash Publication 2001

Isaiah 61:1-3

 

Thank you for visiting

Updated: May 9th, 2001