October 26th, 2008
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Alan Fox
SILK WOMAN
The silk which she loves
flows against her skin,
the white silk spun
from a cocoon of words,
spun and shimmering in her dark eyes
against dark skin
which tells her who she is
and who she is not,am I the moth inside
her mouth where words
form, silk cocoon dark skin
against the words of need
I did not say love
until which of us can tell
I cannot
who is the spinner
who, the moth
who, the silk.
–from Rattle #25, Summer 2006
October 25th, 2008
Review by Jeremy Voigt
THEORIES OF FALLING
By Sandra Beasley
New Issues Press
The College of Arts and Sciences
Western Michigan University
Kalamazoo, MI 49008
ISBN:-10:1-930974-74-4
64 pp., $14.00
http://www.wmich.edu/newissues/
Theories of Falling is a book about the body and the spirit. The wordplay in the title sets up poems that are concerned with both the spiritual fall of man and the physical pains of living. The spiritual fall works as a central metaphor (and literally in titles such as “The Puritans,” “The Angels” and “The Flood”) as the persona behind the poems probes childhood and dysfunctional adult relationships. Beasley also presents the pleasure-pain principal with tremendous energy in poems full of strong images and wit.
In the title poem Beasley meditates on the cat’s ability to turn and land on its feet:
October 24th, 2008
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Paul F. Cummins
TOSSING HAIR
She tosses back long black hair
A conductor-like sweep of the hand
Prefacing careful considerations with this
Gesture unconsciously graceful as waves
Of the tall Kansas grass
Wafting in the summer winds;
Stirring and rearranging the gravity
In our conference rooms and seminars,
Her gesture almost cloying in its cadences
Yet changing the very currents of our thought.
When her hair began to disappear,
She adorned rainbows of scarves
Then soon allowed us to see
A new silver-gray crop of hair,
A terrible new beauty born there
And we could feel a shift
In the weight of the air.
–from Rattle #25, Summer 2006
October 23rd, 2008
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Pablo Garcia Casado
—translated from the Spanish by Chris Michalski, performed by The CS Field Trio
DINNER
They stuff their mouths with food when they talk about
the house. When they talk about money and what it
takes to earn it. She walks through the rooms like a
queen. Points out the tablecloths, the plates, the
fabric on the kitchen furniture. He offers us a beer,
the moisture on the glass is the sweat of his brow.
Get down on your knees and put your head there, he’ll
say much later. But for now they thank God that they
are what they are, that they have what they have.
Fresh pasta, soft cheese, a discreet Spanish wine that
we drink with delight.
–from Rattle #25, Summer 2006
October 22nd, 2008
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Ash Bowen
STERILE
Your sister can’t stop hurting when she sees children
laughing. They coil in her dreams, knees raised
to their stomachs, feet stamping their rhythms.She’s reminded of high school, how she pulled up
her dress in loneliness and a man laughed at her.
But never mind that. Her husband has his guncollection out. He can’t stop pointing and clicking
the trigger at the open window. But the birds
won’t die. They flutter away, startled by the pitchof his voice. They land on the fence
of the city swimming pool. There the children run
off the diving board, ducking invisible bullets.
–from Rattle #25, Summer 2006
