fall 2021
Table of Contents
Return to Home PageWhat We Carry on a Pilgrimage Granada, Take Three Elena Johnson
Boy With Orange Phillip Watts Brown
On the Straightaway to the Rockies Great Grandpa's Grain Elevator A Nova Scotian Night Light Ryan Smith
Swans at the Golf Club Ruth Daniell
i decay, bro erica hiroko isomura
The Graveyard Metaphor for Euphoria Kaye Miller
She's a Pretty Bird Susan Zimmerman
latchkey fragments Frances Boyle
A wrist, a wren, a small knife Ellen Stone
Say It Delicious Berry-Picking Laura Cesarco Eglin
When I See Lake Water Kristin LaFollette
Upon Watching the Rotation of the Earth Charlotte Vermue Peters
No One Knows How to Be Good Emily Kedar
Making the Most of Our Voices Ken Victor
Somewhere within Kostanay, Kazakhstan Justin Timbol
Late August at the End of the World Bren Simmers
Between Then and Then Millicent Borges Accardi
A wrist, a wren, a small knife
—after Gerald Stern
What I thought was an accordion dangling from an open window
turned out to be a man’s arm, his shirt sleeve wrinkled in the summer
evening. I thought he was handing me an air pump for my troubles,
instead, he gave me a blank check, pressing it to me with care.
What I thought was a spring bubbling from the hill by the side
of the road was instead a thin blue blazer belonging to a girl.
What I thought were a pair of shoes lying there, instead, were
her pearled feet where she lay sleeping in the fitful weeds.
What I thought was a dark apartment in the city, turned out to be
a church aisle I wandered. And the baby I thought I saw there,
an amberjack floating in a deep rock basin. What I thought was a couch
to lie on, instead was just a single cushion resting on worn stone.
*
I thought I heard a bamboo flute wending across the town.
Instead, it was cake batter spun thin inside an olive bowl.
I thought I saw a needle flash in my grandmother’s hand.
Instead, it was a camel from her Bible lying open there.
I thought I saw my brother’s jeans hanging on the line.
Instead, it was a roofing nail flashing on the shingles like a gun.
I thought I saw a gazelle loping through the chartreuse corn.
Instead, it was a ladder carved into the horse chestnut tree.
*
Whatever I was looking for—rust by the railroad, wild oats sprouting,
a boy’s hair, peat moss piled for the garden, the way the mind sponges.
My father’s sharp trowel I have carried these thirty years, a watering can.
The tire swing frayed and fallen, the windmill of my mother’s luggage.
She was a wrist, a wren in the morning grain, the scaffolding, elaborate
around her, starting to fall. Somewhere in the haze of my early days, she
rose between the geese and the geraniums, a small knife in her grasp
to peel potatoes—holding the key to our front door that never had a lock.