This body becomes a metronome,

slow two-step, weight raised

to lento, adagio. Old strings

sigh under the long bow,

an epiphany drawn taut.

This, my body, redraws its lines,

hungers for layers

and phrases, fragmented

like Picasso’s women

fractured across canvas,

love and not love.

This is my body, a sack of prayers

sketched and bandaged,

anthems of phantom wounds.

Lacking the amnesty of sleep,

my mouth shapes words

in the thickening dark.

š

Pennies

Coins pile up on the counter

along with rubber bands

from the daily paper she doesn’t read.

She doesn’t need to write another list,

buy a new map, its edges neatly creased

and the highways tangling

red or blue, the towns in different sizes

of type, the big city bold—a bull’s eye

with a snarl of roads—

or a small dot with a thin name,

a few stores, and fields rolling

between the occasional silo

or water tower. She has a drawer full

of travel plans—some old and folded

all wrong, others barely opened. No,

she doesn’t need another set of instructions.

Just one good compass point.

She would pay for that.

š

The Spine’s Minor Betrayals

Limbs move in a chorus of pain—

short solos, subtle crescendos,

a muscular music, a twinge

like a string around her finger, too tight.

What did she forget?

The symphony comes and plays

while autumn falls, notes from a staff,

arpeggios descending into darkness,

the lesser known modes: Phrygian,

Doric. A descant of dry leaves clatters

staccato in the road. Remember,

cold sings into her bones,

another skeletal song. Like the fugue,

the aching grace of the familiar.

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Joannie Kervran Stangeland’s work has most recently appeared in San Pedro River Review, Raven Chronicles, Iota, and Valparaiso Poetry Review. Her first chapbook, A Steady Longing for Flight, won the Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award. Her second chapbook, Weathered Steps, was published by Rose Alley Press. Joannie also hosts the video series A Writer’s Guide to Microsoft Office. Joannie is the guest poetry editor for The Smoking Poet's upcoming spring 2010 issue.

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This frayed edge on the soft of my lips comes off

as disgust and distaste. It’s only the wind

beating the edges of this body.

My father’s eyes stare back at me in the mirror.

That drop to the corner is a slow train

to where I have been.

Baked with sarcasm, I bleed poetry,

I cry a song, and I love a man

with a face ten years too young.

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Ivy Page is a poet whose poetry has been described by Ross Gay as, “passionate, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes hilarious poems, (which) always have a deep and generous intelligence.” She lives in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. She is the editor and founder of OVS Magazine. Her work has appeared in Cantarville, Snow Monkey, Oak Bend Review, The November 3rd Club, Night Train and forthcoming in The Houston Literary Review, the Boston Literary Magazine, and New Plains Review.

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When Aunt Edna mashed the grease out of me

I sprang from the pan to see

How I was not forewarned−

BH had shot me in my groin

And his “possum dog” sunk his teeth

Deep into my side−so deep

In fact I felt crucified:  Jesus, I knew:

I prayed, saying What have I done to be so blue?

Do not fail me now, Lord; may I rise

From this splattering skillet to a size

Neither shortening nor lard, tubfuls, even−

Hot−I mean, can melt or cause me to fall from the Crown of Stephen,

Though I operate peripheries−what can I do?  Some

Might leave me for dead in popping oil, my race run,

My basic wildlife a deadend for any hope toward release.

Well, I’ve got news for Rescue Services everywhere−cease

Worriment:  here are some real hot tips

For those whose hearts are heavy with remorse, lips

Dry from treating Little Feet rudely:

Feel distressed for what you have done, truly?

To one whose ancestors have been around for 60 million years,

Since the days of the dinosaurs!  Go on, rain tears

Over us as we travel alone night after night in search of food,

Eating just about everything:  worms, frogs, grass, corn:  why, once I stood

On a garbage-can in a backyard in the South and ate some grits

From Aunt Edna’s share of Sunday dinner:  they gave me the running shits

But I got over that and returned the next evening for some leftover dog food.

The night was dark, quiet:  I saw her in the window from a pile of wood.

She looked forlorn, standing in her widow’s frame, pulling down the Venetian blind.

I wanted to claim her crowded suburb for my own, find

Out if I could beat the most dangerous enemy opossums have ever had.

Oh what cruelty Man brings to territoriality:  cars, guns, traps, bad

Poisons−what redundancy!−I mean to make you listen:

We opossums are clean, non-aggressive, non-destructive−bootyfools!−we glisten

When we grin, on our backs−what a sight:  we carry our babies!

Immune to most diseases, we are not likely to carry rabies.

Quiet, reclusive, politic, beneficial to the environment because we eat insects:

Not only that, I, born Little Feet, help the poet come up with anapests.

Like Australia’s kangaroo and koala

The opossum is North America’s only marsupial.

Am I making my case?  If you find a newborn babe

You will probably find a roadkilled mom:  save

That infant, for the little one fell off the mother’s back or out of her pouch.

You do not have to wait and watch forever:  take the ouch

Out of the baby’s life by warming it in your hands (wear gloves)

And place it in a box on top of a towel-wrapped hot water bottle:  love’s

Sweet song will honor you, as your baby opossum sleeps

The time away in the semi-dark you have made:  feed-

Time will come soon enough:  remember:  quiet is the watchword for little ones:

Newborn opossums are about the size of kidney beans.

Scot Siegel

Skeleton Says

stay up all night

don’t drink any water

fall asleep in a de-hydrator

go snowshoeing in a storm

follow the wrong star home

crawl on all fours

hunker down beside the wildfire

drink a little too much cabernet

glissade the saddle of your lover’s nylons

scratch the doorframe

let your tongue sail the honeyed room

unhinge her jaw

feel her marrow move

Scot Siegel lives in Lake Oswego, Oregon, where he serves on the board of the Friends of William Stafford. His first full-length poetry collection is Some Weather (Plain View Press 2008). In celebration of Oregon’s Sesquicentennial,  Poetry Northwest and the Oregon State Library selected Some Weather as one of 150 Outstanding Oregon Poetry Books, one for each year of statehood. Pudding House Publications released Scot’s most recent collection, a chapbook called Untitled Country, earlier in 2009.

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Luke Morgan

We’ve got everything we need:

pretty plastic and bright lights

to cover our imperfections.

Flashy bleached smiles

pre-packaged feminine wiles

and manhood in a pill.

                  Elsewhere,

in pockets, hidden deep

in forgotten mountains,

there are others

singing new songs,

writing new epic poetry,

and eating honey

right off the comb.

                             We buy ours

in quaint jars stacked

on riveted shelves

in organic markets

and let ourselves feel better

about our more natural

kind of life.

Mick is the author of two collections of poetry; his work has been featured on semantikon.com. His work has been published in The Licking River Review and the American Mythville Review. Mick currently resides in Tempe, Arizona with his wife Melissa and their two cats, Blue and Gumbo. When he isn’t writing, he might be found in any number of local bars or coffee shops, at off-track betting sites, or at the track. He might need a haircut.

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