issue 32 > poetry

• Signor Eulisse in Nafplion

  by Gail Holst-Warhaft

  In the museum he sees a map, his eyes
  of blue Venetian glass realize
  this Greek port was Napoli di Romania,
  minor jewel in the Corona Venetiana.

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• Rear View

  by Gail Holst-Warhaft

  There was music in his walk,
  a silent rhythm he moved to,
  one hip then the other
  dropping like well-oiled parts
  of a machine, then rising again.

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• Aphrodite

  by Donald Kuspit

  not a sign of suffering
                                 in your beauty,
  however much you've lost
                                      the hands that once aroused Adonis.
  no trace of sadness in your eyes,
                                               for no mortal is irreplaceable.

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• Kathe Kollwitz, Self-Potrait, 1889 (age 22)

  by Donald Kuspit

  cute and cuddly you're not,
                                     but i'd sleep with your gloom,

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• A Starling

  by Lynn Levin

  I turned to see a bird apace
  with my train. Like a wave in space
  it crested, troughed. In winter tweed
  the starling seemed all business, beak
  certain as a compass.

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• Diagnosis

  by Lynn Levin

  As I was swimming in a pond
  a man came up and took my hand.
  I feared that he would pull me down—

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• Poem 2 and 10 from Short Poems

  by Marcela Noriega.
  Translated by Alexis Levitin and Fernando Iturburu.

  2
  I carry my dead on my back
  
  6
  You liked to get drunk, to circle the well of madness
  say senseless things, mirages you’d invent,
  commune with the worst criminals, stink like garbage

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• The Military Mind

  by Burton Raffel

  Where am I going, I always used to ask
  myself. But now it's only where
  have I been, where I have gone
  to some other place. No one has ever answered,

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• The Trace

  by Mark Rudman

  You mean I hadn't gotten back to you?
  I told you I liked them, I know that.
  Up all night. Conception.

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• Five Octaves: Demitasse Spoon

  by David Slavitt

  In an up-market jumble shop in a glass case
  were maybe a hundred silver spoons, all orphans

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• Five Octaves: Medlar

  by David Slavitt

  A metaphor for age? The fruit of the medlar,
  the nespola, is one of the few on offer

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• Five Octaves: Zamboanga

  by David Slavitt

  A bitter disappointment: Zamboanga exists, can be found on maps (in the Philippines),
  

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• Five Octaves: Gourds

  by David Slavitt

  They're too pretty to eat or too weird looking,
  but people buy them for table decorations,

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• Five Octaves: Hafiz

  by David Slavitt

  Hafiz is a name you have to earn

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• First, by a Shallow River

  by Lee Slonimsky

  These circling hawks pay homage to the round,
  as good a shape as any to call home;
  a spiral’s whirl, astronomers have found,

  suggests Big Bang’s first tendency.  No roam
  or flex: quite uniform.  And still such spin’s
  in galaxies and falling leaves, the birds
  who coast along blue air.  And in the sea:
  observe the curves of waves, black circling fins.

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• After Image

  by Lee Slonimsky

  A clarifying positive: this leaf
  so orange in mid-August, drifting down
  on bluish late day breeze.  Erratically,
  it finds its way to puddled, muck-strewn ground
  (a thunderstorm just passed).  Inspires belief
  in autumn soon.  An odd trajectory,
  the way it surges, pauses.  Finds a sodden home,
  this early color, sign-of-season crinkled flame.

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• Now

  by Phil Sultz

  The old birch tree near the house
  is spotted with lichen and brackets.  

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• The Call

  by Phil Sultz

  The wall phone rings. I pick
  up the receiver and say, Hello,
  who is this?  Someone says,
  This is the mortuary.  We’re
  sending a hearse over to
  pick up the deceased.  I say,
  You must have the wrong
  number, I live here alone.

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• Books

  by Phil Sultz

  Your letters are lost, and I am remiss
  for not remembering the names and

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• Ode

  by Phil Sultz

  Your mother would say, don't
  bring the geese into the kitchen,
  and you would, and with a faint
  smile, lead them out again in your
  muddy shoes.  It was a glimmer your
  father noticed, more than your features
  or your small cough, before his little
  comet illumed and was gone.

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• White Goats

  by Phil Sultz

  The village cemetery
  is all that remains, but
  the white goats are here,

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• Extracts from the Latterday Chronicles

  by Lewis Turco

  You say it is love
  my candy bone?
  I’ll give you love
  it is dark water
  stinking in a well.

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• Denny's Mid-Afternoon

  by Michael VanCalbergh

  I stir my coffee with the lid of the creamer
  as my father spoons more sugar into his.
  We’ve gone out for breakfast, our favorite meal.

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