POETRY
Poetry editor John Lehman's selections from poem submitted by Wisconsin poets.
Avian Causerie
By E.M. Cofer
Blackbirds gather
from marshy summer
homes and fly
to town, collecting
at the Meadowdale
Coffee Shop.
Perched at tree-top
tables, they speak
family secrets
of swallowtail relations
and how the buzzard
wars have gotten out
of hand. They gripe
about the livestock
market and the hot,
dry summer's
shriveled worms.
They shudder
at the bitter winter
yet to come. Then
gossip-weary, they wrap
their sooty cloaks
about them
and head south.
My Lover's Braids
By Tom Boswell
When my last lover
went,
she left her long brown braids
in the dresser drawer
so I hung them from the
garden fence
to scare the deer away.
The Oven Clock Says 4:44
By Bruce Dethlefsen
quick listen to the tick of it
tonight not quite
tomorrow yet my friend
the time will come
when end is ended
the light on the black
and white linoleum
no longer shines
when I am died
and done will finally
rhyme with gone
right now resign to fight
or not
with all your might
the silent tock
Kabul
By John Sierpinski
I roll awake
in the half moon-shaped ditch.
"Where the hell are my Kools,
my Canadian Mist,
the ice for Godsakes,
yes, even my Blackberry?"
The dying light
lets me see
that he is still there, too,
with his filthy face,
his blood stained shirt,
the small, reptilian eyes.
He curls his gnarled brown
fingers, beckoning.
I push myself up to sit,
then stop, holding my
breath. His lips tighten
around yellowed teeth
while he pushes a swollen
rat toward me with his
bare foot, saying, "This is
the answer to your questions."
All Those MFA Students in Davis, California
By Mark Wisniewski
they were so lively
gathering whenever
possible to discuss phrases
someone jotted
none considering angst in the sense
of it truly visiting they had so many
epiphanies & the depth of the poets
among them seemed
unmatched they had countless dark
beers to mull through & hikes
up the Sierra they had
to see cougars
sunbathe they had to roast Gary
Snyder's pine nuts
I left them
because I could no longer
afford rent & then
the 2 other forthcoming
novelists received larger advances
than I
but they both quit
to sell health insurance
& the one poet among them who
published found most of his success
in Alaska
the rest of Northern CA's
upstart writers of 1988
must be trying to forget
that stretch of their
now on-track lives
I'm not
necessarily saying I've
outwritten each but I do
remember a discussion
in which a fellowship
holder among us declared
only one of us would
make it & he wondered
whose that fate would be
mine is what I was sure
we all thought
the one distinction among us
being that today
only I care to record
what might be
that fellow's most
inspired moment
As a Boy, I Loved the Boy
By Lowell Jaeger
… who soloed before the congregation
each Christmas Eve:
O Holy Night,
stars above shining and to this day
I think certain angels too were blinking
down. O, but he strode like a man
with cleats on the heels of his black
boots. By the age of catechism, flicked
his butts still flaming in the courtyard
lawn. The rest of us recited our verses well
but couldn't sing. When the wart-faced
pastor croaked out against our transgressions
-chewing gum, sleeping in class-
we'd squirm, blush, put our heads down
pitifully. Not the bad boy. He'd slick
his fingers through his hair and smirk.
Who could blame such a golden voice
crowds in bigger towns paid for?
Put him on stage with a rock band of minor fame
which may have grown had it not been one night. …
My mother mailed the news. I had moved away
years beyond. Had almost forgotten his name
though not the face, the tremolo, the crescendo
thrilling me like a boy wouldn't admit, the shame
having drained from me those everlasting services
on Christmas Eve. I wish I could have been an angel
in his hotel room far away. As the smoke crawled
over him, tongues of fire lapping the sheets. I'd have knelt
to kiss his brow. Unfold my wings to hold him.
