SUMMER 1999


 

AUTHORS
Binnie Pasquier
Richard Ely
Brian Hughes
Joseph William Weissman
Tom Baer
Lisa Shapiro
Kristine A Somerville
Edmund Pennant  - featured poem
Toby Lieberman
Arlene Greenwald Cohen
Kay Kidde
Robert Plath
Stanley Barkan
Robert Parham
William Heyen  - featured poem
Paul Agostino  - featured poem
Vince Clemente - featured poem
Claire Nicolas White  - featured poem
Joan Payne Kincaid

Editorial Board
George Wallace / Patti Tana / R B Weber

Edmund Pennant
TOMORROW

Above the lunar horizon
the blue planet is seen
shawled in white covering.

In the lower lake
a blue heron tramples
shards of moon light.

Flashlight in hand
the youngest astronaut
bends to his lawn, hunting

earthworms. Tomorrow
he will go fishing
with his father.

 

 

Paul Agostino
MIRACLE ON AVENUE D

This morning I saw a pheasant
alongside the road
in a middle class
neighborhood development,
its rainbow plumage
set against the mid-March snow.
It tried to hide underneath
a bare bush
in front of a wooden fence.
I took a few steps closer
to get a better look
at this scuttling rarity.
It crowed,
took two amazingly quick
six-foot hops,
and flew away
over the sleeping suburban
rooftops.

 

 

Vince Clemente
FOR A DAUGHTER FAR FROM HOME

I imagine how, from your bedroom window
you see Tsukuba through mist
rising from rice fields,
wake to a farmer's call
pitched high above birdsong,
strain for the Japanese word
for the bird whose wingbar
is color of the spartina meadow
along our harbor: a place
we know as home.

I remember how you ran through leaves
high as hayricks:
you liked the crimson dogwood best,
(always first to go), then
the yellow sassafras,
pausing to speak to something:
Our little mystic, we said.
Now I know: why is it then
I never told you, my daughter?

Gina, I've been up all night
reading Stryk's translations from the Zen,
and there's one poem I come back to
again and again,
one I know you'd like,
about an old monk
lost in sudden rain
and at day's end,
with tree colors darkening,
then weeps, not knowing where the monastery is.

And he hears
the bonging of bells
feels in his wispy bones
the clay fire rising in his cell,
the path under him
a way home:
all steady and now.

Gina, think of us when mist wreathes Tuskuba,
and if you find an old monk
in an orange robe,
one who has strayed too far
in the rain from his cell
take his hand and call him Father.
In his eyes you'll find
the child braiding leaves in her hair,
who understood the diurnal turning,
the soft omphalos we walk upon.

 

 

 

Claire Nicolas White

MICHAEL

This angel has touched, here and there
the earth, his footprint on the rock.
Amazing battles have been fought
to slay the dragon of contempt.

The angel Michael has a wing
clap that could break your arm. In dark
recesses built by mad defectors
he brings light. The Middle Ages
are emerging from the night.



 

William Heyen

ELIZABETH: BIRDLINGS

General Custer,
riding at the head
of the column,
saw in the grass
the nests of a meadow lark
with birdlings in it,

guided his horse
around it,
and without a word,

resumed the straight course.
The whole command
of many hundred
made this same detour -
each detachment,
coming up to the place
where preceding horsemen
had turned out,
looked down
into the nest
to find the reason
for their departure
from the straight
line of march.

 

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