Excerpt from Take Three:3
from
Vendaval by Jennifer Barber:
STORM AT SUN UP
The garden grows frantic
with the scratch of wings
abandoning the
pear
to vendaval, whose moan
is almost human
which is why the
wives
have sleepless nights
and the children
wake more than
once.
Dozing in his yard,
the rooster takes the storm
as something
against him.
The bleary hens, still dazed,
rattle their alarm
too
early, too late
to be of any use.
The sun is up. The wind
is
blowing and blowing.
Hung up next to grief
with wooden pins,
a
skirt whirls over
the skirts of lettuces,
sensual and sheer,
half
fastened, half undone.
Copyright © 1998 by Jennifer Barber. All rights reserved.
From Swerve by Mark Bibbins:
WHITMAN ON THE BEACH
We sit on barstools,two random flowers
at the edge of a
pool,
baffled by our reflections
and by our thoughts
of how the
inevitable
kiss goodnight will be negotiated.
When you get up
to go
buy cigarettes
I imagine what it would be like
never to see you
again.
Walt Whitman recited
Shakespeare to the cold
waves at Coney
Island-
sonnets floating like rafts,
line by line, toward shores
on the
other side of the world.
I settle for mumbling
a few lines I
had
written about you
into my cocktail.
By the time you
return,
I have finished the drink
and forgotten the words.
I stir the
thinning ice cubes
to see if they remember. You should
listen to what they
say.
This may be your only
opportunity
to hear what I think of
you.
Copyright © 1998 by Mark Bibbins. All rights reserved.
From The Scratch-Scratch Diaries by Maggie Nelson:
STY TOWN
Wake to an August so mild and genuine
New York is always right
outside
It won't ever be like this again
Great green summer of the
mind
A row of men play chess in the heat
As taxi cabs slowly
circle
One quiet, resurrected street
The sky is a nubile purple
And
the air has the aroma
Of a public pool. The day makes
Its misty slide
into night
And just when it seems too late
A woman will walk
by
Her name written in water
Copyright © 1998 by Maggie Nelson. All rights reserved.
