Issue 05 Poetry | Page 2

The Bronze Décor

May 1, 2013 Issue 05, Issue 05 Poetry, Poetry

In the bronze distance the last shepherds wander.
The last just man is an angry sinner
Who leaves without a word after a deafening dinner.
The flag of his desire is waving his banner.

[What They Were Building…]

May 1, 2013 Issue 05, Issue 05 Poetry, Poetry

By CATE MCLAUGHLIN

A fine kettle of fish, an ancient Mesopotamia

unearthed anew. Mystic cities, the press

of fertile crescents,

thighs wide like to lay seed in. Literal rivers.

A Couple

May 1, 2013 Issue 05, Issue 05 Poetry, Poetry, Translation

By YANG JIAN

He was old.
She, too, was old.
Their years, like lightning, slit the heart of the passerby.

Booming, Spring Shoves Open the Door

May 1, 2013 Issue 05, Issue 05 Poetry, Poetry, Translation

By MO FEI

Booming, spring shoves open the door,
Blocks of ice wash down the river.
While some people stay in youth,
Some regret and grow old.

They That Died in the Water, The Maidens Washed Their Bodies at the Shore

May 1, 2013 Issue 05, Issue 05 Poetry, Poetry

By JORDANA ROSENBERG

from The Pocket Encyclopedia of Revolutionary Violence, for the Years 1066-2092, vol 1, entry 1
The weir-trap is set. Iron stakes pounded into the bed of the saltmarsh arc from the blacksoil into the shallow reeds, straw crosshatching the stakes,  a water-net for the sprats and silver pike, eels, and the marshcray hunched among the reedbone husks in the mud.

The Major Subjects

May 1, 2013 Issue 05, Issue 05 Poetry, Poetry

By LAWRENCE RAAB

Death is easier
than love. And true feeling, as someone said,
leaves no memory. Or else memory
replaces the past, which we know
never promised to be true.

The Mortality of Books

May 1, 2013 Issue 05, Issue 05 Poetry, Poetry

By LAWRENCE RAAB

Dampness and sunshine
are equally fatal. Jackets fade, mildew
gathers. Whatever you wipe away
will surely return.

Original Sin

May 1, 2013 Issue 05, Issue 05 Poetry, Poetry

By LAWRENCE RAAB

That was one idea my mother
always disliked. She preferred her god
to be reasonable, like Emerson or Thoreau
without their stranger moments.

Of Yellow Cellophane and Funerals

May 1, 2013 Issue 05, Issue 05 Poetry, Poetry

By IAN MACLELLAN

Memories are an act of creation. We piece them together from disparate fragments and imaginings until it feels like that’s how we always remembered it.

I’m a young boy, seven or eight, and I’m holding the red cord attached to the corner of the coffin as the men lower it into the grave. Around me an overbearing huddle of black and grey woolen coats, men with leather gloves and sombre Sunday-best hats: women go to the Kirk, but not the cemetery. I am trying to reconcile the pale wooden coffin with my grandmother, who, I am told, is inside it.