JANET HAMILL
Wander.1
Because I cast myself off as a brave heart built of the straw of a sparrow’s
nest. I cry all night when lilac bushes bend to the ground
from rain. From snow. From habit. I cry in the absent arms
that brought me. Warm from phosphorescent sky banks
Though nothing will ever close the distance. I still cry
tied to the ribcage of the moon. Listening to the foghorns
blowing over the seas of the moon. In rain. In snow. From habit
I cry because a wanderer tries to break out of my skin
Every night. Its muscles heave and convulse. Its spine ripples
its eyelids swell. Its oars dip. Its body rises and tries to separate
with a boat no longer than a drugged horse. No wider
than a channel of tranquilized blood
From mountain stillness. From sands restrained by carnivorous reeds
from rain. From snow. From habit. I cry all night
DAVID WINTER
Parole
The Correctors have allowed you
to try living in your name again.
Left hand in your mother’s,
right hand in your woman’s,
you face glass, you face
the man who has come home.
You tell me you learned home
from that anti-place
where no drunk mother
kicked you out, no father
mocked the accident
of your making, where
concrete held you, softly,
until anger fell from your body.
You tell me of returning
to this world I shakily walk.
As you step from my family
home into the open dark,
into our watched American town,
I notice what has not changed:
your gait conveys a purpose,
a place you mean to arrive,
a naked space, unwalled,
unnamed, stripped of air,
not yet witness to the horror
we call freedom, or its limits.
***
It’s Animal but Merciful
great weather for MEDIA 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9857317-0-0
$15.00, 7.5" x 9.25"
162 pages
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