I Revise   I revise because images, like moth wings, grow, hidden in secret shrouds, because the sun never stops seeking an oak in every acorn, because milkweed, beautiful in bloom offers wind-borne gifts to the earth in autumn. I revise because the sky molds and re-forms clouds the way a sculptor works wet clay. I revise because the Muse is a shape-shifter who lifts me up on eagle wings at dawn. By dusk, we crawl the ground as ants. I revise because I like surprises, poems that turn themselves inside-out like tee-shirts ready for … Continue reading I Revise; Critic; Happiness by Jean Sampson →

Letterpress, Bangor   I, too, discern it: an impression of the impression left on leaves, the broadside’s bite, an invitation through the mail in a bygone, backhanded braille. The leaden shadows that hide there, in our words. Type lives on, thank Gutenberg, in our unsubtle century, with a pass through Whitman’s fingers— This latent mine—these unlaunch’d voices— but rarer and rarer, slipped shophand to shophand, rarer and rarer is the specimen in recto that spares the verso. We don’t look verso, indent-bent. The LED is our screen, it projects only forward, the LEAD is some … Continue reading Letterpress, Bangor; Herd, Sheepscot; Vibrations, Crystal by Kevin McFadden →

A Tomato, Like Love,   starts small, a fuzzy flimsy seedling sneaky worms would secretly undercut. You could almost miss its yellowish blossom that becomes a fruit, hard and green at first, slowly ripening in increasing light, growing fuller and rounder and smoother. A tangy air, not altogether pleasant, and a certain prickliness surround it. One day it simply falls into your hand, that thin taut skin barely able to contain the sticky red juice that wants to burst out at the slightest pressure of the very tip of knife or fingernail or tooth or … Continue reading A Tomato, Like Love; Balm; Answered by Michael McFee →

Popillia Japonica   For rows of sun-buttered, glistening corn, red and green trimmed vines of tomatoes wrapping themselves around silvery rusted poles, thick fields of gummy blooming tobacco, tangled thrusts of okra and lean stalks of string beans, plump pumpkins and cantaloupe, they came. Some think they rode over, camouflaged in the beautiful, murderous kudzu. Others that we brought them here purposely, despite or unaware of their hunger, like gems. Papa called them pests, bastards, Japanese—beetles no different from morning glories or Johnson grass, or me puffing the fluffy seeds of dandelions. Instead of apple … Continue reading Popillia Japonica; Naivete by Angie Hogan →