volume seven | number one | spring 2006

Poetry

Carolyn Blount Brodersen
-- On the Bus

Collette Lawlor
-- The Diver
-- Fall

Jenn Habel
-- Us
-- Allow Me to Introduce My Bad Side

Taylor Collier
-- When He Knocks

Janet I. Buck
-- A Letter to My Sister

Linda Benninghoff
-- Voices Soft as Morning Fog
-- The Aspen

Gary Charles Wilkens
-- The Gift
-- I, Tiresias

Jenny Yang Cropp
-- stealing kimchi

 The Diver
 -- Collette Lawlor

Sometimes after a deep breath
she delves into murky depths,
pushing lower into water,
heavier by the metre.

Weeds snag her legs,
she recognizes wrecks,
gnarled objects
now carpeted in barnacles.

She forgets the minutes left,
studies intricacies of coral, then
like a bubble
pressure pushes her up

and out--
the opposite of drowning--
to the boat where boys
haul her up the side,

remind her not to dive so long.

 Fall
 -- Collette Lawlor

Against grey dusk
they flit and flap
into the trees,
emerging like leaves
that choose not to fall
but to fly
from black branches,
defying the ground.