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

 Voices Soft As Morning Fog
 -- Linda Benninghoff

You died in the winter.
Two years later I still cannot feel myself,
staring at a corner of the room
where a spider wanders
shifting its eight legs.

Moving forward,
I pick one foot up
after another
trying to catch a glimpse
of you in memory--
fearless--
unwilling to change
your blue eyes never grieving
yearning only for what we two
could have--the home-baked bread
you fed the seagulls,
the potato soup you made for me.

Sitting in the trees, the mockingbirds'
voices are soft as morning fog,
drifting--
memory is like that
falling where it pleases.

 The Aspen
 -- Linda Benninghoff

It was a drab Christmas—
you gave me a book,
"Poetry and Letters of Jane Kenyon."
After a few pages
I realized she was dead,
like your husband and my friend.

The little aspen
up at our lake cottage
seemed to sigh that summer,
leaf after leaf
trembling with light
dropping into
a pool of curls
and twists and ovals
russet and brown,
as if it were
already in mourning
for many summers,
the lick of light,
column of wind,
as if dying
were waiting,
crying,
choking
on leaves
hoping for still another summer
light crossing the bark,
grass climbing at the base.