A New Poet

Linda Pastan

Finding a new poet
is like finding a new wildflower
out in the woods. You don't see

its name in the flower books, and
nobody you tell believes
in its odd color or the way

its leaves grow in splayed rows
down the whole length of the page. In fact
the very page smells of spilled

red wine and the mustiness of the sea
on a foggy day - the odor of truth
and of lying.

And the words are so familiar,
so strangely new, words
you almost wrote yourself, if only

in your dreams there had been a pencil
or a pen or even a paintbrush,
if only there had been a flower.

from Heroes In Disguise, 1991
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, NY

Rotary

Christina Pugh

This poem is a meditation on the old fashioned rotary phones that came before the touch-tone type.

Closer to a bell than a bird,
that clapper ringing
the clear name
of its inventor:

by turns louder
and quieter than a clock,
its numbered face
was more literate,

triplets of alphabet
like grace notes
above each digit.

And when you dialed,
each number was a shallow hole
your finger dragged
to the silver
comma-boundary,

then the sound of the hole
traveling back
to its proper place
on the circle.

You had to wait for its return.
You had to wait.
Even if you were angry
and your finger flew,

you had to await
the round trip
of seven holes
before you could speak.

The rotary was weird for lag,
for the afterthought.

Before the touch-tone,
before the speed-dial,
before the primal grip
of the cellular,

they built glass houses
around telephones:
glass houses in parking lots,
by the roadside,
on sidewalks.

When you stepped in
and closed the door,
transparency hugged you,
and you could almost see

your own lips move,
the dumb-show
of your new secrecy.

Why did no one think
to conserve the peal?

Just try once
to sing it to yourself:
it's gone,

like the sound of breath
if your body left.

from Hayden's Ferry Review, Issue 27, Fall/Winter 2000-2001
Hayden's Ferry Review

A Birthday Candle

Donald Justice

Thirty today, I saw
The trees flare briefly like
The candles on a cake,
As the sun went down the sky,
A momentary flash,
Yet there was time to wish

from The Summer Anniversaries, 1960
Originally published in The New Yorker
Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT

You Can't Write a Poem about McDonald's

Ronald Wallace


Noon. Hunger is the only thing
singing in my belly.
I walk through the blossoming cherry trees
on the library mall,
past the young couples coupling,
by the crazy fanatic
screaming doom and salvation
at a sensation-hungry crowd,
to the Lake Street McDonald's.
It is crowded, the lines long and sluggish.
I wait in the greasy air.
All around me people are eating –
the sizzle of conversation,
the salty odor of sweat,
the warm flesh pressing out of
hip huggers and halter tops.
When I finally reach the cash register,
the counter girl is crisp as a pickle,
her fingers thin as french fries,
her face brown as a bun.
Suddenly I understand cannibalism.
As I reach for her,
she breaks into pieces
wrapped neat and packaged for take-out.
I'm thinking, how amazing it is
to live in this country, how easy
it is to be filled.
We leave together, her warm aroma
close at my side.
I walk back through the cherry trees
blossoming up into pies,
the young couple frying in
the hot, oily sun,
the crowd eating up the fanatic,
singing, my ear, my eye, my tongue
fat with the wonder
of this hungry world.

Botany in Action

Christopher Joslyn


This morning I found you before the rain,
Before a shower, before makeup and hairspray,
Before you made your breath like mint,
Before morning prayer, soap, earrings, and perfume,
Before hot water, breakfast and a cigarette, when
You were six brown leaves dancing in the wind

This morning I found you before the phone rang,
Before the first bill was paid, before your impatiens woke to thirst,
Before you cleaned rough white crystals of sleep from the corner of your eye,
Before you took any medicine, before you looked in any mirror,
Before your life began to need you, when
You were smooth stones at the bottom of a cold, fast-moving stream

This morning I found you before you touched the powdered wing of your own early beauty
With an attempt to be beautiful.
Your hair a million unmapped directions, a survey of the wildness of sleep,
Your body rising, falling with your breath, before you dressed in different rhythm.
This morning I found you when you were botany in action,
Partly bud and partly bloom, scarlet flower drinking air and light.