Back From The Land of Nod. . .

 

 

In This Light
by Matt Hart
nothing and nothing gets by you, but I get so distracted that my notice has been put on notice for birds and for traffic For instance, the constant slap of the sound of waves against gutters gets by me Grass stain on my hands from falling down at the hospital gets by me Physics Sequined dresses The Olympics get by me Meanwhile, the mountains are, so far, only distant, and some days I am even making my way through them with my pants on, which is lucky, though at other junctures sunflowers and pine tree needles my arms in full blossom as you appear around a corner kaleidoscopically The day looking up between us pink clouds

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For You Today

 Jessica Greenbaum

\

Of course there is a jackhammer. And a view, like Hopper,

but happier. Of course there is the newspaper—the daily

herald of our powerlessness. Easy go, easy come: thwash,

the next day another, an example of everything that gets done

in the dark. Like the initiative of the crocuses from a snow

that was, as it works out, warming them. Or in this case,

the strange October weather warming them. There were the

conclusions we jumped to. To which we jumped. There was

pain, and then there was suffering. Of course there was my

ambition to offer you the world, but one that I have rearranged

to make sense. Here are all the sensations of being alive

at the turn of the twenty-first century, here’s how they ring out

against each other, here’s how one brings out the sense of 

another, here is the yellow next to the fathomless blue.

 

 

 

 

 Still Burning

Gerald Stern

Me trying to understand say whence

say whither, say what, say me with a pencil walking,

say reading the dictionary, say learning medieval

Latin, reading Spengler, reading Whitehead,

William James I loved him, swimming breaststroke

and thinking for an hour, how did I get here?

Or thinking in line, say the 69 streetcar

or 68 or 67 Swissvale,

that would take me elsewhere, me with a textbook

reading the pre-Socratics, so badly written,

whoever the author was, me on the floor of

the lighted stacks sitting cross-legged,

walking afterwards through the park or sometimes

running across the bridges and up the hills,

sitting down in our tiny diningroom,

burning in a certain way, still burning.

 

Back from Nod #2