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Spring 2008 Issue

On Finding

 

I unburied a crumpled bird,

dragged from tangled

 

weeds, vines grown so thick

I forgot I grew them on purpose.

 

She found things, wailing,

lonesome flapping against bars,

 

murmur at my breast,

caged probe.

 

But finding is all the same.

Once I’ve discovered the sealed pocket

 

I can’t hide things there

anymore.

 

Vines prove just as useless,

temporary as fences,

 

It’s only a matter of remembering

I devised the disguise.

 

I’ll strangle her (I can’t swallow

her song much longer).

 

Between the clamps of eye-

lids, beneath the weight of air,

 

I can ignore the fluttering, fragile

in my veins.

 

              — Hadley Brown

 

                                                               Time

 

If there are seven minutes, then the rhyme with the celestial is odd.  Sequins splash down:

7 x 60, but not even.  If there is a bodice, it sparkles over the bosom, redolent of time.  If

there is a bosom, it sparkles beneath the bodice.  If there is one body, there are seven of

them.  Hence there is a center and its center is iridescent: slick counting.  If there is

seven, then there are sixty and so on, as in a gender inside a gender or a rhyme also called

eternal reward.  Note the presence of sequins, carefully tabulated, placed on the tongue.

Sequence melts there.  Accounting, measuring cups which are globular, breast-like, sitting

one inside another, a minute in sixty seconds.  The ingredient that reverts to shine.

 

                                                                                                  — Elizabeth Robinson

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Daughter of Rimbaud

 

The girl of the open dress

rises on the hour

in which words are of celebration

for she herself is a celebration

when she stretches her thigh to the ground

and the wind blows over her

with its infinite fingers

A tricycle of crystal awaits her

with the flowers of the patio

and a nest of blind butterflies

undresses between its bones of honey

And in her bed of blue plumes

she hangs her braids of wheat

and counts her dead bees

until remaining asleep

while the evening envelopes her

with its yellow lips

The daughter of the open dress

awakens on the hour

in which the clocks dream

because she herself is a dream

when she opens her dress

and the sparrows flock

crazy with love

above her paper-white breasts

 

              — Mario Meléndez

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