Poetry Feature No. 3 in Series Degrees of Apprenticeship The Sarah Lawrence Program With Introduction and Poems by Thomas Lux

~ A ~   ~ B ~    ~ C~ Viscera and Ephemera Jenifer Wohl Jonson Claim Kasey Jueds Dressed for the Weather Body of Work Judy Katz She Knows When They Kiss Louisa Lam Sunflowers Alice A. Loxley Fangs Christina Manning New Mother with Revisionist Tendencies Flashes Back to Being Dropped at Safeway with Litter of Kittens, 1978

Relapse Victoria Matalon What I Learned from the Parsees Jamie McNeely Hungry Seth Michelson On the Shelf Greg A. Nicholl Write Into the Sunset The Bronx Twilight Runaway Baruch November Back Home Tara Pearson Parting Gretchen Primack

~ . ~ . ~ Viscera and Ephemera Jenifer Wohl Jonson You'll ask yourself what is different. Sinew and bone now rearrange themselves into a new lover, up to the old tricks. But you grasp onto the one thing that has revealed itself. Perhaps a scar in the lip or wrist of that perfect flesh, that you can be privileged to name as incident, cause and effect. Pain. Always the same story told again on a new body. ~ . ~ Claim Kasey Jueds Once during that year when all I wanted was to be anything other than what I was, the dog took my wrist in her jaws. Not to hurt or startle, but the way a wolf might, closing her mouth over the leg of another from her pack. Claiming me like anything else: the round luck of her supper dish or the bliss of rabbits, their infinite grassy cities. Her lips and teeth circled and pressed, tireless pressure of the world that pushes against you to see if you're there, and I could feel myself inside myself again, muscle to bone to the slippery core where I knew next to nothing about love. She wrapped my arm as a woman might wrap her hand through the loop of a leash—as if she were the one holding me at the edge of a busy street, instructing me to stay. ~ . ~ Dressed for the Weather Judy Katz . . . and the lands grow distant in your sight, one journeying to heaven, one that falls. . . . —R. M. Rilke ("Evening") We could be those lands tonight, lying together after sex: you falling into sleep through the darkened house, the shades, the books, your forearm jumping once, me climbing past to wakefulness, limbs tightening, treetops clearing, a winter night leaned into— I had the dream again, the one about the field. Only this time it was filled with snow. Tall, choppy snow. And just your black hair visible over the curve of earth between us. I remember thinking, For once, I'm dressed for the weather and how proud you'd be—but I couldn't take one step toward you. Not even the first step. I stood there in my heavy boots weary with the thought of it. ~ . Body of Work Judy Katz Today I'm picturing a languorous one, not unlike yours, stretched across the horizon like a landscape. Smooth. Shapely. Perhaps these lines are a few strands of hair blown by a lazy wind into the corner of the mouth. It is calm I want. I'm tired of the hungry heart, the churning viscera. I'd like to write an eyebrow or a little patella. A deep hip crease or the perfect arc of a foot. Give me two lines as tender as the pale half-moons setting in your nails, and watch the poem rise and open its face. ~ . ~ She Knows When They Kiss Louisa Lam She knows that when they kiss he always closes his eyes.                                       She wonders how small or close you have to be And when he comes his face is an offering to the air.                                       to hear the old flood recede farther everyday, She wants it to be hers— the curve of open mouth, the fusion of top and bottom lashes.                                       to know that every drop from the faucet is empty, Every sated breath striking her neck is a crumb that falls on a cleaned plate                                       bearing no promise of a new washed world— that muffles the sound of her starving.                                       never again will olive branches be so tender a green. ~ . ~ Sunflowers Alice A. Loxley The sunflowers streak the air; they fill the dark with their furious after-images and jagged colors. The florid scenes that come, leftovers from past nights, re-made in the dark, deny rest. And I find within me an objection to everyone's happiness, a desire to say, "But this, this family circle, this love was not mine." At the edge of the table lies the rumpled napkin that whitely glows, my old portion. Here or there, somebody else's story, a list of remedies, a glass of wine become a faithless anodyne. The sunflowers flare in the dark room, their beauty a layer upon layer spiral of seed heads swirling, a thick excrescence of paint that arouses the dream within the dark of a medieval painting. Three feet above the tabletop, holding the center of the dark they burn like night fires on the water, and I am sailing, sailing, the choppy waters filled with flowers. ~ . ~ Fangs Christina Manning New Mother with Revisionist Tendencies Flashes Back to Being Dropped at Safeway with Litter of Kittens, 1978 I wish I could tell you the barbital blonde did not stow Rascal in her car with two Terriers while she shopped for shampoo in the haloed citrus aisles. I was witness to murder through the sealed window of a Pinto. This is a true story, a stone pearling in my gut. Despite my bruises, Parenthood is making me more of a liar than ever. In the guise of Family, I treat speech like a chicken: grease it, stuff it with crumbs. Manhattan divorces me from the Animal Kingdom, an estrangement which rendered labor and delivery a grievous endgame with my inner wolf. I won't repeat it. I wish I could tell you it wasn't up to me to fish the lock with a wire hanger, lift him from their fangs and cup his body in my hands while I waited for my Mother to squeal up in the Corona Mark II with bad brakes and take me home for burial. ~ . ~ Relapse Victoria Matalon Alyssa! Joey proposed on Tuesday and she hasn't eaten since. —It's not on purpose; I've just been so busy and excited and nervous… By Friday, those tight jeans, (Joey: the Wow-you-look-hot jeans) didn't cling at all, didn't hug a curve, I was so jealous. Mom said It's normal. All brides get skinny. But we joke about how crazy we were in thosedays, (as if it were years and years ago,)                            thatphase,        (as if it had only lasted months) And we said we would never go back, couldn't conceive of ourselves ever going back. (We were nuts! Sick in the head—That's not us anymore; we can't ever go back!) See a pretty girl eat a sandwich: cry, cry. See a fat girl happy: how? why? Take our clothes off for the guys— We needed to hear it:Awesome stomach! Perfect breasts! Great thighs! We were scared of salads.             —A month before vacation, I decided I'd live on              gum and candy (nuts!) A lifesaver for breakfast,              Trident for lunch, and—the best part, highlight of the day—              the post-workout blowpop. I'd start sucking it when I got on the subway to go home and it would last all the way to Brooklyn. (Now what real food can be savored for that long?) Then I'd chew the gum inside until Avenue M. On vacation, everyone thought I looked great. When I got home, I ate a banana, gained half of it back. Put milk in my coffee, gained the rest back. So I decided it just wasn't worth it. —The starving? —No, the eating. . . Another time, I was on a date and wanted the guy to think I was normal. So I ordered a salad and the penne. Then I went to the bathroom to get rid of it. And there, on the floor of the stall, with my hair tied behind me, tongue outside my throat, I felt low. I thought, this must be the lowest a person can possibly go. It's not worth it. —The dinner?        —The starving, the lying . . .  So we left. But this week, Alyssa went back. (Everyone thought she looked great.) But she could hardly hold her hand up to show admirers. And I was comparing myself to her. (That's how it was there—a competition, a game of horse. The better person makes do with less.) She took a bite of a nectarine. I had two nectarines. She didn't run. I didn't have to run. She went to sleep at five. She gets to skip dinner. This isn't fair. Stop. You can't go back without me. (stay here) ~ . ~ What I Learned from the Parsees Jamie McNeely I could never bury you. You saturate everything that could cover you, and the lies I tell are sacred. All that time I loved you in a tower of silence— with circles and circles of walls, with empty staircases and inner wells. When was the last time you saw some body walk out in daylight? I did not want to breathe you. I did not want to drink you, though it ended with your skin stripped like sheets from our bed. A word from you now would kill the air. And I am a gentle bird; only a few times a year I drop a finger or an ear in some new man's lap. Soon your disappearance will be complete; even your voice mixes with rain, passes through charcoal grates and out to sea. The last visitors only admire the gardens around you. ~ . ~ Hungry Seth Michelson I sit behind my apartment house and try to job-hunt the classifieds: a blizzard streaked by black boxcars I can't hop. E.S.L. instructor . . . must speak Burmese. Dog groomer . . . recommendations required. Sommelier wanted . . . What's a 'sommelier'? Morning chill purples my hands, whitens the last callus from my last job. I curse those shifts of mason's taunts as I loaded their trucks with our bricks, required to wear a lilac hard hat. From the Shamrock Cottage across the alley wafts of fried eggs and coffee remind me where I sit, broke. I slur the brickyard foreman who fired me for flooring a thick-neck no one liked. A fat man, pink and sweatered, leaves the diner rubbing his belly, teeters towards his company car. He nods Good dayat me, smiles smug as any boss. I skip a stone across my asphalt backyard, watch it clack to a halt. ~ . ~ On the Shelf Greg A. Nicholl They rush onto the stage for fifteen minutes of poetry. The first recalls standing on a bridge with Kinnell analyzing a poem by Whitman watching the white foam of water below. They all have their mentors, friends gone on to win the Pulitzer, someone they call every birthday, on holidays, after someone dies. Perhaps they have regular dinners, lunches between workshops, or drinks on the town discussing smoky verse drowned in vodka and gin. We have been here only three months, have heard only a fraction of the poems yet to be written, have searched out new voices in hopes of having someone to talk to before the first snow. Yet, will we reminisce about times spent lounging on campus discussing Olds, Doty, Simic? Will we become the Next Generation poets standing in front of an audience, retelling the good old days, never questioning if our names will appear on the shelves next to Whitman, Doty Olds and Simic, in twenty years time? ~ . ~ Write into the Sunset Baruch November       Perhaps we don't write the way we talk. Maybe it's like the movies: No one loves that way. No one drives that fast, that well. No one can fight three knights at once.       Perhaps we make movies the way we want to kiss. Then why not write poems the same way, over the top, heavy hand on heavy hand? A love untrue to the endless decay of beaches, the disfigured seagulls of reality. The ones that only last till Monday, Thursday at best. ~ . ~ The Bronx Twilight Runaway Baruch November Struck by the Bronx twilight, weary Moses folds his belongings into a threadbare satchel, binds his hair back, taps his staff to the floor, waves a farewell to pigeons. With a reverent hum, Moses recites the wayfarer's prayer, and departs. He walks and walks, and the streets ache on, leading him like a dream of land, then the cab splits the puddle, splashes him, spoils his only outfit, the dream expires too soon. Moses slams his staff twice upon the granite curb, and no one, no one can blame him this time. ~ . ~ Back Home Tara Pearson The air is stale now, the smell of family forgotten. The refrigerator hangs open and the crystal has lost its glint under a thin coat of dust. I have come home to sort out my parents' things. Closets and coats and pictures, papers and suits and silverware, the final diassembling of their lives. The first night I wrap myself in musty quilts, lie still and listen to the house carry on without us. The somber tick of the mantel clock and quiet gush of air through the vents. I dream of falling. Slipped off the edge of some glorious height, palms unfurled against nothingness, the whole earth loosed, flying up towards me. ~ . ~ Parting Gretchen Primack Meanwhile, everyone here wears too much skin, out for everyone to see: hands, faces exposed and blinding. We women lounge about the bar like a stable of horses. Across the street buildings are basted with sweet painted sunset, dissolving into space. Meanwhile my blood is glass. In a few minutes I will engage the bartender. In a couple of hours we will make our way to the door marked Authorized Personnel, and I will do it for love, though not his. ~ . ~ . ~ ~ A ~ ~ C ~ [home]