ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

 
THREE POEMS
by Kathryn Rantala


An Else

Thinking an else
I mishandle
cup, crow, willingness.

Trees to bud,
flower in them,
pushed up;
yards
swaddling good,
the bad, greens,

but I mishandle all,
opening instead
an other.

A some thing comes:
bird won't answer,
or plant; but I,
thinking a besides,
an anyway,
do,

mishandling
the door,
even the lean of it.



I Shudder Anymore

I shudder anymore, a foot slapping to not look, not look, not here at the corner of the bookcase that turns, gloved, looks to not speaking and without consideration of bicycle, but oh, those grey gloves! What is growing is growing was used to be growing now angling (growing) insisting a push at me conspiratorially of books, the Maseratti, the concubine, the archbishop layered in Victoria, and, oh my sweets, the lover with those flowers, how one is reading now past needs, the heart wetting through the chair, numbed leg by the fire, a dead cat and someone daring to love medicinal hair-darker now myself with not enough lamp how even candling to the door is an obelisk for cold, the peering, curious spread inward down it, down in it, to where I shudder, I shudder anymore, and most of the time.



3 Musical Occasions

Late Music in A

Hold the hand up, like this, still blooming:
Grenadine adventurer, ambivalent token
of the ambidextrous chevalier!
unpenitent wanderer in ambiguous orb grasses,
ambrosial Khan, murderer-protector of the little digits.
Eyehole, heart hole gorge the smaller vessels,
reach the nimble thumbs; the
numbed thimble pianist. A little ten at most,
maybe one we hum.

Rag in M

Andalusians, their lost sheep, the
French without drawers, the
babies on the levies, Cajuns gone.
Such dancing!

So much calmer two-handed black man
slow sweat wandering,
the pinkerside keying kinescopic,
the melody,
beautiful Mobius rotogravure.

The Potential of G

Ordinary beginning and then
greatly not ordinary, glossed,
glimmered, glissando'd, Gustavo,
his gestures strung disgustingly
and dance enabled, free of France
once and for all, steps among
his willing undead, still with wine,
and with one hand strums the packet.
Tear along here, the crowd shouts,
in the rising and falling parachute
of Giselle's skirts, when minor mirrors
gored, gashed, exhausted.