ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

Three Poems
by Suzanne Buffam


Sir Gromore Somyr Joure 

That was a happy station, full of sunshine and cabbage.
You could sit among the thinkers for hours,
thinking anything you wanted. You could think
about your kingdom and feel a small stab of remorse,
or you could cultivate an interest in the funnel-shaped
webs leading down through the grasswort
towards what toothed and cruel center lay waiting.
Knees were for kneeling. Lashes were for looking
at the sun. The river was slow and it hurried.
Trains slowed down but did not stop.
Wherefore was the question on everyone’s lips
though none spoke it, nor plucked it away
but let it hang there like an overripe pear
left out for the gleaners to dispute in the fall.
Every horse had three different names, each one
more purple than the last. Sir Gromore Somyr Joure
took the day every day until the very day
he retired. Did I love that dark horse?
I did not. His breath stank of cabbage.
He bit the hands that fed him. He would stand
in bad weather and refuse the boxwood gate.
But I was there in the fray and the fanfare,
I was there in the dooryard, and I was there
when they laid him down cold to the earth.


Two Hands 

One hand flashes a mirror at the sun.
The other casts the shadow of a wing.

*

One hand opens a window.
The other hand lowers a lid.

*

One hand holds a nail.
The other hand loses the hammer in the grass.

*

One hand wears a ring.
One wears a scar where a ring used to be.

*

One hand tears up a note.
The other hand tapes back the petals on a rose.

*
One sifts through a box of old photographs for the boy half-buried
            in sand.
One hangs the empty frame back on its hook.

*

One wrenches a nest from the crook of a branch.
One finds enough dropped feathers to build a whole bird.

*

One builds a box.
One buries the bird on the ridge.

*

One locks up the cabin.
One turns back the hands of a clock.

*

One grips the railing.
One drops a silver chain into the lake.

*

One presses a small yellow bud between the chapter on love
            and the chapter on desire without an object.
One leaves the book out in the rain.

*

One hand tests the waters.
The other hand traces a name across the waves.


Love Sonnet

Now you are old and mostly bald
riding an antique bicycle.
You are wearing a neckbrace
and your posture––because of the bicycle?
because of the rolling Bavarian
hills in the background?––
is comically upright, as is,
in a way, your facial expression
which is none the less gentle
and none the less reticent
as you weave and swerve jerkily
in decreasing rings on the cobblestones
on which I am standing
remote        and also too close