Sarah Sarai | A Thousand Deaths

A Thousand Deaths

 

Jack’s in Wisconsin with a girlfriend

whose father is down one cow,

which I become in its death,

the wandering-off cow Jack finds

“out in the woods with its legs sticking /

straight up to the stars.”

Its unborn calf is by its side.

Eight dead cow-legs point out

two escaped cow-souls.

And so I become animal mother

sorrow, my eyes aching and red,

searching night skies.

My legs pointing to the endless.

I am galled by the up and

down of love, a boulder

hard-shouldered every day.

 

Quote from “Thinning the Herd,” I Have No Clue by Jack Wiler (Longshot Press, 1996)

 

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Photo by Amy Holman

Sarah Sarai has published two to three poetry collections, depending on how you reckon, and a bunch of short stories. A native New Yorker, she lives in the big city, where she is an independent editor of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.

Thaddeus Rutkowski | Red Sky at Morning

RED SKY AT MORNING

I consider myself lucky

that I don’t have to take warning

on the mornings when, at sunrise,

the high clouds turn pink,

then deepen to red,

covering half the sky.

 

I’m not a sailor,

worried about the weather,

expecting the red clouds to turn

to dark gray clouds that let loose

a flood of rainwater,

tossing my ship at sea.

 

I am just a person looking out my window,

well, not constantly looking,

because that would be boring —

just looking at the sky —

but now and then checking

as the reddening registers in my mind.

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Photo Credit: Jackie Sheeler

Thaddeus Rutkowski is the author of seven books, most recently Tricks of Light, a poetry collection from Fair Weather for Media. He teaches at Medgar Evers College and received a fiction writing fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts.

John Swain | On the River Loing

On the River Loing

The sky loops over a rose bower,
your arms fall through rivers,
a clear rush of sun
on the tall ferns, between the plane trees,
you swim with me
in the bright poppy water.

Light lets the flowers trail your streamline,
the river moves
through the ancient bridge,
the sky of celandine springs,
the sky of yellow cherries ripe,
light taste in the white grape skins.

You turn with the river lit with sun,
your aura of leaves, aura of lamps
lights the trees on the sandbank gently blazing.


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John Swain lives in Kentucky and in France.  His most recent chapbook, On the Roof Terrace, was published as a bilingual edition with French translations by Gaëlle Richard and Daphné Brottet.