Near the Angel
-Kathleen McGookley
The angel’s outline under last night’s snow is almost invisible, the valleys of her wings and legs a shadowy X, low ridges the wind could have shaped. But it was not chance; you laid down to make her.
The silver garbage can, near the angel, near the birdfeeders, is new and neat and perfect, under its cold white cap. Its lid, shiny and undented, fits tightly. Today I am in love with this sturdy container, full of cold seeds. The snow does not look like anyone’s ashes. When the sun shone, when I chased the baby away from the stove, my yard was too bright to look at for long.
First to breathe that air
- Marion Boyer
A grey helmet with a heavy glass rectangle
is the closest my husband comes to armor
and his head snap to bring down the mask
seems an entirely masculine move. He lights
the blowtorch with a metal striker throwing
a spark just before the flame blast. Asbestos gloves
hold the steel. Who can imagine the men
who built a city by straddling girders sixty,
eighty stories up, eating their ham on rye lunches
in the bright sun, hoping they’d be there
at the topping off to erect an evergreen.
Their casual balance, worn shoes swinging in space,
is a primer for grace, the balance walk between
iron and clouds. I want to ask each man
how he decided to place his foot here, not there,
when he felt the structure’s sway in his ankles;
how it is to coon an I-beam until the wind dies.
crouched in the pocket, gripping the flanges,
to walk a new space in air nobody’s ever been,
what he thought watching barges swim
their miniature way on the silvered water below.
Street View
-Caroline Maun
In Google Maps, it’s a perfect mid-summer day,
2009. The geraniums are muscular,
and I’ve put planters full of petunias
on the porch so that my mother
will enjoy them as she smokes her cigarettes.
Her yellow ashtray, visible from the street,
is on the table, ready to hand, and while
she is not sitting in her seat
as the camera-car rolls by,
the cushions are comfortably arranged.
The echinacea is prolific,
black-eyed susans shoulder each other for sun,
pansies have volunteered from the year before.
The pear tree is still dustless,
although its blooms have long since disappeared.
Now, I await the pear blossoms.
Maybe I’ll recreate this drive-by porch in vivid
reds, whites, purples, and blues this year
because that chair, covered with blown snow,
is going to remain empty
and the ashtray I washed and put up this winter
is in the shadows of the cupboard.
Caroline Maun is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Wayne State University. She is the author of The Sleeping (Marick Press 2006), Cures and Poisons (Pudding House Press, 2009) and Greatest Hits: 1999-2010 (Pudding House Press, 2010).
