MiPOesias Magazine

William Stobb's first collection, Nervous Systems, is a 2006 National Poetry Series selection. It will be published by Penguin in 2007. William lives in La Crosse, Wisconsin, where he is Assistant Professor of English at Viterbo University.

Crow                                                           
                                                                                        for Kevin Marzahl


Ride bike fast and slow             like even
people on the paved trail
by the tracks and in neighborhoods        like odd
                                                                 half-glimpsed 
houses and curb-shaped stripes of yellow
                                                      ball flies up 
                            above the tree these children play 
ball at the very edge of traffic
having no safe concept           casual 
                                              neighborhood
crimes slide past 
even the president bet         
the have-not kind 
in casual households                
make out like a crow        finds a bat sleeping 
                                            under a buckled shingle        
                                        he rips away
four rapid beak attacks 
change one bat from old to new
dark             half way to Stoddard 
on the highway trail 
too toothy smiles on the fronts of 
too fast broncos           ride fast          flat-out dive
down the switch-yard access road 
north past the trailer park                         saving my life
circle stop one minute                                     friend told me
at the outskirt fountain                                 crank pedals
then on along this rim                                                 go crow

Poem for Detroit                                                  


High-plains car-chase game
                                             Race to connect
with isolated storms running the horizon            
                                     Drive state 
highways county roads
any old dirt track to get your           self right
                                                 in weather
Once I hit washboard at seventy
my Olds leapt 
from one gravel edge to the other         
                                                       The steep margin 
had a kind of gravity and I understood
I would be found after some time
                                                            One artist
cast every part of a wrecked American
sedan              reassembled it without the death
                        One less
rollover-in-rain-then-bleed-out-humming-the-Supremes
-death    (or one
                           more not-that)          
                                                        This blond 
Montana kid I knew played trumpet 
with the Temptations in Bozeman
                                                      past their prime
they stepped off the tour bus 
in red velvet suits & did groove       
                                                   See how wherever
                                                                   else it goes 
                                                            out and out  
it reaches Detroit 
                                         To fall 
through auto-motion into new music
                                                             Air’s made 
for Motown       Air gets everything down
                                                to its pump      broken
                                                valve          pooling fluids
                                           eventually
                   first hard drops 
smack the smoking 
chassis               Or 
                           If 
it never does rain maybe a bird           what the 
wind sounds like blown over cooling
                                                           The point of chasing 
storms is to meet before being 
unmade           one weather one car 
                                     one body
                                            me as in meteorology            
                               If you ever play and win  
get out of the car 
let the cold rain hammer you some