FEATURED ARTIST
JACK MOREFIELD
INTERVIEW
Robert Creeley
POETRY
Robert Creeley
Pam Burr Smith
Ron Lavalette
Gian Lombardo
Hugh Ogden
Gary Lawless
Jane Eklund
Tom Chandler
April Ossmann
Rich Murphy
Graeme Mullen
Lewis Turco
Elizabeth Tibbetts
Sydney Lea
2004 PUSHCART NOMINATIONS
The First Annual
Coat Hanger Award
New England Reads
Jack Reviews
Robert Creeley
Puerta
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Jane Eklund
Jane Eklund has received grants and from
the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts for poetry and the
Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice for fiction. Her poems have
appeared in journals including the Georgia Review, the North
American Review, the Sun and Poetry Northwest. She works
as an editor at a weekly newspaper in Peterborough, NH.
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IN THE PHOTO GALLERY
This isn’t about me, or you, or what went wrong.
This isn’t black and white, half-tone,
chiaroscuro, the interplay of your image on my reprographic
paper. In one life, I’m flying past the Genesee
Hotel; in another, hurtling to my startling
conclusion: a barber pole, a coffee shop, the sidewalk
beneath the flashing marquee. There’s no free lunch,
no free garage. Have I mentioned how everything
is connected, but not in a way you’d expect? I’m not touching
those dance hall girls, I’m not exploding
into history or even into sadness, I just want
to lie naked for a while in the sphagnum moss.
Three dimensions were too much for us, so I’m folding
into two, a child’s valentine tucked inside an envelope and sent –
to whom? No one knows where this story’s going
and you know, pictures are fine but I can’t tell a thing
without words. Nothing wraps up like the end
of a sentence. It’s just a reflection of who
I am. Or it would be, if this were about me,
or about illumination, or about anything at all
except time, momentum, and the incredible free-fall
of the heart, which always works in wide-angle, without a net.
ONE OF THESE STATEMENTS IS TRUE
I have a working comprehension of quantum physics.
I lust after Snow White.
The seven dwarfs are like brothers to me.
I can describe the sky using a quadratic equation.
Montana is the big equation state.
I left my heart in Montana.
That’s where Snow White lives.
The sum of the numerator and the denominator times pi
is equal to the velocity of flames.
The seven dwarfs are setting wildfires in the Bitterroot Mountains.
Snow White says I am the best kisser she has ever encountered.
The wildfires are burning at the edges of my heart.
Einstein said kissing is a scientific proposition.
Einstein said it’s always about sex.
The wildfires in Montana are a Disney theme park.
The seven dwarfs, my brothers, work there stoking
the underground furnaces.
Einstein is opening a guest house in Missoula.
I’m taking Snow White there on a romantic getaway.
I’m already packed.
I’ve already purchased a bushel of poisoned apples.
BOTTICELLI
Venus is chilly, posing by the ocean
into late afternoon, and not a little ticked off.
What is it with these male artists,
she thinks – couldn’t he have painted me
a shawl, a cape, anything to keep the bitter
wind at bay? Perhaps a Thermos of espresso,
some wool socks. It’s been a long
five centuries, barefoot on a half shell,
nothing but a rope of hair
for modesty, a carefully placed hand.
Always the pink carnations flying by,
always the velvet wrap just out of reach.
Who knew it would be like this?
Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi Botticelli –
a long name, long gone, while Venus
suffers on; the life
of the imagination doesn’t quit,
there’s no stopping it, no curling up
in the shell, pulling down
the lid, waiting out eternity in a cave
lit by a polished pearl.
Poems © Jane Eklund 2004. All
rights reserved. |
