INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
Chris Lord
Joseph McNair
Karyn M. Wolven
Geoffrey Philp
Paul B. Roth
Duane Locke
Silvia Scheibli
Shutta Crum
Felino Soriano
Steve Beaulieu
Donald Hewlett
Alan Britt
Joanie Freeman
Mervyn M. Solomon
Jerry Blanton
Marilyn Churchill
Running Cub
Mukul Dahal
Alice Paris
Helen
Losse
Fred Wolven
Ann Arbor Review is an International Journal & ezine
Copyright (c) 2006
Fred Wolven
All rights revert back to each poet.
------------------------------------------------
Fred Wolven, Editor
Homestead, Florida
Submissions via e-mail:
A cool St. Patrick's Day morn -
two ghosts walking the Gulf's deserted white-washed beach,
their daughter's arms fine wool draping their shoulders,
an intricate knit relinquished wordlessly as their bottle-
green shadows unbury her sand-covered feet, offer her
a leprechaun's hat for the sea to fill with sand dollars.
The daughter sees herself as a droplet on a shamrock,
part of a transparent trilogy, a bubble left behind
on a page of sand when the ocean withdrew its hand,
a bead of sweat on the temples of two men she once healed
with her touch. Now she is breaking, tastes of the salt tossed
over the road home's shoulder by the winds of Ivan and Katrina.
She wants to vanish into desecrated air with her two Irish fathers
who died exactly three weeks apart on a Saturday night, adrift
in the rocking arms of red-haired Marys and graying Moiras,
where they heard the last call of bagpipes, ordered a pint,
toasted the spirited fiddler playing on the three-legged stool
at the cross-roads, dropped their tithes in his upturned hat,
sang harmony to their daughter, hush now, don't you cry.
Their voices still echo where the water is wide, part waves
of grief, break open a bottle of light in the tipped green sky.
THE ESTUARY AT THE DAUPHIN ISLAND SEA LAB
I become the balloonfish, eyes bulging aqua-blue,
my cartoon face blowing the bubbles of an infant,
become a purple puff schooling in a coral classroom,
my fins the blond eyelashes of a mermaid's child
I turn my back to the seagull, the bully on the bough
turn my face with settled birds into the ferry's wind
watch the black wings of a thousand cormorants
rise from the ocean in one wave, roll out the night.
Chris Lord, Ann Arbor