INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
Alan Britt
Shutta Crum
Jumoke Verissimo
Las Slomovits
Richard Kurtz
Lyn Lifshin
Duane Locke
Serena Wilcox
Jerry Blanton
Dami Ajayi
Odimegwu Onwumere
Joanie Freeman
Dike Okoro
Amit Parmessur
Paul B. Roth
Divya Rajan
Kim Keith
Fred Wolven
C. Derick Vann
Al Ortolani
Steve Barfield
Jim Davis
Chris Lord
Jennifer Burd
Will Swanson
Isabel Kestner
Lisa Schmidt
Running Cub
Tolu Ogunlesi
Gallup Park, Ann Arbor, Michigan
An unseen bird. You find something
inside yourself that calls back.
The water's surface is broken time
and again by the ducks,
those clowns. The ripples give
a laugh to the lilies
moored against the far shore.
A man and a boy appear
with lines, bait, and patience:
two fish, alive, sunny-side-up.
And that other river,
behind you - footsteps in one ear
out the other and loose stitches
of conversation in any language
weaving past, knotting up
on the adjacent bench,
unraveling. In one of those accents
the father introduces himself
and his son, Rodrigo, asks where
you live. Quiet is the current
you paddle together,
and the fish silvering the air
all the way back
into that other river,
inside you, where the voices
of ones you have loved -
now closer, now farther away -
call from either side
of moving water.
*
Just before dusk,
when the shore floats
everyone else downstream,
orange heats the clouds
and smoothes them over
lilies dock feet bench tree
man-and-boy-in-the-distance
and your bones even lighter
where you settle into the greenery,
admiring the way day lays down
its scarves upon the river.
A bird. That's all
there ever was to begin with.
Jennifer Burd, Ypsilanti, Michigan