INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
Gerald Clark
Lyn Lifshin
Paul B. Roth
Ndue Ukaj
Anne Babson
Laszlo Slomovits
Qinqin Huang
Duane Locke
Adhar Maheshwari
Shutta Crum
Odimegwu Onwumere
Anthony Seidman
Chris Lord
Running Cub
Amit Parmessur
John F. Buckley &
Martin Otto
Joanie Freeman
Alan Britt
Jennifer Burd &
Laszlo Slomovits
Sonnet Mondal
Karyn M. Bruce
John Tustin
Jennifer Burd
Michael Gessner &
Daniel Davis
Martin Camps &
Anthony Seidman
Fred Wolven
M. J. Iuppa
John Grochalski
Catherine O'Brien
Joe Milford
Byron Matthews
Joseph Murphy
Dike Okoro
Ann Arbor Review
is an independent
International Journal & ezine
Copyright (c) 2012
Fred Wolven
All rights revert back to each poet.
--editor / Southeastern Florida
------------------------------------------------
Fred Wolven, editor
Submissions via e-mail:
Lazing at lunch, torpid with quiche
and Beaujolais, I saw those brambles
by the shed, how they rise
In an accidental arch to frame, say,
some lissome vision passing under,
her tiny flowers carried in concise bouquet.
I drained my glass to quell the ache
as other eyes, less prone to bleary
reveries, scanned keen for opportune
configuration. Eyes that see
A flyway when there's one to see,
then swing the hungry void at dusk,
twirl down that lethal space, traversing
back again, again in ruthless iteration,
throwing silver threads across the moon...
But brambles grow only as they can,
to merely be as they can be; they rise
to no presumed design, no more arch
than flyway in their plain reality.
We understand so easily how words
can grace the world with metaphor,
incline the eye to what it sees; but
don't overlays of mute instinctive purpose
do the same?
If that's a sort of poetry, there are
more kinds of poets than we credit.
Most lack words to conjure visions
or disturb our sleep,
But they bring such exacting fit
to time and place, like the perfect word
in the perfect space, that their mere
Persevering, closely seen, finds an ancient
endless interlacing, the intricate eternal dance
that, merely, makes the world proceed.
Byron Matthews, near Albuquerque, New Mexico