INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
Richard Kostelanetz
Karyn M. Bruce
Duane Locke
Lyn Lifshin
Rich Ives
Chris Lord
Anton Gojcaj
Donal Mahoney
Laszlo Slomovits
Alan Britt
A. J. Huffman
Bhisma Upreti
Ali Znaidi
Paul B. Roth
Joan Colby
Rexhep Shahu
Catherine McGuire
Michelle Bailat-Jones
April Salzano
Kufre Udeme
Jane Butler
Jennifer Burd
Peycho Kanev
Joanie Freeman
Jennifer Burd &
Laszlo Slomovits
Frederick Pollack
Fahredin Shehu
Holly Day
Serena Wilcox
Ndue Ukaj
Running Cub
Fred Wolven
Allison Grayhurst
Rose Mary Boehm
Michael D. Long
Jim Davis
Christopher Dungey
Bobbi Sinha-Morey
Jason Ryberg
Douglas Polk
Janine Canan
Ann Arbor Review
is an independent
International Journal & ezine
Copyright (c) 2013
Silver Grey Fox
All rights revert back to each poet.
--editor / Southeastern Florida
------------------------------------------------
staff:
Francis Ferde
Silver Grey Fox
Running Cub
Fred Wolven
Submissions via e-mail:
The horses proceed down the river path.
There is a place to ford.
The waters low enough.
The willows overhanging.
A vast hotel on the far bank
Full of mercenaries and warlords
Speaking languages we've never heard,
A rasp of brutal xylophones.
You can no more drown in this river
Than you can flounce into the drawing room
Where the dictator is drinking
Sour wine with his retinue.
REFUGEES
We trundle in all of the clothes
we can fit on our bodies.
It is not winter yet. An old man
wears dozens of flannel robes.
Mud underfoot and the soldiers
shouting, cannon being dragged
by straining bodies. All the horses
were slaughtered months ago. Hunger
travels this road. If anyone knows
where we are headed, he keeps
his mouth sewed with black thread. Huts smoke in the distance,
crows caw from the rusted
belfreys of pine. Their cries like
shabby black elbows. Night
suddenly. A pox of stars
and small fires splaying a cruel orange
slap print on exhausted faces. There were dogs once
and sometimes snared hares, now
we gnaw our own fingers,
hug sleep to us like gristle.
They say a blood moon
means a change of fortune. Our bloody footprints
will bloom in snow like miraculous flowers. Nobody talks
of calendars or the old occupations.
Families forget the names they were born with.
All the roads
cram with this progress.
Eyes and mouths hauling a sack of wants. Old women tell
of fig trees, cool water, sheep on a mountainside.
They bless themselves. The gravel of their legends
haunts some of us. Others plant
one foot after another.
Joan Colby, Elgin, Illinois