Editor’s Choice: Michael Ogletree
Two poems by Michael Ogletree
NEEDLE IN GROVE
We make love to the shrill cry
of the homeless man two blocks
down, pacing rhythms against
a barrage of unfounded insults.
Your touch is lunar: distant,
shifting. Light is a greenish glow
against your bluish-blue eyes,
supernatural and para-familiar.
Every kiss is a catechism, every
last chance breaks in splinters
that collect in the same routine—
expecting skips, scratches.
FRAUENKIRCHE, 1995
Standing among the rubble,
I force breath in and out and wait
for sense to settle in like morning dew.
I will wait all day.
Sleepy Dresden , your fallen lady
can’t wake up. Her paintings
are ash, her pews mulched to pulp.
I stare at the altar that pierces the leaden air
like one of Saint Sebastian's arrows.
Prayers rise from the congregation—
six-thousand tons of stone.
The tour guide smiles; he tells of plans
to rebuild, to wipe her wounds with a salve
of mortar and diplomacy. As the others smile along,
I walk to the banks of the Elbe
and remember my grandmother in her coffin
wearing more makeup dead than alive.
I ask the river, who remembers,
if we will forget the face of our brutality
after all our scars are bandaged.
The Elbe whispers back, the whip
of wind on water, and sighs toward the sea.
Fall 2007 Poetry
.ETCETERA by Ron Miraflores
Featured Poet: Judson Hamilton
Editor’s Choice: Michael Ogletree
TRUTH IN ADVERTISING by Patricia
Fillingham
PAMONA HILLS by Daniel Wilcox
YOU AND LANGSTON HUGHES by Rosemary
Pennington
QUIET ASYLUM by Candy Tothill
THE TRAVELER AWAKES. HER TRAIN AWAKES
by Nick Courtright
DYING ALONE by Helen Peterson
THE LIE by Daniel S. Irwin
NEWSPAPER PHOTOS OF THE BROKEN WORLD by
Donna Munro
OCCUPIED TILL I DIE by J. Alan Nelson
BECAUSE LOVE IS LIKE THE SHORTEST DAY by
Dave Migman
YOUR EYES ARE by Jennifer Bowles
OF BEAUTIFUL SOULS by David McLean
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