FOUR POEMS, FOUR POETS
CHRIS FORHAN
Aspirin and Shadow
Moon I swallow at dawn
to unsludge the blood,
haul it along: clump
of dust dissolving
that I might not
dissolve too soon
into this dust
I trudge across,
moonlight fashioning
a blackness I drag
behind me, long
blank flag of myself.
VICTORIA CHANG
Elegy as a Red Dress
We open our red dresses
and underneath
you are gone. What
remains:
thousands of wingless
bees that
when true, are blue, that
no longer make
goods, that no longer
think
clearly, drunk baskets
of fuzz.
ADDA DJØRUP
From Thought’s Divan
I came to a valley amid mountains where no valley was.
A wind full of gentle bells rushed through the soft grass.
Almond blossoms floated like foam on the rich darkness.
Above the high mountains bitter-cold air bit into crunching snow.
Behind them the moon strewed its light like sugar
over the blank mystery of the sea.
And peacefully
stuffed on its sumptuous beauty, I cursed
creation.
Sighed
and ruminating
sprawled out on thought’s divan
conjured up the notion that behind the stars
the angels are waiting—the universe’s seamstresses in white—
who each with an arch smile and a quick scissor snip
rips the heart from the chest and throws it
high up and catches it
throws and catches
throws and catches
until it is weightless and floats away in the dark.
translated from the Danish by Roger Greenwald
ELYSE FENTON
Aubade, Iraq
Sulfur-mouthed nightcrier, rooftop
harbinger, bringer of the gut-shot
dawn—What I would do to keep you
at rifle’s reach, stifle you, drown you
in the Tigris’ muck and swill, touch you
aflame on its kerosene spine
I could wait out artillery skitter, crater-
blast, stay here long into next empire
dreaming fingers and the Fertile Crescent
of thighs—if not for your voice
risen like Babel’s ghost from the ruined fortress
Ash-haired rider come to tongue open
dawn’s torturous eye—
*
all from Pleiades 31.1 (2011), Eds. Wayne Miller and Phong Nguyen
42milespress.com 