THREE POEMS BY 42 MILES PRESS POETRY AWARD 2013 FINALISTS
MARK WISNIESKI
One Week Before Heart Surgery
last night I dreamt
Hemingway was alive
& only he & I & his fourth wife
knew he wasn’t long
from his second death
he was leaning back
against an armchair
in a bungalow he
rented month-to-month
speaking quietly
& sometimes
incorrectly
his wife disliked
my presence but to him
it seemed
my interest offered a break
from a Sunday of thoughts
I could tell he wanted to write
but knew he shouldn’t
finally his wife
lost interest in me
& it was only
he & I in a cab
drive by no one
on the outskirts of
Sacramento: he was out
of his element & we
passed an indoor stream
he discussed just enough for me
to realize he no longer
cared about trout
ours was a mild friendship we’d
agreed could last until six days before
the next death between us
& then
by the way he sat–
with one hand
over the other
on his cross-legged lap
gazing neither at nor
away from me–
I knew
time was up
for one of us
DAN KAPLAN
+
Once we note how numbers change
appearances we try others.
The gray-headed albatross loops the globe
in 46 days and the extent of
migration is greater than thought.
Across the square
an ancient dog labors,
one day won’t wake.
Night develops a faithful copy
others will scrape across.
As with certain advances
countries become little
more than geometries.
As small areas burn
and distant shapes occupy
something like fields
of vision.
RICHARD ROBBINS
The House
Nudged into an inner wall, witness
to every squabble, there was a nest
where grief lay its eggs. Their footsteps led there,
even walking away. Sorry joists
bulged like ribs. Across humming, ancient
wires, their house talked and talked, the present
they gave themselves for a miracle birth
of something flying, tired, out their chests.
* all poems selected from submissions to the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award, 2013.
42milespress.com 