The bees came out of the junipers, two small swarms
The size of melons; and golden, too, like melons,
They hung next to each other, at the height of a deer’s breast
Above the wet black compost. And because
The light was very bright it was hard to see them,
And harder still to see what hung between them.
limestone, with traces of polychromy, c. 1200
There was a saint once,
he had but to ring across
water a small bell, all
manner of fish
rose, as answer, he was
that holy, persuasive,
both, or the fish
perhaps merely
hungry, their bodies
a-shimmer with
that hope especially that
hunger brings, whatever
the reason, the fish
coming unassigned, in
schools coming
into the saint’s hand and,
instead of getting,
becoming food.
I have thought, since, of
your body—as I first came
to know it, how it still
can be, with mine,
sometimes. I think on
that immediate and last gesture
of the fish leaving water
for flesh, for guarantee
they will die, and I cannot
rest on what to call it.
Not generosity, or
a blindness, trust, brute
stupidity. Not the soul
distracted from its natural
prayer, which is attention,
for in the story they are
paying attention. They
lose themselves eyes open.
(1998, Volume 19.3)
Carl Phillips’s thirteenth book of poems, Reconnaissance, will be out from FSG in 2015. In 2014, Graywolf published his book of prose, The Art of Daring: Risk, Restlessness, Imagination.
Mark Jarman’s poem “Northern Insomnia” appeared in NER 13.3-4:
Passing out of the rain into dull cloudlight,Through heather, a field of sleep, and rock,Into the discovery of waterAnd with it the recognition of wind.
Dark water, water showing,In a basin cut lengthwise below a hill,Nothing of the sky, a sheepish gray,Nothing of the eye’s desire for rest…
I’ve never.I’ve never made love.I’ve never made love to a man.I’ve never made love to a man but I imagine.I imagine pulling the moon.
Pulling the moon out of his brow.
I imagine pullingthe moon out of his brow and eating it again.
Know that lately,I am giving myselfto sleep as I oncegave myself in love,my body flung eagerlyinto bed; limbs limp and heavywith pleasure; the bedclotheson waking arranged exactlyas I entered them.I am in love nowwith rest, with releasefrom the tireless ego—
You want to keep feeding the fish
inside you, but you keep
eating the fish because you’re hungry.
This is not the way it should go.
No one said you would not be hungry.
You knew the dimensions of the aquarium
inside you, knew it was inside you.
She who fogged the glass didn’t know
that you’d eaten the fish, but you did and do.
You hear the aquarium inside your chest
crack, and before you know it, the carpet
is soaked with bleached coral,
plastic kelp, and multi-colored gravel.
This is not the way it should go.
This is not how anyone should go under—
the water that you contained now contains you.
Aliki Barnstone’s poem, “Sadness,” appeared in NER 21.2:
.jpg)
Rilke says sadness is the moment the future enters us
By surprise and pushes us into the unknown
The handsome bartender says,”Your drinks are on me”
—And leans across the counter—”What’ll it be?”
Alcohol is heat in my ears as I catch my reflection
In the mirror, happy flirting without forethought.
But days later alone the question comes back:
What will it be?
and I remember moments with you
When time raced quickly around us like a romping young dog
And we were amused. Today time reminds me of the hound
Knowingly guarding the underworld. Sadness slips in,
Doesn’t it? even in the gentle pleasures of the body
Which pass too and remind us of loss.
A first look at NER Vol. 34 Nos. 3–4
after a pen and ink drawing by Troy Passey
of a line by Edna St. Vincent Millay
troypassey.com
Volume 35, Number 4
Cover art by Margaret Withers
January 28 (Wednesday) 7:30 pm, Seattle: Hugo House is holding the release party for our new issue. Readers include Kelli Russell Agodon, Kevin Craft, Michelle Peñaloza, Susan Rich, and Christopher Robinson. Poetry editor Rick Barot will emcee.
February 10 (Tuesday) 7 pm, Boston: A celebration of NER with readings by contributors Brock Clarke, Lisa Van Orman Hadley, Matthew Lippman, Lenore Myka, and Alexandria Peary.
February 24 (Tuesday) 7:30 pm, Middlebury, VT: In the tradition of public radio's Selected Shorts, enjoy this evening of original prose and poetry from NER, read aloud by Middlebury College students, with a "s'more readings" reception after the event.
March 10 (Tuesday) 4:30 pm, Middlebury, VT: NER is teaming up with the College Library to host a reading for Please Do Not Remove, with contributors Gary Margolis, David Dillon, and Karin Gottshall.
Fifth Down: Reading Don DeLillo’s End Zone | Jeff Staiger
It was a thin paperback novel, creased, softened by wear, part of the Penguin series of Contemporary American Fiction, dirty white with big letters hard-shadowed in red: DON DELILLO and below, bigger yet, END ZONE. This was on a gray Saturday morning in Pittsburgh, where I had landed not long before at the end of the 1990s. [Read more]
