Angela Hume

Daniel Scott Parker

from (i.e., Jump)

You who are mortal & alarming,

cut your coat out of your own back-

yard. Measure the curve of water with the bare

of your pale & cumbered bones & feel.

Time has already changed the present

so commas are shuddering into periods

of blue. Our longing becomes a shimmering

desert & to come back is alone. I see my face

again in the mirror & that bearing grin becomes

a cistern of disgrace I can’t let go. Is ceci n’est pas

une pipe a poem? I don’t know. In a dream we are

standing outside the Pantheon, & I wonder could Adam

have known his own loneliness? The poem is a dream

& the desert is blue in light of all this.

Daniel Scott Parker has never wrestled an alligator, but he has drunk water from the Okefenokee Swamp. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Spork Press, Marco Polo, The Stray Dog Almanac, and great weather for MEDIA. He lives in Chicago, where he is pursuing an MFA in poetry.

Weston Cutter

AUGURY

The grill kicks an orange hole in the season,

                                    a spear into ribs,

a thief in aisle eleven: I've laid hands on those

                                    massive midwest drills

+ imagined twisting one into a frozen lake til

                                    water quit its solid

seasonal stubbornness to reveal blinking life

                                    beneath, living stuff

which knows more ways to live with ice than I.

                                    What I know

involves occasional cocoa, salt on the side

                                    walk, recalled or fore

told equitorial stories, Costa Rica or warmer. The

                                    salmon hums bright

pink in the December dusk + the dog believes

                                    falling snow's a question

asked over and over again, he answers with barks,

                                    sniffs anxious

where his two-hours-back footsteps have dis

                                    appeared. The only

chance I've had so far I turned from the hole

                                    in the ice, watched

friends offer vividity to its depth, the lake

                                    a phone booth they

dropped the quarters of their youth into, hello...

                                    we all steamed in dark

together. Who knew. They hooted, I hung back.

                                    And what was it they

found or felt? That view, stars the endpoints

                                    of distant icicles. They

emerged dripping, touched blue. It's like going

                                    through, they said.

To where, to what. Who knew. Ellen loves me

                                    despite that I've

never manned up + dropped myself into

                                    measured harm

+ now the fish is ready, flesh flaky, out of place

                                    in this cold: we

make meals from whatever we can, set the table,

                                    count days till May,

pour the wine, dive in.

Weston Cutter's the author of You'd Be a Stranger, Too, a collection of stories, and the chapbooks All Black Everything and (0,0). He runs the book review website corduroybooks.com and has poems coming soon in diode and Copper Nickel.