The Transcendental in January
by normal
“Winter midnight
My voice does not
Sound like my own.”
— Otsuji
Snow to ice
January is The Month of Cripples.
It all breaks down.
The roof is lame
The pipes lame
Snow tires bald
Feet in boots numb
Legs ache.
One dozen wild turkeys slide & bob
Beneath the suet cage
Where mad squirrels feast.
The plowman comes & goes
Bills arrive like stink-eyed cossacks
Night with the cold soul
Of a black jewel
Night of bitter stars
Comes & stays.
Bones muscles
Revolt against us
Between the scattered snowclouds
The moonlight frozen
Upon a cemetery of seeds
Blackbirds huddle
January is The Month of Forever.
The jack rabbit
The white tailed deer
The pileated woodpecker
Noble, fleeting & quite ridiculous
Spot checks ones grip on sanity.
Thoreau said
“There can be no black melancholy
To him who lives in the midst
Of nature & has his senses still”
& Thoreau said
“Deal with brute nature. Be cold
& hungry & weary”
& Thoreau said
“You must love the crust of the
Earth on which you dwell more than
The sweet crust of any bread or cake”
& I say
“January is The Month of The
Dark Hearted Comedian.”
The Fire Starter
by David Sloan
“Scatter as from an unextinguish’d hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind.”
— Percy Bysshe Shelley
I relish tossing
the live match
into raspy roadside grass
or starting small
with the tiniest
steeple of twigs
bird’s leg-thin
just enough tinder
to nurse a fragile flame
laying on larger brush
gingerly as if springing
the trigger of a trap
sticks a finger’s width
then a wrist’s until it catches
a low guttering that grows
like a great flurry of feathers rising
in the echoing calm after a gun shot
then the elation of the uncontainable
the wild leaping flames
the sheer scale of destruction I too yearn to see
my work spread far beyond my material reach
the jackrabbit fireballs
flushed into the open zigzagging crazily desperate
to put themselves out but only igniting
more brush until the whole dazzling scene
crackles with brimstone and burning bushes
The Spaces Between
by David Sloan
What insistent whispering crowds out sleep?
It coats me like pollen, buoys me against
the weight of daylight, points to the spaces
between things. When I press my fingertips
together, diamonds appear. Between tree limbs,
stairs spiral skyward. Below birds’ wings,
above pages in books, a sky bowl catches light
and our hope for overflow.
Between pebbles in the garden, a seed,
architect’s plans scrolled and tucked away.
Trapped light waits to climb the stairs
and unfurl. Everywhere the geometry
of branchings. In darkness tree roots
coil over and under each other, fortified
tenfold by their interlacing,
like fingers praying.
The numbers of the body do not lie.
Oneness loves itself into symmetry,
mirrors of arms and legs ending in the surprise
of fives. Between the singing of our skeletons,
the fountain of dead-seeming bones.
We forget where blood is born.
And if every bone fits into its rightful joint,
what is the skull’s socket?
When we press our bodies together,
a raft bobs between two blues.
Sun and full moon seesaw at the edges
of the world. Streaked shavings fall,
float into the middle, where we always
want to be. Even in extremity,
when we fall out of the between, we keep
saving each other, over and over.
Sonny Kenner has his red guitar
by Kevin Rabas
in hand, and moves through the melody as if what he wants
is for everyone now to give and get that long kiss
in this room on this night in this club, in the Levee,
where I am dancing with Adrienne for the first time,
and her hips have got me dancing better than I have ever
danced before, and I want to just shimmy on up to her and take her
by the waist and lead her on out into this street lamp night
and onto a quilted patch blanket in this city grass,
beneath these tall alders — and let our howls
be to a new moon, and to the city fountains,
and to the plaza holiday lights that might flicker and blink on
in the middle of summer for us, our lust flipping that switch,
that strand of wire in the bulb heating and glowing,
for one eyebat, one eyelash wink.