by Mark DeCarteret

A Description of New England
     “ . . . the paradise of those parts.”
                                     John Smith

It was too silent, too untold,
the sky here the same as the sea,
this color like cinder blocks —
so slow to matter, commit.
We mistook seeing for enough
of the thing, fun as it was —
single filing next to the shallows,
a detail of late fall at low tide —
maps were better cheap to teach them.

Photons still cling to these concepts
as if they were has–been poets at the dip.
Can one even be bothered with stability,
the distance between this and that moment?

Unable to wash its entire stink from my skin
I now live with these devils in relative peace.
Yes, clouds are the snuffed–out, souls–in–waiting,
the gulls continually touting the benefits of this limbo
but then what does one do with this knowledge,
especially here, where the land dwindles off,
its icy light measured in the most prolonged blinks?
There’s always the chance we’ll surrender by year’s end.
Alone with that first dream, whenever it can be managed.

by Mark DeCarteret

“ . . . and so we got rid of the day
as well as we could.”
— Nathaniel Hawthorne

All that separates you from the past
is this most ordinary form of rain —
unless it isn’t you who now sits at the window,
curtains parted to this map of the underworld,
these two flies which now lie on the sill
unawares to who is trapped, who’s departed?

Isn’t that your ancestors who stand in the shadows,
their stares like the flitting of candle light?
The wind will tell you what’s entailed for you,
the next line or even chapter if you let it
but if you were any more tight–lipped, polite
you might suffocate, drown in your very own spit.

The sun is unsure of us, returned without wonder.
How little you’ve thawed since its pantomimed dawn
when that planchette had wandered your chest
till it stalled over yet another of your vowels in awe.
You stifle either a wail or a moan as the earth tips,
suffering first its seas and then its heavens.

by Sarah Anderson

1.

They agreed to meet at half seven,
the pub on the corner with the bright yellow door.

He told her to look for his faded red t–shirt. “Last call,
blokes.” She left with him, the barrels rolling

out the door, past the canal, stacked for the taking.
The smell of crepes on weekend mornings filled the town,

filled his room, from the open market below. She’d buy
thick candles and curry soup with mustard seeds

to hold and gently pop between her front teeth. She’d buy him
a scarf and wrap it loosely around his neck.

2.

In hysterics, they fell down one afternoon trying to balance
a mattress on their heads, carrying it along the canal. When she had a fever

and saw a frenzy of white birds in his room, he asked her about them and held a cool
washcloth to her cheek. She imagined his older face.

3.

Fifteen years and I smell that town still — rain and bricks of bog turf burning. The
same texture every night. You were never the same

except in your transience.

by Sarah Anderson

You see, it was hot orange light back in the forest
by the rusted water tower where he said never turn this way —
flames billowed to the right —
never want this way again.

She couldn’t make out his face across the flames rising
            a giant metal bucket
the frozen lake. She wasn’t sure
            what it was but a hunger, the kind only a virgin knows

This was primal. Two people staring at each other
            through the swirling dust and slide projector light

an art history lecture twenty years ago. He looked at her
            chipping clay from beneath a thumbnail. Her hands
                        were rough.

She searched for him during lectures,
His five o’clock shadow. What if she had gone with him
            to the water tower?