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FIELD #84

(Spring 2011)
 
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Contents

D. Nurkse

Notes from the Foothills
Blackbird Island

David Hernandez
Moose in Snow
Dear Mockingbird
Ida Stewart
Ginseng
The Mountaintop Refuses His Advances
Cynthia Cruz
Rattlesnakes

Elizabeth Harrington

White Kitchen
Diana O'Hehir
Thirty Years
Pelle Lowe
Wing Slated for Demolition
Nick Lantz
How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
How to Appreciate Inorganic Matter
Francesca Abbate
Dear (You Know I Never Rode Horses Well)
Psyche's First Chili Dog
Kevin Prufer

Four Little Conversations
Modern Poetry

Lee Upton
Shots of Vodka
Joseph Fasano
Confession
Nance Van Winckel
I Have My Own Damned Family--Thank You Very Much--But Theirs Apparently Has Nobody
Not Withstanding
D. A. Powell
The Opening of the Cosmos
Transit of Mercury
Almonds in Bloom
Bern Mulvey
North Mountain
Divorce Poem
Dennis Hinrichsen
Okinawa Dog
Lorraine Doran
The Horse Letters (four)
Dore Kiesselbach
Hickey
Wes Benson
Some Assembly Required
Iron Mirror
To Disappear as Love
Lee Sharkey
By Your Intolerable Acts of Grace
Mike White
Love
Mark Neely
Four Falls
Steven Cramer
from Clangings
from Clangings
Sarah Blake
One Part of His Brain
Frannie Lindsay
Watermark
Will Schutt
Strange Giraffe
Elba Journal
From a Middle Distance
Adam Day
Elegy: Water from the Same Source
Letter from an Unknown Woman
Diane K. Martin
Refract
Amit Majmudar
Day Job
 

Poetry 2010: Five Review-Essays

Martha Collins
The Long and the Short of It (Major Jackson, Holding Company; Charles Wright, Sestets; Charles Wright, Outtakes)
Kazim Ali
A Big Moment Yellow (Ewa Chrusciel, Strata)
Pamela Alexander
A Pair of Taxis and a Parrot (Nick Lantz, We Don't Know We Don't Know; Nick Lantz, The Lightning That Strikes the Neighbors' House)
DeSales Harrison
The End of the Honey (Julie Carr, 100 Notes on Violence; Julie Carr, Sarah--Of Fragments and Lines)
Anna Journey
Hymn Away This Reliquary Fever (Beckian Fritz Goldberg, Reliquary Fever: New and Selected Poems)

 

 

MOOSE IN SNOW

A moose is born, his legs
unfold and wobble
beneath the weight of himself.
He grows, roams the fields, his antlers
sprout into empty hands.
Then the sky drops
snow, a meadow
fills with whiteness
the moose trudges through,
his breath in the Montana air
cobwebbing. A man
raises his camera
and the moose materializes
in the blood light of his darkroom.
A painter finds the photo
and squeezes out
titanium white, burnt umber,
works the brushes until
he has the snow-stippled coat
just right, and the visible eye
looks like the night
standing behind a peephole.
There are reproductions, rollers
spin in a print shop
and it's moose moose moose
descending on itself. One man
buys one, hangs it
with a frame in his sunny office
where his patients come
troubled, medicated, and I
explain to him this heaviness
pulling down the length
of my body, scalp
to soles, cells and all.

--David Hernandez

Copyright © 2011 by Oberlin College. May not be reproduced without permission.

FOUR LITTLE CONVERSATIONS

What's in that pot? Lamb stew with carrots and potatoes. What's in that other pot? That other pot is empty. And this one here? And that one there? Empty, empty. And what's in the refrigerator? Perishables. Perishables? Things that wilt and die. And what's in the drawer? The knives I use to slice the perishables.

Is it bleeding? It's just a little cut. Is it bleeding bad? No, not really. I just nicked myself with the knife. You should hold it under cold water. You should cover it in gauze or paper towel. Do you have any alcohol? Do you have any Neosporin cream? You should wrap a sheet around it. You should tie it off at the joint so the bleeding stops.

Thank you Lord for this food we're about to eat. Has the bleeding stopped? And thank you Lord for our friends who love us. I can see a little spot there, on the gauze. And thank you, also, for the many kindnesses of the day. It's like a lamb's red eye opening. It's like a perishable unfolding its petals. You'll scare the children.

It was a very good stew. Thank you. Is there more? No. And how is your cut? The bleeding's stopped. And the knife? Safe in its drawer. And the perishables? Asleep in the crispers. And the perishables? All tucked away in the crispers. And the perishables? They are dreaming and happy. And the children? As I said, they're asleep.

--Kevin Prufer

Copyright © 2011 by Oberlin College. May not be reproduced without permission.


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