Fire in the Pasture: Twenty-first Century Mormon Poetry, edited by frequent WIZ contributor Tyler Chadwick, made its debut at 2011 end in impressive style. Tyler reports that Fire in the Pasture has “risen as high as #2 in both Hot New Anthologies and Hot New Inspirational & Religious and #12 in Hot New Poetry.” The [...]
When winter beats its broad path
across fields, kneeling the weed
and setting, too, over sage and oak,
deep white pavement;
after wasps and beetles
have borne off, crumb by crumb,
rusted plum and apple pulp
so far beyond the last gather
the ground where they fell
no longer smells of cider;
when there is light instead of leaf
on the branch, star instead of pear,
deer [...]
It’s like the old Tarzan movies:
White hunters find their way barred
By skulls on sticks.
The Park Service has erected
A pavilion on the rim.
Beware, it says.
Quicksand. Flash floods.
How to Resuscitate Lightning Strike Victims
One warning tells.
It pretends helpful information,
But it is another white skull.
On a sideboard, the complete caveat—
A man pierced all through with sticks.
We are loath to [...]
I would say I feel cold but no
That’s not right—I feel dark.
Winter has begun glooming bone
Half so bright with fire as once cheered.
This arm and shoulder upon which I fell—
They make a rough fit. Especially
I feel it there. My eyes rummage
Squat days for glints. In my chest
There’s a catch, these lungs losing
Appetite, thin instants off [...]
Skulls and other crumbling caves invite
Smaller things to enter them. So this mill,
Detail jumbling as its carpentry unlaced,
Called me down to its hollow, where irrigation
Swilled in a greener-than-grass surface algae,
Emerald, tepid, moating around the swayback
Structure tossed up by waves of receded grain.
Blue damselflies, thin as flower petals,
Coupled in a fringe around the pool.
Beyond that water [...]
I almost forgot! Today, WIZ turns one. Happy Birthday to us! I’ve been preoccupied and haven’t come up with any fun thing to do in celebration, but I would like to run out a line of thanks yous.
Thanks–deep, ever-flowing thanks–to Wm Morris, for helping me open this space and for providing solid support.
Thanks, WIZ readers, [...]
She could smell the season on him. Summers
he came through the door redolent of horses
and wild mint; winters, copper and ice.
Metallic and snow-clean, he cooled the house.
Saturday night, my husband and I made a last minute run to the only grocery store within 22 miles before it closed at 9 p.m. On the return trip, I drove with the SUV’s highbeams on, because we live on a country road whereon we’re likely to come across animals on the pavement, everything from [...]
(for my father)
Late afternoon came floating down the creek.
The Appalachia air chilled gradually;
Ringlets formed round shivers on a pool
Where mayflies burst its skin, and theirs, some trailing
Papery shells behind them in their flight.
Brown trout missiled the sylphs, arched and slapped
The surface, falling back, while I cast toward
The trembling pool, slowly wound my line in,
Looked up. [...]
(for Saul)
My son, seven, says, in passing,
“To travel at the speed of light
You must become light.”
From the apparent blue, this bolt
Blasts me from terrain
Of rolling, languid thought,
I am forced to leap by precipice
And, after thrills of floundering,
Beat together wings of suspense
And impetus, igniting flight.
He is only seven, and it is my duty.
Breathless, I ask:
“Where did [...]