. . . as though seeking that part of his
being which had remained in the hills.
–Aharon Applefeld
please keep in mind I’m just like you and so
I do a little lying sometimes it’s reasonable to assume
there’ve been some mistakes made already it’s too much
I’m not who I was even a moment ago
this occurred out there where I used to be
as in this is mine and this is not
if I’m winning I get excited and
if I’m losing I get excited
the coal dust is one of the possibilities
and the territory of imperative recline is one
ice is one and moonglow if you don’t romanticize its attraction
(Jean-Luc in the pantry
Jean-Luc under the stairs)
and tiny packages of birds flying
beginning with something late for their speech
beginning with endings and intermediaries
the progress folded over napping
the arrangement of trees suggests enclosure
the detached leaf’s art begins descending
it just started leaving me in the darkening woods
the distant thump of the autumn moon
a thatched hut with a brushwood gate
(an abandoned child’s bamboo hat
ferries home the evening sun)
(Jean-Luc in the widow’s knickers
Jean-Luc in the halls of justice)
a paper goldfish swims against the wind’s current
how is my pulse being kidnapped by
the steady beat of a peasant family’s
clothing against river rocks
my marrow section tuning their teeth mounted
skeletal preening my bones softer
until it listens like wings this is innocent
but I am not a white deer
in the dazed green meadow
turning slowly golden as the sun
sleeping into the mountain grass
or a bundle of cold men huddled
over a barrel fire nursing
brown paper bags
taking turns getting angry
stalking away and limping back
when the boasting falls in on itself
and the night crowds in to join them
(Jean-Luc at the evening table
Jean-Luc in the witness protection program)
and whatever came from the sky
fell cold and careful muting everything
now there’s something at the door wet and needful
descending and grasping leafless shrubs
knocking with cold tiny fists it could be fate or
freezing rain or the same drunken neighbor
whoever melted yesterday beside the porch when
everyone he was close to left him the neighbor kid giggled
his mouth full of straw The Cold Reality of History
rolled over burped continued eating
his mother and father
foraging in the future
brought back too much
and spoiled his favor
with the surprising sweet
reek of its diligent arrogance
(Jean-Luc sniffing an odor of fennel and rosewater
Jean-Luc with the doves cooing quietly as bathwater)
his expression carries the dull glow
of a wheelbarrow handle as if
he alone holds up
the world’s one ragged bumpy load
with all mankind’s inflated
and artificial dignity
soon enough there will be cavelight
soon enough stone doors open
to the wounded paw
Now you are old enough to lead us. I think about this all day, all night. I think about persimmons and I think about ice, but mostly I think about this one thing and I watch the light coming in through the window and going back out each evening, and I watch for the change that will tell me what I want to know, and it does not come. This is why I stay, but it is not why I think about staying.
someone still watches from outside
waiting for our crime to speak
Rich Ives has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Artist Trust, Seattle Arts Commission and the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines for his work in poetry, fiction, editing, publishing, translation and photography. His writing has appeared in Verse, North American Review, Massachusetts Review, Northwest Review, Quarterly West, Iowa Review, Poetry Northwest, Virginia Quarterly Review, Fiction Daily and many more. He is the 2009 winner of the Francis Locke Memorial Poetry Award from Bitter Oleander. His story collection, The Balloon Containing the Water Containing the Narrative Begins Leaking, was one of five finalists for the 2009 Starcherone Innovative Fiction Prize. In 2010 he has been a finalist in fiction at Black Warrior Review and Mississippi Review and in poetry at Cloudbank and Mississippi Review. In 2011 he is again a finalist in poetry at Mississippi Review. The Spring 2011 Bitter Oleander contains a feature including an interview and 18 of his hybrid works.
Witness