Kudzu Review Summer Solstice 2012 Edition, Madison Percy Jones IV (Editor), Arthur Wilke (Editor), Robin Ward (Editor) [books to read to improve english txt] 📗

WHEN by Sue Blaustein

I met you on the day
of a mid-April storm, when wet
wretched flakes pelted
everything. Rivers of slush
rose to meet the curb
outside the dojo.
Inside, I saw you
for the first time –

your name
in black letters,
across the back of your white gi top.

That was a chance Saturday,
and there were one or two others.
Since I worked nights
I rarely crossed your path.
You came to teach
the morning class
when your local was on strike.
More than once
you looked directly at me.

I memorized
your worn quilted jacket,
learned to recognize
your swamp green car.

The following year
I transferred to the day shift
in February.
We were lovers before
it warmed to even fifty.
In early March on our first
weekend away,
Rock River Leisure Estates
was deserted.

We slid deep orange yams
from a can
of heavy syrup
to simmer into the first of
years of meals.

The grass was emerald from thaws,
wet under a steady,
clicking sleet
that beaded white propane
tanks squatted at the ends
of empty trailers.

I heard
a chorus of spray from cars
crossing
the I-90 bridge
as huge carp nosed silently
through Lake Koshkonong.

Since then
when boats
are pulled from the water,
when snow dampens
redwood campground signs;
when ornaments
are marked down, or
cottage pumps are drained,
my heart
catches
that off-season hum.

TO CASSANDRA R. W. Haynes

The sound of one’s own voice in prophecy
Of deeds that come to shake the very earth
Strikes through the chronologic tyranny
One inherits helplessly at birth,
And, in giving power, takes all the power
From the action of deliberate choice,
Although as actors we face the final hour,
Both doomed and satisfied by that voice.
Why should we then repeat or overstate
The implications of this situation,
And let its empty loudness intimidate
Our abstract thought with dissonant negation?
In your sane madness you cry what’s true
But no one hears your desperate voice but you.

EAST OF EL PASO by R.W. Haynes

Last night I met a perished knight at arms
Wandering feebly down the murmuring stream,
And we spoke awhile of debilitating charms
That lurk malignantly in hope and dream.
Death had relieved him of all but regret,
He smiled, his eyes unseen in the ghostly shade,
But hoarsely whispered then that to forget
He’d instantly take agony in trade,
And he reached forth to me his bony hand,
And I pronounced forthwith the living curse,
And he was gone with that crushing command
That the dead must obey and none can reverse.
And the waterfall echoes its perpetual sighs
And I stand watch here silent at moon-rise.

THE WILDERNESS by Peter Branson

Pass apple trees in fallen state. Where Jack
kept guard, find pollard scars; exotica
transported, nursed, improved, now specimen,
top heavy, overblown; script run amok,
ink-blots of punctuation marks beyond
head height, gargoyle-tormented bark. Trace steps
by tumbled barrow, bleach-dry bones of mill,
neglected coppice, feral, overwhelmed.

Coupes bolted, underwood for charcoal, fence
parts, furniture, Necessity hand-jived
via foot and dancing pole, decays at stool.
We’ll rouse Jack Green to rhyme, re-jig, reform,
rejuvenate for nightingale, dormouse
and butterfly, sustain with grace and time.

NEW TREES by Seth Trent

Driving home at night
a little blitz
I see new trees planted next
to old ones and think;
They’ll never make it.
Who am I to think that?

I have no right.

I like being a little blitz
I say what I’m feeling.
But feel every word I say is stupid.
I want to stop talking
to have a deeper quieter
voice.
The world won’t let me and
I am too much of a coward to ask for
more.

I am like these new trees
planted next to old ones.

THE CHAMPION MAPLE OF WELLS AVENUE by Andy Myers

The distant thundering had shook the loose panes of glass through the night and the lavender skies mingled with dark clouds anxious with precipitation. There was no sunrise, merely a shift of hues in the sky, from night into a white skied morning with rolling pockets of rain clouds arriving from the west. In the dusty attic shrieks of wind streamed through the drafty windows. The old frame clapboard house felt the fear in its piney bones. Around noon the sky fell through forming rivers of runoff to roll down the sloping streets and the wheelbarrows in the gardens overflowing with the bubbling nectar of life. It was a nearly useless day, a day of waiting and listening as the thudding hum of rain drops fell onto the tin roof like dried peas. The rain barrel filled up with ease and was soon overflowing from the top; my toes sunk deep into the silty mud as I walked into the downpour to open the spigot and unleash the water to ease its condition. As the day rolled on into afternoon, the rotating howl of tornado sirens began blasting from the cemetery, their harsh pitch belting down the alleyways and through opened screen doors. Soon the televisions would be on, their screens glowing and casting an eerie blue light amid the early darkness. Manic bursts of wind bolt down the empty streets and the tops of trees bend. The old trees stand in bold defiance to these forces, their roots anchoring them as deep as they grow tall, reaching down to latch onto the marrow of earth.

The day was nearly a greying preamble to the blanketing darkness of night. The rain continued on, washing layers of silt and hummusy earth from the fresh spring soils, stripping young green shoots of their leaves. An old maple, its arms stretch heavenward, forms a faint silhouette against the blasting of wind and rain. Sometime before midnight the street is awoken by a tumultuous pop and a bluish flash of electric light. The kinetic energy of a century of thunderstorms is suddenly released onto the cooled saturated pavement. All eyes rush to the front windows of their prospective houses, their heads swimming with images of panic. There in a neighbor's driveway lies the bulking arm of the ancient maple, having drug a tangle of power lines with it to lie on the limestone gravel in the rain. Several people emerge to watch and ponder, and soon emergency vehicles and some city workers have arrived to do their work. They