Reason Breeds Insanity

Pastoral
by Jennifer Chang

Something in the field is
working away. Root-noise.
Twig-noise. Plant
of weak chlorophyll, no
name for it. Something
in the field has mastered
distance by living too close
to fences. Yellow fruit, has it
pit or seeds? Stalk of wither. Grass-
noise fighting weed-noise. Dirt
and chant. Something in the
field. Coreopsis. I did not mean
to say that. Yellow petal, has it
wither-gift? Has it gorgeous
rash? Leaf-loss and worried
sprout, its bursting art. Some-
thing in the. Field fallowed and
cicada. I did not mean to
say. Has it roar and bloom?
Has it road and follow? A thistle
prick, fraught burrs, such
easy attachment. Stem-
and stamen-noise. Can I lime-
flower? Can I chamomile?
Something in the field cannot.

Something in the field cannot.

Something cannot breathe
smothered under the ground
as it is by the sod.
Little eyes and little claws
scratching blindly at the roots.
Gnawing noises, sawing noises.
Slip up. Away. No lawn mowing
above the tiny beings. Head down
the blade swings fast. Vole. Mole.
What’s the difference? How are they
the same? Tunnel. Tunnel. Dirt and roots.
Slip through, slimy little skin.
Blind eyes. Claws. Long claws.
Moth balls choke. The smell.
We cannot breathe with those balls
in our tunnels. We retreat.

A Pot of Tea

by Richard Kenney

Loose leaves in a metal ball
Or men in a shark cage steeping,
Ideas stain the limpid mind
Even while it’s sleeping:

Ginseng or the scent of lymph
Or consequences queasing
Into wide awareness, whence,
Like an engine seizing

Society remits a shudder
Showing it has feeling,
And the divers all have shaving cuts
And the future’s in Darjeeling—

Blind, the brain stem bumps the bars
Of the shark cage, meanwhile, feeding,
And the tea ball’s cracked, its leaves cast
To catastrophic reading:

Ideas are too dangerous.
My love adjusts an earring.
I take her in my arms again
And think of Hermann Göring,

And all liquidities in which
A stain attracts an eating,
And of my country’s changing heart,
And hell, where the blood is sleeting.

A Princess and Her Pee

Princess dressed to attend the ball.
Trouble is brewing, pain is steeping.
She is troubled inside her mind—
Will she survive, or like her colleague, end up sleeping?

Wracking cough of mucus and lymph,
All around people are, at the sound, queasing.
From here they wonder whence
she commences her seizing.

Princess expectorates with a shudder
and onlookers get a sneaking feeling
that in her spare time she cuts.
Did she pick up consumption in Darjeeling?

After the ball she hits the bars,
picks up a few guys and proceeds in feeding
every stereotype of her caste.
And the reader persists her reading.

The behavior of the princess is dangerous.
Don’t share her necklaces or earrings.
She goes to the free clinic to get tested again—
her monthly voluntary goring.

The test is necessary. By which
disease is dying. Which is eating
her body, her mind, her heart?
Her hopes are dashed by diseased sleeting.

Line Poem
by Caroline Knox

Long jetty, long shell-racked jetty, cracked warped planks.

Beautiful fish, beautiful sea-bass poached with an August tomato,
on an ironstone plate.

A snake’s slough, a snake’s spinal cord, a dry-rot stump.

A twill tape measure, an audiotape cassette unspooled and puckered,
shining.

Agate prayer beads, kazoos, whistles, rattles.

A bike chain and a bungee cord. A möbius strip and a broccoli elastic.

Split vanilla pod inset with paltry-looking flat oily brown seeds.

Egg-and-dart molding of vitreous fake sandstone. Contrails,
mares’ tails, mackerel sky.

List Poem

Old comic book, a Wonder Woman comic book, soiled pages.

Pink worm, a slippery earthworm cracked and dry, in a plastic sandwich bag.

A raccoon skin cap, a rabbit’s foot key chain, a piece of driftwood.

A crinkled dress pattern, several eight tracks labels faded, dusty.

Knotted prayer rope, song flute, marbles, music box.

An airplane gear and a silky cord. An infinity symbol and two pieces of velcro.

Soybean shell burst with beans missing and husk brown and dry.

Papier-mache volcano with soda-vinegar explosions. Sun dogs,
neighbor’s dogs, Red Dog Saloon.

Just
by Alan Shapiro

after the downpour, in the early evening,
late sunlight glinting off the raindrops sliding
down the broad backs of the redbud leaves
beside the porch, beyond the railing, each leaf
bending and springing back and bending again
beneath the dripping,
between existences,
ecstatic, the souls grow mischievous, they break ranks,
swerve from the rigid V’s of their migration,
their iron destinies, down to the leaves
they flutter in among, rising and settling,
bodiless, but pretending to have bodies,

their weightlessness more weightless for the ruse,
their freedom freer, their as-ifs nearly not,
until the night falls like an order and
they rise on one vast wing that darkens down
the endless flyways into other bodies.

Nothing will make you less afraid.

Just

before the snow, in the late morning
slow moons dangling above the horizon dipping
behind the red finishes of the antique barns
beside the woods, beyond the fields, each tree
bending and blowing forward and bending again
beneath the dipping,
…
I am not really fond of the original poem or mine, so I’ll just stop here. I usually like Shapiro’s work, too. I think if I want to write like him, I need to outline the parts of speech and analyze how they work together and go from there.