The Reaching

The window’s boundary
Staggered
Eager stars, their mounted arms
Surround the opening
Glistening reach for
A brief window-sized peak as dark sides find themselves as the ends of the same table
Inside—what’s inside—the opening
Unfinished Man
Tumbleweed brambled words
Made to look like man
So close, I could hear crackling from outer space
An endangerment
The many arms of dream stuff
—somewhere between silver, soft, gold
A linked, living ornamentation
—opposite ends of a revolution
Caught in a daylight séance
odd items
A home-movie hovers
Crashing charges
—stale sweat memory confetti

Last chance was on my mind
One that had bled to death on a concrete floor
No man found it for a week, not until
An unbearable smell moved-in to my rattletrap
Fingers on my shoulders
—across the table
fossilized children in the attic
We take a walk
—rawboned in the sun’s rays

Accidents enclose black patterns
stolen sun
pillow coward
Above the table
Before the window closes, the Silver She tells me
You fell in love with Bacchus over biceps
Romance safely on stage, nowhere near your heart
The image of man * the words of man * the touch of man
Given by not man of the stage
You don’t live on stage You
Watch it and leave when the theatrics stop
The moon says
The show is over

The moon says
It’s time to stop playing not woman

I left
I didn’t say good-bye
No man was ever there
Arms of starstuff pull tightly together into an enormity
Into the blue-black sky, they rise
truth imitators
near the truth
Silver shine on the ass of my sorrel mare
Forestal action beneath
All eyes rise to the Queen of Tides
—water cure
You I love

Anita Schmaltz

36

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Of Great Consequence

I find myself in a place where the ferns grow red
a silver spreading pool
Reflects the sky
Covers the road – Wildwood Road
Three brown-grey doves coo on a metallic thread near treetops
White stars
Where three rivers confront, concur
Intersex
I am in Edenville, near the Lost Arrow Resort
On the water
With me are Love and Hate
We pass the Mustang restaurant
Tittabawassee River
The dry, savage suggestions fron Burntwick Lake
Gold mixed into blood
now a copper cat, gazing above
I know I can’t stay here – not yet

Off the road, out of the saddle, on foot
Walking down a path into wild woods
I find a cement box wanting a lid
Piled inside lay naked turkey carcasses
Human sacrifices
Beheaded, plucked and pimpled
Grey flesh wanting feathers
Cold, underneath the weight of the dead
I know these bodies
They stood before abstracted ignorance in a great holy war
While struggling with themselves
They flung their disheartened chests before dinosaurs
Slaughtered by those dying things not dead
I know this voodoo
My skin is covered in it
Vultures salivate over the grey pimpled casualties
Somewhere, I don’t know where, I lost
Love and hate
Prophets have spoken of such things
The earthly cost of evolution
After a wish on a dying star, I find
I am a zombie

Anita Schmaltz

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Burning clean

burning clean tonight
i’ve walked through
the cleansing fire

it’s all gone
nothings left
of the past

no coals here
to rake my fingers through

it’s all gone up
in ash and smoke
heat and cold

risen to the surface
blown away

you can see yourself
in the stars tonight
clearer than any memory

it’s time to walk around
take a breath
and enjoy the evening

David Sands

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The crowd

you can see
yourself in the shadow
on the sidewalk

you can hear
yourself in the rustle
on the street

you can feel yourself
in the heat of the moment
soaked up by the sidewalk
and reflected back at me

it’s funny how
the lines on people’s faces
they react
to the things you say and do

and they react
to the rhythm of the streetlights
the patterns of the stopsigns and the
buildings that tower over me

you can see yourself in
other people’s faces
we all get hungry
we all need some place to sleep

and you can feel yourself
in other people’s places
brought together
by the cry
of the voices and
the violence
the violence
in the streets

David Sands

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Flash of light

and there is
a flash of light
in the heart
of a grove of trees
and the birds
in the air
take flight

and there’s only you and me
and the smoke
and the pouring rain
and the circles within circles in the grain
and I catch your eyes in the night
and there is a flash of light

in the moon and
a grain of sand
the wind
and the touch of your hand

and we circle
like circles
in the night
and there is
a flash

David Sands

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The lightning

we wait
counting the moments
between the storm

the sky
reaches out
in all directions

the lightning
zig-zags
and returns to you

David Sands

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The veil

the night begins
like any other night
with the sun sinking down
into the welcoming obscurity

and just like that
everything is unfamiliar again

and even i
can’t make you
out from the shadows

and the whole world
is like the pit of an eye

and the night remains
like any other night

and nothing I’ve ever seen
is seen

and everything that could be said
has been said

and all that remains
is for you to say the word
the one word
that is somehow different

and open the door

David Sands

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Portraits, Still Lives, and Nudes

Marriage Ceremony, Kibbutz Nir Am, 1948

August
sun

ignites
this

country
of cloth

burning
white

the same
light

trapped
beneath

their skin
there is

more than
one

vow
today

their chupah
held

up
by four

slender
rifles

Carly Sachs

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Landscapes

The Barn, The Viola

this barn still standing
where day and night
pass through the flesh
of rotten boards, paint
long since weathered away.

what shelter can it offer,
wind slipping through wood
the way hands whisper
across skin
the sway
of the bow waking
the viola

Carly Sachs

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The National Gallery

the reading girl

she is all white
afternoon
light comes through
the window
her night-
gown hangs open
exposing her breast
the whisper
of a finger
turning
the page.

this is what
you brought me
here to see:

the way the pages
are cut in stone
the straw
of her chair
breaking.
how much time
magni must have spent
chiseling away
at this moment.

all around us stone,
dark horses and warriors
swords drawn
in endless hunt.

what curator’s
wet dream
to put her
here in amid
this tangle of animal
parts, legs and tails
erect.

from another angle
the book
covers her
breast.

for years
you had only
seen it this way.

now i remember
what i saw in you,
soft spoken and precise
the way you averted
my eyes on kozna street,

how it was me
who leaned in
on the charles bridge

but here we are
again in a quiet room
the hot silence between us
and the girl of stone
reading

i open my book
and begin to read too
trying not to think
of the way your flesh
wound its way around mine
once in a borrowed flat.
you walk away
and look at old medallions.

the years pile up
and we cannot go back
to that page, the one this girl
will never turn.

Carly Sachs

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