The Heir | Andrew Coburn Forced March | Robert Lietz Dear Leader Dreamer | Gabriel Check Antipastoral: Dairymen | Amy Groshek Snapshots of the Epic | Gregory Lawless Three Reliquaries | Laurence Davies The Inexorable | Stefanie Freele Travel Photography | Joshua Walker Post-Christmas Inventory | Laura Kolb Cityscapes, Silos, Blue Nudes | Amber Krieger Farming Silence | Lauren Ashleigh Kenny Evan in the Tent | Walter Cummins Three Poems | Grace Wells On the Contrary Archives | Search   Heir.htmlMarch.htmlDreamer.htmlDairymen.htmlSnapshots.htmlReliquaries.htmlInexorable.htmlPhotojournalist.htmlInventory.htmlCityscapes.htmlSilence.htmlEvan.htmlGrace.htmlContrary.htmlArchives.htmlshapeimage_2_link_0shapeimage_2_link_1shapeimage_2_link_2shapeimage_2_link_3shapeimage_2_link_4shapeimage_2_link_5shapeimage_2_link_6shapeimage_2_link_7shapeimage_2_link_8shapeimage_2_link_9shapeimage_2_link_10shapeimage_2_link_11shapeimage_2_link_12shapeimage_2_link_13shapeimage_2_link_14
Rescue | Grace Wells I’ll take my poetry. And my book. Not its crystal award for that’s too heavy and I have far to travel, back through years, trespassing even the seasons, for it was summer then. I’ve practised the trick of revealing the heart in the chest so she’ll see it can be filled and know love. I will force a stair to exist and for this one night alone, allow myself be fleeced of the gold life I lead, as I go back for her. In silence I’ll descend the mountain road. They’ll not hear the gate or the lift of the latch as I enter the black cottage where the only light is her own dimmed glow. But I know my way, know he is there to the left watching the film she has begged him not to show. Any moment, the scene where the football jock holds the head of that woman beneath the pool because she won’t suck his cock under water. And I can feel the water tear the lining of her nose, taste it in her mouth, its throb fill her lungs, so the gasp that echoes down the years as she finally bursts the surface, might be my own. I can still see her crawl from the edge, but I’ll leave that actress limp away, for it is not her I have come to rescue. Not her I have come to rescue but my own self hunted to the bedroom shadows. The children curled in cots and no sanctuary except that last crouched corner of the house in the hole she burrows for herself by the floor, quaking, beyond tears, her mouth, her lungs, her penis-choked throat denied air. What can I say to her, ghost-self I have no tongue. I hover, extend my arms, the poems, images of the grown, safe children. Scoured of faith she will not believe, I offer her blind eyes the world, but nothing will let her rise from this moment, only that I stretch out my hand, lay it on her head, on the short stubble of her hair. An Interview with Grace Wells... >  read about the author Wells.htmlWells.htmlshapeimage_3_link_0shapeimage_3_link_1
commentary | poetry | fiction | chicago | spring 2007   © 2003-2007 | all rights reserved Contrary ® is a registered trademark of Contrary Magazine