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.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
Forced March | Robert Lietz A woman absorbs the damage after all, and the words, already old now generations, like furniture, attaining depths, stamped coins and medallion plates, a life's events like next collectibles, in the looks of these, composed with instruments, who smiled and multiplied, and might invite her still, lucky in cash or poverty or personal devotions. They burn their lifetimes into place, seed words to catch in winter conversations, seasons afterward, when universes fuse, when women deeply reach, contribute their pocket lint to spare the armory, (already old now generations,) remembering such hands, and then the motion of such hands, lost in flames, or lost at ill-machines in accidents. She turns away then stands, knowing better than disturb the deadfloat of a lover, finding her way through doors to upper-story windows, asking what's to make of it, of this little breeze and wine-soured breathing, and what might crowd her nightmares out, this field of air aflame, herself aflame, and dancers, just connected at their tips. And here, absorbing the damage after all, the flesh-tones after all, precis escolates, as glamorous and wrong as stories seemed to be, as the dancers, sounding the horns of a little flesh, their salty trance, and acts pulled off with strings, supplanting miracle, their faces like old wood and like old leather after all, watching as universes fuse, and voices, whispering, along the World's clef, a century running at storm-speed, lost for all the fine commissions of the body, teasing one to fugues, and one to strip herself before a canvas, spell-binding still, too much to penetrate, then gone -- for all their lovely accident -- too much to penetrate, and too much displayed before this fierce constabulary, abroad in lovely overture, in tandem now, among these lovers of bold breasts, of umbrage, and of all inspired gossip. * Precis escolates. The facts require this old wood and this old leather after all. No prints, no features left, but these, working the strippers' tents, happy just to gaze on body-cobbled light. She marks the ease with which her furnace now reminds her it's been cold. And marks the course of spoiled love, of years she marched in service to her prince, of career, without the grace of a profession, beginning in misprints, in prison stints at the far side of the World. She shares with these the blue congruity and leer-thinned blue, blue of steel and spring shirts, feeling a hardness come, an engine, idling longer than she'd guess, feeling this riptide's surge, ( than pick-up or dropping off explains, ) this wash of action on claimed land, and these a-buzz in fabulous doorways, asking of men which cuts, which Rhone would satisfy, which fabric sized and laid to private likings, which grind would satisfy the purple fathers of the century, persisting to drop their lines in creeks another people left to business. And these, behind the grocery, letting go with their own waters, enacting their techniclumsy jig, as lean as local weathers bringing the first leaves on, bird-riot, and all engaging miniatures, inviting this show of wounds she'd thought would never be reopened, the hands alive, and the wizened curators, reaching again toward her, ignoring the warnings not to touch.  read about the author Contributors.htmlshapeimage_3_link_0
commentary | poetry | fiction | chicago | spring 2007