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7 POEMS
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RICK FOURNIER
was the winner of the Ibaraki-Minneapolis Sister-City Haiku contest twice, in 2000 and 2004.
Soft-bellied clouds merge
The moon pushes them apart
With golden fingers.
The full moon took hours
Last night, disentangling her
Gown from the oak's grasp.
After weeks at sea
Albatross turns toward home
Bringing the full moon.
Under bright streetlights
Laughing children with wet tongues
Catch drifting snowflakes.
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PHILIP DACEY
His most recent book, his 8th, is THE MYSTERY OF MAX SCHMITT: POEMS ON THE LIFE OF THOMAS EAKINS.
SERENADE
In a survey, non-English speakers picked cellar-door
as the most beautiful-sounding English word.
Associated Press news release
You are as beautiful as the word cellar-door
on the tip of someone's tongue, in someone's ear.
My tongue in your ear, my stellar dear,
tells all, and more, but mostly je t'adore.
I want to take you on the parlor floor--
as sailors holler land ho when they steer
in sight of hills or towers, vales that cheer
their homesick hearts, I cry out cellar-door.
Not salary or celery galore
or cuspidor or salad says amour
like cellar-door, best-seller word for sure,
a thriller for the mouth for evermore.
And your eyes! That blue! Mon dieu and zut alors!
What else but (no soul's windows) cellar-doors.
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LINDA BACK MCKAY
is a Minneapolis writer and traveling teaching artist whose most recent poetry collection, Ride That Full Tilt Boogie is available at www.visi.com/~lbmckay.
MEMORIAL DAY
Black Hammer, Minnesota, one church,
one house, four boarded-up storefronts,
twelve Oldsmobiles, twelve
farmers who drive with two feet
and share one past.
An egret over Black Hammer
points its shadow toward the marsh,
strewn with leftovers of winter.
Ancient cemetery. Cryptic stones.
Ole Olefson and Poor Baby Hildegard.
Overgrown with the first weeds of summer.
There is breath in stone and touch in roots.
Ole used his black hammer
to shoe the horses and straighten pitchforks.
He chiseled names into stone with it.
They named the town for Ole's hammer.
Olaf Svekman voted to call it Little Fjord.
Ingevold Vik and most of the others did not
think it wise to dwell on the past.
In the old country, bitterness
dried their faces and hands
like sculpted slabs of beef jerky.
They came to this lush soil with tools.
They brought embroidery thread, heirlooms
and the spirit to create heirlooms.
They found their valley in the rain,
in the heart of green trees
where their dreams took root.
Ingrid cleaned the house while mean
clouds slouched above the little mountains
that used to make her feel like home.
She beat rugs with a stick
as the baby's cough worsened.
All the babies were sick that year.
All the mothers boiled water, hopeful
in America, that this too, would pass.
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KAREN KARSTEN
lives in St. Paul, MN and has been writing forever.
BREATH OF SPRING
For Noreen
The smell of lilacs saturates
the twilight today,
air heavy with dew
like so many springs ago
when we hid along
the narrow trail above
the Redwood River listening
to the roar of the usually
sluggish stream, ignoring
our mothers' calls.
Hidden from everyone
we were invisible, part
of the glowing lavender twilight
innocent as the fragrance of lilacs.
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