Week of June 1, 1998 - June 7, 1998

Ruth Daigon and Travis Talley

BECOME A POET OF THE WEEK
by e-mailing a few of your shorter pieces or one long piece to me
ALONG WITH a bio of any reasonable length. (Include what city you live in)
It's fun, it's easy, it's free. Impress your friends. Impress your mother.


Send to: POTW@PoetrySuperHighway.com

Ruth Daigon
RUTHART@aol.com
http://www.freeyellow.com/members/lyric

Bio(auto)

Ruth Daigon was editor of Poets On: for twenty years until it ceased publication. She won "The Eve of St. Agnes Award (Negative Capability) 1993. Her poems have been widely published: Shenandoah, Negative Capability, Poet & Critic, Kansas Quarterly, Alaska Quarterly,Atlanta Review, Poet Lore, Tikkun....Internet "E" zines include Ariga, Crania, Cross Connect, Zuzu's Petals, Switched On Gutenberg.... also Poet-Of-The-Month on The University of Chile's Pares Cum Paribus (an "E" chapbook in English and Spanish), her chapbook has recently appeared on Web Del Sol. "Between One Future And The Next" Daigon's latest poetry collection was published by Papier-Mache Press 1995., "About A Year" (Small Poetry Press in 1996), Gale Research published her autobiography in their Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, 1997 and she has just won the Ann Stanford Poetry Prize, 1997 (University of Southern California).

The following work is Copyright © 1998, and owned by Ruth Daigon and may not be distributed or reprinted in any formwhatsover without written permission from the author.

It's That Time of Year

again he's drowning
and the Red River
opens wide to take him in

mother rooted to the bank
her voice floating over water
we're waiting supper for you

bread and milk lie
heavy on the table
where sisters stand
strange to one another

they turn their backs
and climb the stairs
to narrow rooms

it's that time of year
nudging memories of his face
streaked with summer

small talk at evening meals
walks along the river
with its radiant shine

in this house where
no one survives love
darkness opens
like a white door

A Fresh Cadence

awake i run my hands
along the flesh I know
better than my own

your body turns toward me
curves against my back
matching perfectly

our mouths shape words
into a new language
stored in linen

or the slow years ahead
shadows stitch the night
we are in a different country

i let my fingernails grow
paint my eyelids blue and invent
hot nights in our fifth floor

village walk-up above italian
shouts and smells where a thin
thread of sun hovers in a life

of cool vegetable mornings
scorched afternoons and naked
nights dreaming of feathers

when our familiar bodies drift
toward each other we are back
in our private room with windows
where silence gathers in a grain of sound

The Sill of the World

In the distance, a tractor driven
by the brush-stroke of a man
weaves across the fields
until the sky prepares for evening.

He leans against the barn,
smells the green,
sees birds rising in the sky
as if they had a reason

to feel at home there
and watches the traffic of the stars
over fields finally balanced
on the sill of the world.

At dusk, fences grow invisible.
Crickets count the seconds
and stone walls smelling of earthbreath,
bear witness against each other.

Moments

Winds blow in the same bare place
as though this northern reach
were all that's left of earth.

Sun skids on frozen
surfaces and fog
chokes off all sound.

A snowflake resting in a child's
palm makes of her life
a simple moment. This

moment
emptied of all memories
but one.

And the Beginning Follows the End

The seasons at odds within her, she
leans against the window kissing the cold glass
like an echo in search of a voice.

Listening to her heart on its secret slope, she
watches a bird in bent-winged flight and feels
the round world holding still.

The wind returns with a swipe of claw
a stench of fur and the sky slopes
blank as a snakes eye.

Haloed by calm, she breathes quick breaths
as the five fires of meaning
flame all about her.

She knows a few things: the world is round and
flat, and a bud nippling on a branch, perfect inside itself,
still needs sunlight to complete it.

She knows what comes before the word,
the single grain, the irritant producing pearls,
and that a splash of water in the sea

stretches to the border of beyond.
She also knows though earth is smug
with toothy heights and endless horizons,

its five continents, its shifts and surprises,
one day it will suddenly turn inward
leaving an empty space, a taste of salt.

Travis Talley
ttalley@students.uwf.edu

Bio(auto)

I am a student at the University of West Florida, in Pensacola, FL....my permanent residenceis in Mulberry, Florida (near Tampa)....I write.....I drive my little Toyota....I attend anthropology and English classes every now and then.....I eat badly.....I have little money.....at this particular moment I'm about to make myself a bowl of campell's chicken noodle soup....I detest soups with vegetables....that is, unless it's New England clam chowder..... I drool at the thought.....and that's about all there is to me.....oh yeah, i'm also wasting valuable studying time on my website "i Sold My Soul to Confusion9"

The following work is Copyright © 1998, and owned by Travis Talley and may not be distributed or reprinted in any manner whatsover without written permission from the author.

Wet and Dying Under a Singular Sun

she's wet and dying under a singular sun
...with her hair strewn about her
..........with tangle-like impressions and folk music,
...like being here before the tide of the moment
..........in plural monstrosity chambered and sick
..........and fierce all at once with mesmerizing
..........silkiness.
...the way in which motion is E-motion
..........a singular notion discounting disfunction
..........and walled in and closed boxes
..........like cardboard arteries only made in the U.S.A.
...forgive and forget, she told me alive in the sand
..........with tweaking purity unscarred honesty
..........and a tequila in the other hand offering
..........silence.
...for now alive seems best with ice and shot glasses
..........somehow never seems far away and waving
..........expecting with boredom a silkiness undiscovered
..........untouched and ferocious in white black and grey
..........with color strewn about that singular sun,
..........wet and dying.