by Angela J. Rydell

Pregnant Woman Thinks of Rainforest

The elephant stands on a stool—one-footed—
a teacup curled in her trunk, the delicate gauze of a tutu 
stretched over her ample torso.

Some kids nearby have become the quietest 
they’ve been in probably weeks, mouths four poised O’s,

as if in awe, she believes, of how love can be so fat and enormous,  
thick-skinned, compliant when trained, yet twitching  
a sail-sized ear, a tail, its true nature bursting the seams 
of its costume, tuned to the far off stammers of toucans,  
the flexible cage of a zebra’s running body, 
while balanced so carefully in the spotlight, on stage,

on one small point, chair top to foot, and what a foot: 
strong as a Mack truck, sensitive as the bones of the ear, 
evolved, when pressed, to feel,  
through any molecule on its wide pad of sole,  
tremors, voices, seismically wise,  
speaking to her through the shifting earth.

-originally published in The Beloit Poetry Journal, winter 2008

by Lynn Patrick Smith

These Little Scenes

The angora night
ignores the man
standing at an angle
against the disabled elevator
chanting about angels.

By the nearly naked
vacant lot
the Palomino Limo
looking for a parking place
barely misses
the Masquerading Mercedes
in cascading rain.

In a crowd
it’s easy to pick out
the crazed accountant
with his fettuccini ledgers
leaking loopholes and nooses.

The inconvenient couple
in constant battle,
with whistle-stop talk
rattling waiting room mood,
travel by elevator and limo
dangle on loopholes
and nooses.


-originally appeared in These Little Scenes, Fireweed Press, 2006, by Lynn Patrick Smith.

American Life in Poetry: Column 150

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

There's a world of great interest and significance right under our feet, but most of us don't think to look down. We spend most of our time peering off into the future, speculating on how we will deal with whatever is coming our way. Or dwelling on the past. Here Ed Ochester stops in the middle of life to look down.

What the Frost Casts Up

A crown of handmade nails, as though
there were a house here once, burned,
where we've gardened for fifteen years;
the ceramic top of an ancient fuse;
this spring the tiny head of a plastic doll--
not much compared to what they find
in England, where every now and then
a coin of the Roman emperors, Severus
or Constantius, works its way up, but
something, as though nothing we've
ever touched wants to stay in the earth,
the patient artifacts waiting, having been lost
or cast away, as though they couldn't bear
the parting, or because they are the only
messengers from lives that were important once,
waiting for the power of the frost
to move them to the mercy of our hands.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2001 by Ed Ochester. Reprinted from "Unreconstructed: Poems Selected and New" by Ed Ochester, Autumn House Press, 2007, by permission of the author and publisher. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
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by Lynn Patrick Smith

Waiting for the Paper

My paperboy is sleeping in again
so I’m staring at some scare-tactic infomercial
about my body’s bankrupt enzymes
being the reason for the recent demise
of my high energy level
and how they don’t replace themselves.
Of course this Doctor has a remedy
that is so obvious someone should have
already thought of it.
And he doesn’t want a Nobel Prize
just thirty-nine ninety-five.

Yesterday it was the Rolling Fat Burner
wheeling its way into my living room
promising to cure all my ills
as I coast back and forth across the floor
on its patented caster wheels
literally feeling the results
in minutes.

I’ll tell you, I can tolerate lactose
and I’m not lacking essential nutrients
available in convenient powder mixes
now with five fresh flavors
and I have no burning desire
to relive the 70s with the
Bellbottom Rock CD collection.
I don’t even need Ginkgo Biloba to remember
why I feel out of sorts.
It’s because the world is starting up
and I’m sitting here with a cup of coffee
and no newspaper.

-originally appeared in These Little Scenes, Fireweed Press, 2006, by Lynn Patrick Smith.

by Janet Taliaferro

Night Terrors and the Wizard of Oz

They were under my bed
the creatures with conical hats,
orange and green.

They bobbed around the room
just at the corner of my eye
and disappeared when I looked
directly at them.

They didn’t come every night
but often enough for a year or two
that I would call for my parents
afraid to go to their room.

Mother never heard me
but my father, clad in striped pajamas
of some color I couldn’t make out,
would appear like a friendly apparition at my door,

“What is it?”
“They’re back,” I would say
in a voice pinched with fear.
“Would you like a glass of water?”
“Please.”

With a single swallow
the creatures melted
like the Witch of the West
in the Wizard of Oz.

And Wizard he was
born in the time of Queen Victoria
and not an affectionate man
but patient with children
he could hold
two diametrically opposed ideas
in his mind at once and still seem plausible.

He believed women should be demure
and soft of voice.
He would quote Shakespeare
to make his point on the rare occasions
we discussed anything
but science and business.

On my sixteenth birthday
he gave me a book about love
a sentimental text
reflective, I thought, more of his first marriage
ended at two weeks with the death of the bride
rather than an indictment
of the bitter stalemate with my mother.

It was the only time the subject was approached
and when I see the book on my shelf
I think of it as a manual with a single instruction
“Here. It’s your heart. You figure it out.”

The summer I was eighteen
we stood on the street corner
in the windy space between two bank buildings
and he handed me a check
for my entire college expenses.

As we discussed how to invest the money
for the next four years
it was as though he had handed me
the complete confidence
of a pair of ruby slippers
and said, “It’s all yours.
You have the wit to get over night terrors.
Get on with it.”

-originally appeared in Northern Virginia Review

by Ron Czerwien

Revival

One crow picks
At a knot of flesh and muscle,

Another in my neighbor’s hickory
Complains, complains, complains. . .

We forget to be astonished.

How else do you explain
Oak leaf shake and shimmer,

Tambourines and hallelujahs
In a late September gust,

Or the evening’s theme song:
A little rain, a little more. . .

Never the same, never the same.
Oh love, forget me often.

-originally appeared in Wisconsin Trails

by Lynn Patrick Smith

This is the Poem You’ve Been Waiting to Hear

unless you were thinking it would rhyme
and say nice things about
my mother, my wife, or my childhood
which I did capture, beautifully metered,
in my Pleasant Suburban Childhood poem
that I left at home because
the last time I took it out in public
it ran off and got drunk with that
gang of Miserable Urban Childhood poems
and said things about me
I cannot repeat in the poem
you were hoping I would read.
So, instead I offer you this.

Just imagine me reciting whatever poem
it is you’ve been waiting to hear.


-originally appeared in These Little Scenes,
Fireweed Press, 2006, by Lynn Patrick Smith.