Postcard from Novi Sad Chris Murray
for Olja Jokic The square of town steeped in yes-- exhaled like a shimmering verb from this fifth floor balcony--yes (ever the best no)-- and your "Hola!" from the indigo curve, hypoteneuse & maze from root to roof, each bubble of light on the street sucked to a turquoise sigh in the light's honeycomb, the soak of its green buzz, yes: home, the one opening that is yours, your first cry, your first I, that one echo holding you on the sloped roof of first word, first window gaze on yes: shared, how "things are good."
Chris Murray directs the UTA Writing Center. She also teaches literature, composition, and creative writing at UTA. Her poetry can be found in the Fall 2002 issue of Znine, also at the online journals, canwehaveourballback.com, eclectica.com, and in print in the Yale Angler's Journal.
Falling Asleep Reading Keats Vicki Sapp
1 I am in love with John Keats. His spent breath rises and falls on my chest, as he sleeps outside of time, with me. Now 2 we are together on the other end of our midnight rest. We become two old souls forever young in pure Arcadian tongues. Breathlessly shaping perfect words you sought in life. Longing soul, I call these blessed lines from you who first found me in my crib on the threshold of human sign and sound, a baby in love with the senseless fall of bird notes in the deep soft tones of her father's choice. Reading 3 my old father still freely gives what remains to him, the living voice to his dead young bard. He reads, feeling they will soon meet and he waits lighthearted in time's last rush. I am his child in her middle age, bearing between me and a blank ceiling the weight of old and young on my hushed heart. Tonight 4 loving Keats, long gone but forever alive at my breast, I might be learning how to die: to know he will come, but to love my days 5 of autumn rust leaf, scarlet fade, gold laden pall of flowers, banded bees, ripe grapes and boys pale of late sun spangled through a melacholy haze 6 so much I forget 7 he will come and recall other joys of passage, believe he will carry me as sweetly as his siren bird or the shuddering curve of living poem held late in my arms enfolding a heart slowly versing consciousness into consciousless warmth, into the perfect vessel of frozen breath, lost and last words he left behind to sleep with me, in light
Vicki Sapp teaches creative writing, and British and World literature at The University Of Texas At Arlington. Dr. Sapp recently received the 2003 Provost's Award for Excellence in Teaching, as well as the 2003 Liberal Arts Constituency Council Award for Teaching.
| Home | Editor | Submissions | Non-fiction | Interviews | Fiction | Poetry | Drama | Contact Us |