July Selection #1

Dear friends: July featured a big, fat submission pile - far too many poems to post them all here. It was lovely! Thank you all. Our July selected authors are Deanna Hopper, Amos Clifford, Bill Krumbein, Michael Rothenberg, and Steve Woodall.








July selection #1


WHETHER A MOON

day or night,
awake or sleeping,

I dream of sky
& houses, white.

Sea, white.
Clear liquor

mixed with water,
white.

White love.
And

if there is light,
white chimneys

in a blue winter.

Michael Rothenberg

July Selection #2

( Note: in the following poem, please imagine the 4th, 5th, and 6th stanzas are indented, as well as italicized. )


July Selection #2


Father, Son, Ridge


The first time that I ever saw -
looking down upon everything,
from the top of a ridge,
totally alone –

as, I spent many times on top of the ridge
with many other people
but being on top alone was different
and I could see people waving up, small

they saw me too
they felt my smile
they felt how open my heart was.
My joy, that I felt at that moment,
still remains
on that mountain top.

I watched you go and worried about you
my eyes could follow you partway
up that ridge
then you went behind a rocky tower
I couldn’t see you anymore.
I sat and waited for you a long time.
I waited under a screen of white bark pine
and I listened to myself
I listened to my fear.
I thought: what he’s doing, is exactly
what I would do, when I was his age –
any yet – I’m so worried.
And I saw clearly that my worry was my problem.
It wasn’t yours.
You were doing exactly what you needed to do.

I made the descent down to the lake to wait for you,
and sooner, much sooner than I expected,
I looked up and saw you on that peak.
I saw you holding your arms out to the side

like wings
like you were feeling that you were flying.
And I thought, “I know that feeling.”


Amos Clifford

July Selection #3

July Selection #3


May Lake

Many thousands of feet up
the granite face

granite fissured, wrinkled, thrusting, scaling,
strewn with scree

marmots peek from crevices
unseen grouse whump whump
curious birds observe
a gasping climber

color nears its limit -
blue, green, about to burst into flame
into something new
in the thin air

rivulets rush through wet green chinks
thronging with stings

in sloping scree a single tree burns green
against impossible blue
and nothing else

in brilliant wind one heart carries its mountain
no less
nothing more

distant waterfall roar


Deanna Hopper

July Selections 4 & 5

July selection #4


hordes of grand children
cross the moat, invade my castle
sweet corn tassels bloom

Steve Woodall





July selection #5


Right Picking

Public right-of-way
that space between fence lines
plump ripe blackberries

Bill Krumbein