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POETRY Two Poems by Michael Cadnum SHEEP Chios, Greece The hawks shrill, counting themselves cry by cry. The fox noses the wind for freshness. But this flock has no past and no math. They...

â€œWolf Motherâ€ (May 2021)

POETRY WOLF MOTHER Michael Cadnum Capitoline Museum, Rome She knows without remembering, alert and peaceful at once, and she will stand as she is, her surface soaking up the light, as long as...

â€œTortoiseâ€ (March 2021)

POETRY TORTOISE Michael Cadnum The only wild creature that ever visited was the tortoise, a living helmet that would be crossing the heat-reflecting gravel again suddenly after years of being...

â€œPotato Settingâ€ (February 2021)

POETRY POTATO SETTING For Vigdis Storsletten Michael Cadnum A string bag of them gives off the wet smell of earth before anything. The year is infant, and trees stand with their naked...

"Astronomy" (January 2021)

POETRY astronomy For Katha Pollitt Michael Cadnum You knew it would capture you that evening you caught the flash you recognized only after a heartbeat, a meteorite over the rooflines of yet...

â€œSharkâ€ (October 2020)

POETRY SHARK Michael Cadnum Sleep is a search. Waking is a wound. Did I say your name? Here, I catch and close again warm as the abyss. My skin is sandstone, my teeth the law. These...

Weasel (August 2019)

WEASEL He thought little of the cattle-freight rumbling on its rails, the paddocks of horses, the sheepfold always crammed with living wool. Frost on the flatland coursed beneath him, and the...

The Return (June 2019)

THE RETURN Everything can be replaced— the trilobite kissed into the fragile shale, the cup I hold high and see lamplight around my fingertips, even the kestrel circling high over the creek. But...

New Moon (May 2019)

NEW MOON after Brigit Pegeen Kelly I wanted a creature—a bird, perhaps, or an animal that glides even if it cannot fly, an ocelot, or a seal, but I got a planet, maybe because I checked a box...

Otter (April 2018)

OTTER I shine like a hairless fish, or a tongue, but this is my pelt, enclosing a secret's cunning— winters in dark surf have given me the silhouette of a wave rising or just-spent, and the cold...

Elephant at the mall Grand Opening (October 2017)

ELEPHANT AT THE MALL GRAND OPENING The snout is delicate, snuffling, pursuing the peanut and extending further. Considering. Two bouts of hot exhalation, saluting, curling around the...

Two Poems (July 2017)

POETRY Two Poems by Michael Cadnum MOSQUITO The garden at night coy shadow, fishpond thick with softly gleaming algae. The human whispers, our murmured secret thrives in such balmy chiaroscuro...

Two Poems (June 2017)

POETRY Two Poems by Michael Cadnum THE BEE BEE SWARM A ricochet, she races, lingers, hurries to be forgotten, the single vowel of a teeming alphabet, too small to carry meaning. Privation...

Raccoon (December 2015)

RACCOON He abides near flowing water even when it’s underground, knowing how to ghost across the cornfield to the least whisper of runoff. He knows the truth about more than the land, this...

Eagle (November 2015)

EAgLE She releases the earth, every dawn, opens like day and closes like night. The human highway is nothing to her, blunt in its purpose, coursing to no destination she calls home. The...

The Flamingo (May 2015)

THE FLAMINGO The pink of her plumage is borrowed from the shells of shrimp she snaps from the muddy grasses, as step-by-step she extends her stride across a kingdom not river, not sea, safe...

The Moth (November 2013)

THE MOTH There is one now, on the screen door, his chalky wings a blur, wanting in, wanting in. A neighbor arrives, headlights and the thump of a car door. The voices slip through the...

Ants (November 2012)

ANTS This is the earth before anyone laughed. This is the persistent prehistoric republic rising up along the wall, escaping the rising groundwater trying not to drown. And in drought, theirs are...

Wasps (May 2012)

Wasps Ripe plums and the hibiscus are their swag and nothing can withstand their slash and wheel. Like the machine gun and the spiteful neighbor they repeat and repeat againno fist or curse...

Cars Burning (June 2011)

Cars Burning Something feels it—the giant land goes all the way to the summit, four thousand feet. While the driver passes time listening to songs or a recorded book, the road ahead lifts...

My Father Swims (June 2011)

The Peacock What does he feed on, this stalking festival, with a gaze perpetually startled, and a bearing so assertively free of nest or boundary that he is either witless or emperor of...

Jack Rabbit (March 2011)

Jack Rabbit With his claw-hammer ears, and his too-big hind legs he's too fleet to be graceful, in flight all air, away and away, erratic and determined. We want so much. All summer we schemed,...

Vulture and Cat (October 2009)

Two Poems by Michael Cadnum Vulture How he lays its body on the sky and looks on high so graceful we want him to be a goshawk or a falcon, anything but what he really is. When we stir to...

Flies (April 2009)

Flies Weâ€™ve ceased trying to kill these grimy comedians, surrendering to the ricochet blur first thing in the morning, the inquisitive hmmm? in the still-dark kitchen. We begin to...

Opossum (August 2008)

Commonweal . August 15, 2008 10 Opossum Fatted on the secrets of households, he pretends to expire right where we can see him, round pink eyes, naked proto-hands snout out there beyond...

Mailbox (October 2006)

Mailbox Each day once resembled a box like this. The plain of ocean, the rugged breadloaf of earth; day was longer then, and night rose up without sleep or twilight. Nothing ended....

Termite Damage (September 2006)

Termite Damage The pinking shears gleam on the blue table, cold the first cold morning of the year. All the way down to the bay the first grass, and the last stands of black...

Madonna di Loreto (December 2004)

Madonna di Loreto after Caravaggio The pilgrims have found them at least, and kneel before their doorstep, staffs angling upward, their callused, bare feet dusty with journey. Half-lit by...

Two-headed Rattler (September 2002)

Two-headed Rattler At first you took my word for it, the legend rich enough for a child new to tales, and new to the truthhow the big one coiled along the glass wall, and all the...

Whales (January 2000)

Whales "The whales got too big and had to go back into the water." A mother to her child, overheard at a museum Even when we no longer ran, for years, the hills comforted, the...

The Centrifugal Force Ride (June 1996)

Michael Cadnum The Centrifugal Force Ride So much of a year is given to us, ready-made Morning, and then the heat Sometimes a whole day goes by and it's hard to notice Unless it breaks,...

Poetry: (September 1993)

pened to Rohwedder might well-and indeed should-happen and Ossi, implying Easterners who are constantly complaining to other West German officials. ...

Poetry (September 1991)

I read it once, stopped, and read it again. The words literally danced on the page. I read it a third time, out loud alone in my room. I heard a voice that was not my own. In a way that I did not...

Poetry: (April 1990)

Michael Cadnum The Martian Landscape The curry powder slope lifts, fulls. The sky is rust, the field scattered with slones. It is day. and each stone spills a second stone of shadow. How little il...

Poetry: (April 1990)

Michael Cadnum The Beasts of the Field By the church by the heck Lhere is always another place where they Maud when ihe rain closes the sky when the wind drags the rolls of wool sun cold they...

Poetry (February 1990)

Michael Cadnum Clearing the Table "Why do we remember the past and not the future1'" Stephen W. Hawking I reach to tug the stained cloth free of wrinkles and the footsteps of the plates, the...

Farm (April 1985)

Michael Cadnum Farm The white horse flings her tail against flies. The metal plate that covets the well wrinkles the air with heat. Socks on the line hang straight .down, stiff, the hardness...

Verse (June 1982)

Hillel Schwartz Aubrey Lord Bail Bonds On cinder blocks to one side of the vacant lot BAIL BONDS stenciled on its slanting roof and huge again across the front, black and yellow, as if held...

Verse (March 1982)

Michael Cadnum The Horse The sinews of the angry mare grow tau hard as the impenetrable future as she tries to pull the stump, Tries and fails. The taproot locked-in dives to something trees...

Cadwallader, Raymond

Cafardi, Nicholas P.

Caffrey, Thomas A.

Cahalan, John C. Jr.

Cahill, Elizabeth Kirkland

Cahill, Lisa Sowle

Cahill, LisaSowle

Cahill, Susan

Cahill, Thomas

Caillois, Roger

Cain, Edward R.

Cain, George M. A.