Verse
Ryan, Kay & Myers, Joan Rohr & Westerfield, Nancy G. & Coulthard, Leslie Jean
Kay Ryan Caryatid Caryatids look slightly languid. They have grace under weight; straight, but not too straight, an alignment lost along with Pericles' helmet. We may attribute some of...
...618...
...She is planned miles away at the quarry for the load she will carry...
...Mysterious lines on silver skin they are signs to something within us like boned wings of great birds that stiffen and stay when loose things are gone...
...the terms are unknown...
...the lease you thought To be written for seventy years, without notice May be revoked at forty, thirty, or even closer To issue...
...Joan Rohr Myers Towards Morning Through a fog befitting Sherlock Holmes seep clues to the strict construction of oaks...
...We may attribute some of it to the garments — thin shifts quarried from cliffs of the purest marble and inseparable from the flesh...
...In the downdrift of softness a hard tension grows delivering the Angelus clear, through a night-long blur of silence...
...Amortization That is papered in a foreign coin At its own rate of exchange, is exacting , Its currency from tissue of body and brain, While the essence you supposed was soul Matures as only your sad gift for coming To terms with the balance of loan...
...her ease runs through the grain...
...It is never that surprise that sometimes stiffens a woman and hardens her eyes...
...Long interest has eaten up The principal...
...She is not dependent upon spine...
...Leslie Jean Coulthard Growth Slough off, slough off the shackling skin, the bitter garments of despair: your parents and your siblings slip, like undone ecstasies that flare and die upon the silken air, into the left-behind: nowhere...
...Nancy G. Westerfield Amortization Taking your pocket calculator, consider This death-making of the loan of self: How it annualizes by constant check At any bank of mirrors, where the pall Qf thinning hair, the wither of skin, The end of all brilliancy of beginnings, Counters your borrower's notion that what You would pay so dearly upon, you would get To keep...
...Move yourself on and leave them there...
...In the sense that a caryatid is born, she is born dressed and refined, ready for whatever might descend...
Vol. 114 • November 1987 • No. 19
