Poetry
Cooperman, Robert & Uschuk, Pamela
Pamela Uschuk Bed Cat Near Old Snow "1 ubed what was left of aburncxhnaichstickaadwrateona. bar of soap in my cell. I would read it and read it until it was committed to memory. Then with one...
...the entire county avoiding their house as tf plague fad ftrotopB out tihettr yen after year...
...How docs die bear end...
...In sun...
...No breeze branches, jutt kicks and the cat...
...Each March, runoff is the tyrant that collapse bridges as it goc...
...Me one to talk W but icily polite butlers looking for mew suitable service- sous brandy bottles their only companions, for tflttakwg die rule by which everyone played...
...sttfrj&g through me...
...Then with one washing of my bands it would he gone...
...the river blows the ok) husk of dogwood to silt...
...wafting our small town's main street...
...dreams his claws in a warbler's throat...
...to riversmeet, then to the sea...
...1 faa&a taste of that isolation this morning...
...The soap is hard, holds thoughts written in ash...
...white patches passing as snow...
...Under ice...
...Under river ice, the slow curre&t fingers stones, silt puffing like cittfos blowing, takes carp and their cargo of gold, their scales despised by the sportsman's line...
...Hobert Cooperman h-wat an art at which the British wle itqiateK, in thnie Victorian novds about motley and love and class: niqtt vfiatf were cads, but who tried to pm oa tomzen face by showing up fttflttfrdBbB, were snubbed by a wall of sflenqe 40 Sard their noses broke: stride or femovai to the continent ttetr only alternatives, w cloistered at&etr estates...
...The old country seduces but matchsticks char my dreams...
...You are a moon inside bats, a new Cerulean Warbler in the cat's moon eyes...
...side split by the dogwood bud...
...How chapped those bands...
...he nibs against my calf...
...Irina Ratushinsktvta Fire sinks in the stove...
...And the cat, from shadow to shadow, washes prey from its agate coat...
...seeing an acquaintance, a Btraage smile on his lace as die distance closed between us like ships about to ram in Roman sea battles...
...washing Wood from iliccity's shores...
...cutting iik dend, as the Eoglish would say, to make me laugh qad nsmemberTd always thought him a moron, but still that nagging tug at my chest, trying to rememher what I had done to make me disappear before his very eyes.o make me disappear before his very eyes...
...What begins the wren...
...rod tahby...
...Snow's shotn clgse to ice in that milk-shuttered light of knowing what's to coine, uf being what's passed before...
...Soviet dissident poet...
...I $n$med to take off a winter glove iD-stake his hand and chat a moment, toot he was past me before I could expel hfc aafne with the ghostly breath of cold...
...ruby tag aider that peels back to green, to the fragile white petal of desire...
...Spring in liie guise of the self...
Vol. 116 • May 1989 • No. 9
