From the Archive – Page 22 – Michigan Quarterly Review

From the Archive

“In the Beginning,” by Alice Fulton

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“This minute my small toes are shrinking / of their own accord. I have no say / whatsoever. Blame it on buoyancy, / without which, rambunctious and passive / as a beachball on the breakers, I / never would have bobbled here. The wild green groans / by which I lived before language / now gesture and have at me / only in dreams.”

“In the Beginning,” by Alice Fulton Read More »

“This minute my small toes are shrinking / of their own accord. I have no say / whatsoever. Blame it on buoyancy, / without which, rambunctious and passive / as a beachball on the breakers, I / never would have bobbled here. The wild green groans / by which I lived before language / now gesture and have at me / only in dreams.”

“Letter in the New Year,” by Donald Hall

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“Do you remember our first / January at Eagle Pond, / the coldest in a century? / It dropped to thirty-eight below— / with no furnace, no storm / windows or insulation. / We sat reading or writing / in our two big chairs, either / side of the Glenwood, / and made love on the floor / with the stove open and roaring. / You were twenty-eight. / If someone had told us then / you would die in nineteen years, / would it have sounded / like almost enough time?”

“Letter in the New Year,” by Donald Hall Read More »

“Do you remember our first / January at Eagle Pond, / the coldest in a century? / It dropped to thirty-eight below— / with no furnace, no storm / windows or insulation. / We sat reading or writing / in our two big chairs, either / side of the Glenwood, / and made love on the floor / with the stove open and roaring. / You were twenty-eight. / If someone had told us then / you would die in nineteen years, / would it have sounded / like almost enough time?”

“December Dawn” by Piero Bigongiari

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Eye, a stone become blood, / late from the eye of God, / plummets bird-like on the riverbed. / Does it pierce the light or create it? What does it expect / in its falling–from its falling? Perhaps / it sees something, searches for something in sleep among the / flowers, / disturbed by its arrival, poor river-flowers, rust-colored umbels / under a dream-rain that foresees the future.

“December Dawn” by Piero Bigongiari Read More »

Eye, a stone become blood, / late from the eye of God, / plummets bird-like on the riverbed. / Does it pierce the light or create it? What does it expect / in its falling–from its falling? Perhaps / it sees something, searches for something in sleep among the / flowers, / disturbed by its arrival, poor river-flowers, rust-colored umbels / under a dream-rain that foresees the future.

“Winter Nihilism,” by Tom Luhrmann

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The objects in the garden, though, / are of a different order. / Remember them. / The white bricks will sustain you / when everything else seems meaningless; / the gardening tools will take you further / than any ideology; / the flag will stand between you and despair.

“Winter Nihilism,” by Tom Luhrmann Read More »

The objects in the garden, though, / are of a different order. / Remember them. / The white bricks will sustain you / when everything else seems meaningless; / the gardening tools will take you further / than any ideology; / the flag will stand between you and despair.

“Hill,” by Margaret Reges

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Tangled against the river the red-gray thump of the feet of deer in the half-frozen mud and the sear of dry branches torn from the living, a yellow-orange strip of barkless wood on the trunk and the tender wet where the branch was torn crystallizing in the cold, and trees like a mesh of black oil.

“Hill,” by Margaret Reges Read More »

Tangled against the river the red-gray thump of the feet of deer in the half-frozen mud and the sear of dry branches torn from the living, a yellow-orange strip of barkless wood on the trunk and the tender wet where the branch was torn crystallizing in the cold, and trees like a mesh of black oil.

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