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Variation 6: Snake by Alice B. Fogel

October 1, 2013 Contributed By: Alice B. Fogel

Have use of edges.
Alongside field—crosshatch trees

to their meadow pedestal.
Way is seam

here beneath eaves where when further
forest rises and effaces sun

camouflaging silver bleed
congeals.  Smaller than rivers

go sleek like rivers and like
rivers slip unseen

below earthly surface things—
pour with invisible volition

between storm-tamped
weeds—slip clear

through stone to lick
fresh linings of eggs.

Chromatic curvature—scale
horizon’s arc littered with all

closest slightest movements
of toad and vole—small

measures of hungry sight.
More beautiful than wind more

grounded than birds
more clever and calm

than time what more
need for body than this:

To crush sloughed leaves
with slim sounds no louder in heaven

than none—migrate
through tunnel skin meant to briefly

burrow in—emerge
clean removed and hunt whole again.

 

Return to table of contents for Issue 7 Summer 2013

Filed Under: Poetry Posted On: October 1, 2013

Further Reading

WATCHING MY MOTHER BAKE
by Michael Meyerhofer

Strangest of all was the knife, how gingerly she pushed it through    the soft raw crust of the pie  freshly-formed on the oven’s surface,   preheat already rising in waves,  her glance warning me not to touch—   the same woman who decided, a week before my seventh birthday,   to have me circumcised […]

Command Hook
by Thomas Mixon

There’s nothing less than a relationship at stake, when one opens a package of LED white star lights on green wire from Target, and another opens an identical package, and both get frustrated trying to untangle the strings.

Contributor Bios for Issue 7 Winter 2013

Issue 7 Winter 2013 DAVID ABRAMS is the author of Fobbit (Grove/Atlantic), a New York Times Notable Book for 2012. It was also selected as both an Indie Next pick and for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers program. His short stories have appeared in Esquire, Narrative, Salon, Electric, Literature, Salamander, Connecticut Review, Five Chapters, […]

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