Out Fox

I saw the big fox again on the path
at twilight. To see something improbable
and wild
more than once seems like
it should be good
luck

but in China the teaching is that the fox is not.

Elder daughter, hair of copper, newly past her teens,
points out the obvious.
You are not Chinese.
(Which, I point out, she would also do if she were Chinese.
Into mid-twenties, unforeseen,
she will have an apartment in Beijing.)

Hours later
I saw four or five smaller foxes among
the children’s playground things.
The slide, the baby swings.
One may have been the shadow of another.

Because they are hunters, as I passed,
they stopped.
Tracked. What I said was run away run
away

Not because of the luck. Or hunt.
Because it’s only when you say stay
and it can’t
and it won’t
and it doesn’t
and it goes
that it is
loss.

—

This selection comes from Peggy Hamilton’s book Questions for Animals, available from Ahsahta Press. Purchase your copy here!

Peggy Hamilton, a native Miamian, received her BA in English from Barry University, and her MFA in Poetry from FAU in 2007. She is the author of QUESTIONS FOR ANIMALS (2013) and FORBIDDEN CITY (2003), both from Ahsahta Press. She’s a recipient of a State of Florida Individual Artist Grant in Literature for Poetry, and an honoree in the State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship in Children’s literature. She’s been a finalist in the National Poetry Series, Barnard New Women Poet’s Series, the CSU Poetry Prize, and the Heekin Group Foundation’s Novel-in-Progress Award. She’s taught community writing seminars at FIU and the Florida Center for the Literary Arts, has read poetry and performed with Devorah Major, poet laureate of San Francisco, at a Miami International Book Fair event called “Performing Persona.” Before teaching at FAU as a graduate student, then as an instructor, she was a jury consultant and grant writer, and taught grant-funded intensive programs for young adults, many of whom were in residential foster or treatment programs, or correctional facilities. Currently she lives in East Tennessee, and is Director of Programs for a nonprofit educational startup that will offer residential writing workshops to high school students as they prepare for college.

T.A. Noonan is the author of several books and chapbooks, most recently four sparks fall: a novella (Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, 2013) and, with Erin Elizabeth Smith, Skate or Die (Dusie Kollektiv, 2014). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Reunion: The Dallas Review, West Wind Review, Hobart, Ninth Letter, and Phoebe, among others. A weightlifter, crafter, priestess, and all-around woman of action, she serves as the Associate Editor of Sundress Publications, Founding Editor of Flaming Giblet Press, and Literary Arts Director for the Sundress Academy of the Arts.

To Feed a Girl

Put her with many girls do not let them
speak sleep them over chickens drop nets low
her to hands knees to come go sit shadow
in doorways open breathing men who can
sleep their clothes gone over by someone then
returned hands knead sleep on a restless skin
back to doorway seeds in daylight go to
pots of water what to the eye looked like
buttons between fingers pushed back almond
like his eyes attached once one broke she gave
me half teeth to task unsewing blinding
white shirt we buried it eyes lowering
whenever he passed he never missed it
none safe little lashes he had others

—

This selection comes from Peggy Hamilton’s book Questions for Animals, available from Ahsahta Press. Purchase your copy here!

Peggy Hamilton, a native Miamian, received her BA in English from Barry University, and her MFA in Poetry from FAU in 2007. She is the author of QUESTIONS FOR ANIMALS (2013) and FORBIDDEN CITY (2003), both from Ahsahta Press. She’s a recipient of a State of Florida Individual Artist Grant in Literature for Poetry, and an honoree in the State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship in Children’s literature. She’s been a finalist in the National Poetry Series, Barnard New Women Poet’s Series, the CSU Poetry Prize, and the Heekin Group Foundation’s Novel-in-Progress Award. She’s taught community writing seminars at FIU and the Florida Center for the Literary Arts, has read poetry and performed with Devorah Major, poet laureate of San Francisco, at a Miami International Book Fair event called “Performing Persona.” Before teaching at FAU as a graduate student, then as an instructor, she was a jury consultant and grant writer, and taught grant-funded intensive programs for young adults, many of whom were in residential foster or treatment programs, or correctional facilities. Currently she lives in East Tennessee, and is Director of Programs for a nonprofit educational startup that will offer residential writing workshops to high school students as they prepare for college.

T.A. Noonan is the author of several books and chapbooks, most recently four sparks fall: a novella (Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, 2013) and, with Erin Elizabeth Smith, Skate or Die (Dusie Kollektiv, 2014). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Reunion: The Dallas Review, West Wind Review, Hobart, Ninth Letter, and Phoebe, among others. A weightlifter, crafter, priestess, and all-around woman of action, she serves as the Associate Editor of Sundress Publications, Founding Editor of Flaming Giblet Press, and Literary Arts Director for the Sundress Academy of the Arts.

Here

I. Where is the field

that is wet from the rain that must run from us or be made steam
because what we are doing is our shelter and we may not stop, not
yet, not while there is breath, not while there is hunger, not now, not from this?

Where is the field that we have turned and turned again taken out of
eaten from put our backs into, sweat into, blood yes
and tears when each thought the other wasn’t looking?

Where is the place

before it was the field, of grass like knives and rock and flash
flood and the rut and harden our moving made?

Did you ever guess each time you apologized for not having made it to water
before dark, I smiled no matter, but never told you why:
I could scour the dishes with salt or sand, night falling overhead,
quarter-hour by quarter-hour, and watch you tie down the animals, the tent,
and bring the old skin off my hands.

Poor stars,
younger and more and closer then,
could only crowd the sky with wanting you and watch.
We, pounding bones on bones on ground: you said here
is the difference
between the force that makes dust
and the force that makes coal
between the force that makes coal and
the force that makes
diamonds you told me here
you showed me
here
and every morning the children’s eyes glittered like yours where are
they now.

II. What if what we know is wrong?

Look what made us. Our lives. Look what we can do: we can take one more step
and then the next for miles through fires of burning lungs and muscles. We can hold
our breath and lift what we cannot lift. Then carry it at a dead run. Into the ocean
and swim. Take it over walls into crawl spaces and then the coup. We can throw it
not away but high when our hands are needed for the next thing because up

it’s hidden. Nobody expects it there. Nobody ever thinks to look. Especially when
we are standing still. With all the promise of a spring. Maintaining an unwavering
look knowing that

even in its ascent, from the moment of release, the heavy thing is speeding back.
The force of an entire cosmos conspiring for the crash. But it can’t have that: we can
also catch.

This is the one condition, the trick. To catch it unsuspected, unseen, you must
mimic the motion of the thing. Drop. Appear to fall. Prostrate. Then up onto
your knees. What they see you catch is their gaze on the curve of your back, your
thigh. They struggle to regain your unblinking eye. That seems like it has been
there, on their indiscretion, all the time. You have taught them to mistrust their
own intentions. This is the origin of prayer. This is the power of kneeling: simple

leverage.

Stand. No hands. Faster or slower than they thought possible. They gasp.
Motionless one moment longer is your face. Then it smiles. They feel grateful to
have been spared. Which means mortal in your presence ever after. This is the
power of what is known as

grace.

Story is sly.
Niobe, catastrophe’s open womb, denied the grave, rest, dust, dilution. Cast to be
the monument of her loss, never once to stretch or bend or again have bones and
aching that would ease in time’s bed. Seed unsown, she becomes immortal stone
instead. What

punishment

to the wife of the man whose music beguiled rocks into walls. Did Zeus not know
Amphion could touch her still? The storyteller did. What

punishment. Or consolation. The story becomes ever slier. And it is not just stones
that weep and love the lyre.

III. What is there such a thing as?

Our fathers, specks on decks on boats on oceans
may very well have taken their bearings by the lights of stars
that were no longer there even then. There are more now. Distance makes its
contribution.

And the horizon
an illusory meeting. Real enough to steady your stomach. Neither true nor false.
You do not have to know it is optics. You do not have to believe.
We can do

this.

—

This selection comes from Peggy Hamilton’s book Questions for Animals, available from Ahsahta Press. Purchase your copy here!

Peggy Hamilton, a native Miamian, received her BA in English from Barry University, and her MFA in Poetry from FAU in 2007. She is the author of QUESTIONS FOR ANIMALS (2013) and FORBIDDEN CITY (2003), both from Ahsahta Press. She’s a recipient of a State of Florida Individual Artist Grant in Literature for Poetry, and an honoree in the State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship in Children’s literature. She’s been a finalist in the National Poetry Series, Barnard New Women Poet’s Series, the CSU Poetry Prize, and the Heekin Group Foundation’s Novel-in-Progress Award. She’s taught community writing seminars at FIU and the Florida Center for the Literary Arts, has read poetry and performed with Devorah Major, poet laureate of San Francisco, at a Miami International Book Fair event called “Performing Persona.” Before teaching at FAU as a graduate student, then as an instructor, she was a jury consultant and grant writer, and taught grant-funded intensive programs for young adults, many of whom were in residential foster or treatment programs, or correctional facilities. Currently she lives in East Tennessee, and is Director of Programs for a nonprofit educational startup that will offer residential writing workshops to high school students as they prepare for college.

T.A. Noonan is the author of several books and chapbooks, most recently four sparks fall: a novella (Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, 2013) and, with Erin Elizabeth Smith, Skate or Die (Dusie Kollektiv, 2014). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Reunion: The Dallas Review, West Wind Review, Hobart, Ninth Letter, and Phoebe, among others. A weightlifter, crafter, priestess, and all-around woman of action, she serves as the Associate Editor of Sundress Publications, Founding Editor of Flaming Giblet Press, and Literary Arts Director for the Sundress Academy of the Arts.

Lang (Wolf)

You were the only one who never gave
me a thought never put a word in my
mouth the last silver linings hide great clouds
of you I saw you were like a sheet of
rain the blank look you had the nothing you
said made not a wall you always left space
enough to let the light in let the light
in between the bars when the door is gone
the nature of the beast circles around
and walks right in the cage this your best kept
this your no good reason you can’t undo
this thing you never did you can’t let go
of what you forgot where you hid buried
kill keeps itself how you loved then to dig

Lang is a homophone for a word by which a wife may address her husband as a term of endearment. It is the title of an official something like a constable.

—

This selection comes from Peggy Hamilton’s book Questions for Animals, available from Ahsahta Press. Purchase your copy here!

Peggy Hamilton, a native Miamian, received her BA in English from Barry University, and her MFA in Poetry from FAU in 2007. She is the author of QUESTIONS FOR ANIMALS (2013) and FORBIDDEN CITY (2003), both from Ahsahta Press. She’s a recipient of a State of Florida Individual Artist Grant in Literature for Poetry, and an honoree in the State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship in Children’s literature. She’s been a finalist in the National Poetry Series, Barnard New Women Poet’s Series, the CSU Poetry Prize, and the Heekin Group Foundation’s Novel-in-Progress Award. She’s taught community writing seminars at FIU and the Florida Center for the Literary Arts, has read poetry and performed with Devorah Major, poet laureate of San Francisco, at a Miami International Book Fair event called “Performing Persona.” Before teaching at FAU as a graduate student, then as an instructor, she was a jury consultant and grant writer, and taught grant-funded intensive programs for young adults, many of whom were in residential foster or treatment programs, or correctional facilities. Currently she lives in East Tennessee, and is Director of Programs for a nonprofit educational startup that will offer residential writing workshops to high school students as they prepare for college.

T.A. Noonan is the author of several books and chapbooks, most recently four sparks fall: a novella (Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, 2013) and, with Erin Elizabeth Smith, Skate or Die (Dusie Kollektiv, 2014). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Reunion: The Dallas Review, West Wind Review, Hobart, Ninth Letter, and Phoebe, among others. A weightlifter, crafter, priestess, and all-around woman of action, she serves as the Associate Editor of Sundress Publications, Founding Editor of Flaming Giblet Press, and Literary Arts Director for the Sundress Academy of the Arts.