Never-Ending Birds

Soft bulbs of morpho blue,
tight light pruned to a circuit,
the swallows feather and vector the wind.

I plume to watch, freshed in the ground;
they ring the trees as their own
sweet planets. Continuous streaks,
the green-blue preens take flying lessons,

beam to the ground they are bound by,
like no flown thing. They bring
around the ground and bright as floods
in winter, flap the wind that takes them,

pushes them into its envelope. The swallows,
so close, beat; I let them scrim
my stance, twist neatly solar.

I swallow, lift at my chest where the freckles
crack, where the wet wings gleam. Swallows
sweep out to swing my heart up with the hawk
who circles the skirmish, weeps, and screams.

—

This selection comes from Sandy Marchetti’s book A Detail in the Landscape, available from Eating Dog Press. Purchase your copy here!

Sandra Marchetti is the author of Confluence, a full-length poetry collection forthcoming from Gold Wake Press. Eating Dog Press published an illustrated edition of her essays and poetry, A Detail in the Landscape, in 2014, and her chapbook, The Canopy, is available from MWC Press. Sandy also won Second Prize in Prick of the Spindle’s 2014 Poetry Open and was a finalist in Gulf Coast’s Poetry Prize. Her work appears in The Journal, Subtropics, The Hollins Critic, Sugar House Review, Mid-American Review, Thrush Poetry Journal, Green Mountains Review, South Dakota Review, and elsewhere.

Andrew Koch’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Bluestem, Connotation Press, Mojo, Rust + Moth, and others. Although a Tennessee-native, Andrew presently lives in Spokane, Washington with his wife and cat while teaching literature and pursuing his MFA in Creative Writing at Eastern Washington University.

Sur l’herbe

You miss it, craning
away from verdancy.

Pause in this place
while I glaze you;
my head tilts
a direction you can’t read.

Green leaves drape
a frame of velvet.

Don’t move:
you can’t see
you are a strange
portrait.

Like Manet,
I strain each stroke
of cup and nape
to show I can,

then muddle you
toward the boughs to sway
in wilderness already named.

—

This selection comes from Sandy Marchetti’s book A Detail in the Landscape, available from Eating Dog Press. Purchase your copy here!

Sandra Marchetti is the author of Confluence, a full-length poetry collection forthcoming from Gold Wake Press. Eating Dog Press published an illustrated edition of her essays and poetry, A Detail in the Landscape, in 2014, and her chapbook, The Canopy, is available from MWC Press. Sandy also won Second Prize in Prick of the Spindle’s 2014 Poetry Open and was a finalist in Gulf Coast’s Poetry Prize. Her work appears in The Journal, Subtropics, The Hollins Critic, Sugar House Review, Mid-American Review, Thrush Poetry Journal, Green Mountains Review, South Dakota Review, and elsewhere.

Andrew Koch’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Bluestem, Connotation Press, Mojo, Rust + Moth, and others. Although a Tennessee-native, Andrew presently lives in Spokane, Washington with his wife and cat while teaching literature and pursuing his MFA in Creative Writing at Eastern Washington University.

By Degrees

Geese triangulate the sky,
beating toward the gramophones
of each other.

One slides from the isosceles
right to angle in the back fleet.
Lock-swift symmetry.

Move over and be as you should be.

A light’s out in the library reading room.
Pleats of Western sky
meet in the gilt-dimmed dusk.

Move over and be. As you should be.

—

This selection comes from Sandy Marchetti’s book A Detail in the Landscape, available from Eating Dog Press. Purchase your copy here!

Sandra Marchetti is the author of Confluence, a full-length poetry collection forthcoming from Gold Wake Press. Eating Dog Press published an illustrated edition of her essays and poetry, A Detail in the Landscape, in 2014, and her chapbook, The Canopy, is available from MWC Press. Sandy also won Second Prize in Prick of the Spindle’s 2014 Poetry Open and was a finalist in Gulf Coast’s Poetry Prize. Her work appears in The Journal, Subtropics, The Hollins Critic, Sugar House Review, Mid-American Review, Thrush Poetry Journal, Green Mountains Review, South Dakota Review, and elsewhere.

Andrew Koch’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Bluestem, Connotation Press, Mojo, Rust + Moth, and others. Although a Tennessee-native, Andrew presently lives in Spokane, Washington with his wife and cat while teaching literature and pursuing his MFA in Creative Writing at Eastern Washington University.

“Cold dark deep and absolutely clear”
                                  — Elizabeth Bishop, “At the Fishhouses”

The water a sheet of beat tin, it is a June song
in March, ripples for welcome. Army and gray
colors tell us why the season resists the call

of our bodies; displayed on the nightstand, the interior
brave replica of summer, stilted
in daguerreotype, printed gauzily. The white light

needed over our shoulders to see the ream, the functioning
slide. The bed is yellow—a blushing pastel paper
out of context in the hoarfrost season. Even

the white bell doilies breathe in dust
from the half-light time. Not entirely shade
but clear gray out across the ledge

and many measures more, a little water flits
between a split-trunk tree. It is
what we imagine June to be: a sliver

of wet movement, an arc that asks for colors
to ice it hotly and shake the shake of gray.

—

This selection comes from Sandy Marchetti’s book A Detail in the Landscape, available from Eating Dog Press. Purchase your copy here!

Sandra Marchetti is the author of Confluence, a full-length poetry collection forthcoming from Gold Wake Press. Eating Dog Press published an illustrated edition of her essays and poetry, A Detail in the Landscape, in 2014, and her chapbook, The Canopy, is available from MWC Press. Sandy also won Second Prize in Prick of the Spindle’s 2014 Poetry Open and was a finalist in Gulf Coast’s Poetry Prize. Her work appears in The Journal, Subtropics, The Hollins Critic, Sugar House Review, Mid-American Review, Thrush Poetry Journal, Green Mountains Review, South Dakota Review, and elsewhere.

Andrew Koch’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Bluestem, Connotation Press, Mojo, Rust + Moth, and others. Although a Tennessee-native, Andrew presently lives in Spokane, Washington with his wife and cat while teaching literature and pursuing his MFA in Creative Writing at Eastern Washington University.

Autumn Damask

Come.
Let me show you
the blown open roses
of nearly November.

Geese land in a card deck shuffle.
Their fingers sweep the ground
then plait down the body.

Lie fetal on the ground.
In the Midwest you will see
the world split—
a lidded eye drawn open as if
by marionette leads.

The willows are four crowns pointing down.

Comfort is when
you are tethered
to a place
you couldn’t move
fast from anyway.

Roam the ground where you are
mapped, flat and free, beneath
this sky, this new sea.

—

This selection comes from Sandy Marchetti’s book A Detail in the Landscape, available from Eating Dog Press. Purchase your copy here!

Sandra Marchetti is the author of Confluence, a full-length poetry collection forthcoming from Gold Wake Press. Eating Dog Press published an illustrated edition of her essays and poetry, A Detail in the Landscape, in 2014, and her chapbook, The Canopy, is available from MWC Press. Sandy also won Second Prize in Prick of the Spindle’s 2014 Poetry Open and was a finalist in Gulf Coast’s Poetry Prize. Her work appears in The Journal, Subtropics, The Hollins Critic, Sugar House Review, Mid-American Review, Thrush Poetry Journal, Green Mountains Review, South Dakota Review, and elsewhere.

Andrew Koch’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Bluestem, Connotation Press, Mojo, Rust + Moth, and others. Although a Tennessee-native, Andrew presently lives in Spokane, Washington with his wife and cat while teaching literature and pursuing his MFA in Creative Writing at Eastern Washington University.