A Summer Song Cycle, and: The Raft, and: Evangelist & Peregrine, and: Five Poems of Farewell

THE TOM McAFEE discovery feature KathyFagan The Missouri Review proudly introduces the Tom McAfee Discovery Feature in Poetry, the first of a continuing series that will feature the work of an outstanding young poet who has not yet published a book. While awaiting publication of this feature, our first recipient Kathy Fagan also won the National Poetry Series competition . This award is funded by the family and friends of Tom McAfee, whose interest in and support of young writers will long be remembered . A SUMMER SONG CYCLE /Kathy Fagan Our people are rising from their heated beds, from their salty beds to a rush of tap water. Lipping their coffee, leaning back in their chairs, they talk about weather and spraying tomatoes, They think of commuting and the snowdrifts last season. For this is the time of living out doors, of the many barbecues under shade tree places, Of yellowing hair and sprawling dog tongues, of the fans blowing pink and blue streamers at Sears. See our people are rising. Their children have heard them. Starlings settle on the black top drive, on the sun soft drive which is burning. They scratch the asphalt and its grassy borders like bulls or wild horses. They scream there, watching us And no sound or movement can lift them: Not our father rolling out with the men on the truck, Not our mother scything daffs for a jar bouquet. Fatted on spring, on their last sip of sparrow's egg, the starlings fear no one, Neither cat nor man, walking on their toes, a gleam of grease in their eye. Women drop lobsters into boiling pots, neighborhood ladies in their skirts and plaid jamaicas. They are talking about men and swagger like them. They are snubbing their cigarettes into sandbag trays; sending us out to the long front yards, shouting their warnings in an underwater speech Through the turning fan blades of the window we crouch near. Hear a radio start. Hear the kitchen turn silent. See The Missouri Review · 51 our mothers look deep into tin-foiled bowls. They pin their hair back and forget us completely: faces gone soft to that song they had played When the attics weren't done and the lawns went unplanted and we slept with our parents, we children. We saw the rain a town over, watched it coming on the black wind. Dogs sniffed the air, snouts up, eyes closed, listening as we were. And when the first drops fell, we sat in the garage together Chalking the floor with chipped plaster, writing our names there, voices dimmed by the banging of it as the roof gutter filled and the windows. The dogs stayed out, running toward us and away. They bit the wetness down, nosed beached worms, they tossed their heads Lion-like until the cloud moved north over slate roofs and all became suddenly quiet. As if touched by the sea or some silver instrument, The ground steamed up a hot smell off the earth and the leaves held out a great light. The men had hauled their load in, when the beef came out and the flies came down And the women laid plates on the table. At the redwood table on the foot-pressed grass We children squad up to eat with the families, spitting melon seeds, knifing clams, Holding their grainy meat on our tongues While flames lick blue through the blackening grill and copters circle, looking for fireworks: For the first one blowing itself over Hempstead, White as our mothers' winter chrysanthemums, and snowing away, like them, in the dark. 6 The hole where we children played trenches and 52 - The Missouri Review Kathy Fagan squirrel digs is filled now with tree, With tamped earth and boot tracks collapsed in the foaming mud. And the men who stand by drink their beers from the Green, slapping mosquitoes down, Not talking. They stare down the house rows, at the light that spills out there While music drifts like a waltz up the lane, Like steak smoke in the branches, and coal feathers lifting when our mothers pass. They have gathered up melon rinds, they have carried their children in, they...