Attendant Shades
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Attendant Shades
Grave Goods
—for Esther
Years pouring faster out thanin, this loved teacher’s life grewvexed, with grounded matters andattendant shades stirring, notwell-heeded. Her dust unvoicedthis long term since, my own nightsnow sink shafts whose echoes soundoutlasting invocationsof her time, which rise to schoolmy lessoned will in reachinginland toward fierce toils of love.
Mime
Clown-white painteyes stareto semicircled rows of semismiles,finds answer not yet full enough;angling for new slants in rhombus lines,he preens, finger-end to skullcap;sureness springs—he pirouettes and knowshis course, becomes a redwhite moment’sblur whose pluming triumphblots in sudden spotlit sprawl. [End Page 28]
New growth seeds in rain of rollinglaughter. Clown white invertsto play an instant’s Harlequin,whose master japes bamboozle kings,then tumbles masking blackwardsover Rome and into Greece,clown diamonds pointing, bendingall perspective’s ancient chasepast chaste Aegean grapetoward slopes which bear an older fruitwhich few know how to pickbut none mistakewhen foolswork has gone well. [End Page 29]
Stephen Malin’s poetry has appeared in Antioch Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Green Mountains Review, Southwest Review and others. His most recent collection of poems is Underlight (2014). He is professor of theatre, emeritus, at the University of Memphis.
