Flying Island

Two Variations                    —for Hazel, 1951-2011 1. Conjunto When I hear your name, Hazel, it is 1994, you and I knee-deep in the Colorado River in Austin, Texas, under the rock hollows at Barton Springs, both of us visitors who met at the library and don’t have swimsuits to take with us over lunchtime, under the July sun so rabid we can’t stand to eat. We talk and talk, your Australian accent telling of loneliness from one continent to the next, brown water billowing over our toes like a thousand sentences to be read and written. At evening, you drive us in your landlords’ Datsun to a cantina where we order tacos and beer, both the same temperature, because we are here for the conjunto music you have never heard before. The Mexican quartet knows everyone sitting at the patched tables except us, so the men in silver-seamed pants flou...

Alphabetics of the Comforters by Jayne Marek   Folded, bedclothes rise in crests toward the storms. One side of night pressed down, invisible, the other Inescapable, a cradle of waiting. Hours of minuscule cat footsteps cross the floor To listen at black walls. Hard to believe anyone might have hidden Something precious under the pillow Where it could easily wrap the mind’s eye In scarves that never rest, that Unfold their hunger, Pointing toward the wind’s escape, Shaping the hieroglyphic Of a name in a forgotten alphabet One is required to know. Cold Promise by Jayne Marek   So rare to have the windows open in autumn     On a day when the dry leaves click together         Stirred by a robin’s foot.   Still here, bird? You’ll be sorry if you linger too long     Among patches of thinning grass. Beetle buzz, bark scents waft in,     On damp weedy air.   It’s m...