Summer 2008 Museletter

Museletter Poetry Page

Foreign Destinations
Editor: Wendy Vardaman

THE BRIDGE TO LLANRWST

They serve coffee, milky tea,
and the most seductive scones in Wales,
along with clotted cream and orange marmelade
in the Ty yr Bont, house by the bridge.

Outside, the high-arched bridge hushes
the muscled roar of the River Conwy.
Each of the span's rough stones is numbered
and placed in sequence, rising to the keystone,
without mortar, rusting iron, or creaking wood.

Daffodils bloom beside the road
as each car waits its turn to pass.
For six centuries,
the bridge has been one lane.
Because of the arch, drivers
are blind to oncoming traffic. A volunteer
stands in the middle, confidently waving her arms
in one direction, and then the other.

Images such as rush hour, cell phones, McDonalds,
or suicide bombers, are only distant realities.
Here at this point, architecture, history,
and luscious scones meet
without wail of remorse,
or even a honking horn,
for a nice cup of tea.

—Lincoln Hartford, New Lisbon

GO BREWERS

I am in a gay bar in London thinking
about the Milwaukee Brewers.

Ian, a wiry and pale little kid, wants
to get laid and while he feverishly works
the room, I sit at the bar alone
with my thoughts of rotations, missed
double plays, line drives in the gap.

There is a collective consciousness
in the air; a cloud that brushes the shore
of my small island in the Antipodes. I
am an interloper wearing Chuck Taylors
and an invisible sign.

There was a kid from my class who died
of AIDS. I wasn’t mean to him,
but I couldn’t say I was nice
either. I guess I just ignored him.
Better to pretend he wasn’t
even in the room.

—Thomas J. Erickson, Whitefish Bay

ROMAN HOLIDAY

The Basilica of St. Prassede contains the most outstanding remaining work of Byzantine art in all of Rome. The floor is made from polychrome marble; on the walls and ceilings, the mosaics of variegated colors and gold represent Christ surrounded by angels.

—Frommer's Memorable Walks in Rome

It’s the woman on the church step,
her blackened hand outstretched,
a nursing child at her exposed breast
that contradicts my mood as I leave
St. Prassede,
makes me a victim
of the coin withheld.

On the street, the sunlight
blinds me. This stillness of
the moment burns
so strong it hurts.
All things—church, street
dust, stones, weeds,
even the fat pigeons
pecking gritty sidewalk—
everything burns.

The woman’s eyes blaze.
My mouth is full of ash.
And this all
takes but one
hard instant.

—Nancy Jesse, Madison

SO QUICKLY BLENDING IN

You arrive alone, against your will,
without any planning or passport,
no warning whatsoever.
Language immersion learning
becomes a must—to link
with those onshore there before you
and listen to the local island guides
all talking fast in carcinoma-speak.

Can you sift through and
assimilate all they're saying:
aggressive invasive lobular?
multi-focal? ductal in situ?, sentinel nodes?
estrogen receptor status? staging?
mastectomies, possibly plastic surgery—
reconstruction?
Can you translate these hissing sounds back
into your own life, that one
in which you so recently, so casually, roamed,
not feeling tongue-tied?

You can’t fathom the specialized menu,
but get served something— maybe cycles
of red Adriamycin and clear Cytoxan,
mixed with anti-nausea meds,
a chaser of Tamoxifen—
and all their sundry side effects.
Ever so quickly, your own fickle hair follicles
follow the bald crowd.

—Ann Penton, Sarona

HOMESICKNESS

J'arrive òu je suis étranger.
—Boris Vian

Mental illness
is a country I left a long time ago.
I miss the mountain views and small grazing animals.
Sometimes I go up to the attic, open the trunk,
take out the national costume I once wore,
and try it on to see if it still fits.

Postcards come
when I least expect it—they say only
Wish you were here,
with no signature and no return address.
The picture on the other side is always
an unretouched black-and-white photo
of a beaver dam,
or a pile of corpses heaped for burning;
I have never been able to decide which.

I send in
the annual application for reinstated citizenship
and receive by return mail a temporary visa,
stamped Invalid Until Further Notice,
and a request for financial disclosure.

When I hear
the national anthem I take off my hat,
place my hand over my heart,
and clouds cover the face of the sun.

—F.J. Bergmann, Poynette
previously appeared in Southern Poetry Review

PLUM MILEAGE

Depending on the tartness,
inversely proportional to the
      distance from the pit,
      One bite
         can,
            on the right day
                  in the right time zone,
hurl me back a few decades
    across a weave of longitudes
         and latitudes
to South Australia
                  And
      into the branches of an
                  apricot tree
      (fruit of similar tartness)
where a hide-and-seek game
      is lost
            due to the
                  spitting
                        of a pit.

             —Katrin Talbot, Madison
previously published in Anew

OUR LADY OF THE MILKY WAY
Copacabana, Bolivia

She is sold at a hundred stalls
wrapped in plastic
stiff skirts arrayed around her
in organdy layers

She is gold, silver, pale blue
Black hair frames a milky face
She does not smile
She holds a doll

She stands on the crescent moon
stars like horns circle her head
Buy her, festoon her with lights
bury her in flowers

purple sprays of gladiola
tiny scented orchids
thin, crackling tissue paper
Offer her riches

drape her in the black night cloak
of the animals, the cuyo, the guso, the chinchilla
Watch the heavens turn around her
She does not move, she does not give

comfort: we are not asking
the easy road, the quick journey
She is our lady of the candelabra, of the white wax
of the puma, of the high niche.

—Judith Barisonzi, Cumberland

Theme for Fall issue:
Parenting

Deadline:
Friday, August 1, 2008