If you care,
it’s a lot easier than you hear.
All you need to know is Still Point.
Find the Still Point in every breath.
Then exhale on Still and inhale on Point.
Still Point Still Point Still Point
The fricative st starts the exhale,
and the p and diphthong comes
from the pit of the gut.
Watch the Still Points roll on.
The West flexes the chest,
but the East watches
its stomach.
Actually it’s easier than that.
You don’t need language.
Just exhale until the inhale
bounces off your diaphragm.
Push your breath away until
it comes back naturally
(like Mickey Rooney
teaching young Liz Talyor
to ride a horse
in National Velvet.)
Jim Klein has published more than 100 poems in publications including The Berkeley Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Joe Soap’s Canoe, Oxford Magazine, The Plastic Tower, Onthebus, Pulpsmith, Gandhabba, and many times in The Wormwood Review, including a Feature Section. He has also published articles in The Christian Century, James Joyce Quarterly, College English. He started two literary magazines, Lunch, at Fairleigh Dickinson, Rutherford, in the seventies, and currently The Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow. Blue Chevies, his first book, came out in September, 2008, and To Eat Is Human Digest Divine in 2009. Trinis Talk Like the Birds, a chapbook, is on the online magazine Muse-Pie this month and be available in hard copy soon. He has been leading a workshop of Red Wheelbarrow poets in Rutherford for the past six years. He edits The Red Wheelbarrow literary magazine. He reads regularly at The Williams Center and Gaineville Café in Rutherford.
