for Jim Harrison<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
1.\tThe Naming<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
We don\u2019t know what they call each other
\nor even how they communicate. Their tongue
\nmight lie in the cycle-sound crickets call
\nor the rise and fall white noise of tides.
\nThey may say nothing, only exchange
\nsad glances at our stumblings. Somewhere
\ntrout bend like commas in the silent
\nmobility of water, bass nibble around
\nthe drowned trunk of trees. In corridors
\nshaped from marble, behind doors
\nso thick they took two men to carry,
\nhidden ritual goes on, syllables
\nwhispered in dead grammars and incense,
\neach devotee ushered to the center
\nof the room where they must say a name
\nand be given one. One name will be
\ninscribed in a book sealed to mortals
\nwho believe in nothing but change,
\nthe chaos of shifting verb tenses,
\nof marriages wrenched asunder,
\nthe screaming chaos of a future
\nscreaming toward us, filling our mouths
\nwith words remembered from the days
\nwe carved them into altars once stained
\nwith the blood of what we sacrificed.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
2.\tThe Little Gods of Hunger<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Some lives are insatiable,
\nalways ready for the next feeding,
\nthe next obstacle to consume,
\nsmall motors leaking oil
\nas they bark through all
\nbefore them. Bare limbs,
\nmud-crusted stones, the richest beef
\nall ground up and swallowed.
\nThis is the first and last story
\nwe know. The first hunger is
\nthe one the body works to feed
\nall its lives. And cactus spines,
\ngrapefruit skins, cold pizza all
\nare fair game. We should learn
\nfrom these little deities how
\nto consume so thoroughly,
\nbut mortal and forever fussy,
\nwe refuse this bean, that brand
\nof seasoning, but the softening
\ntissues of food a step beyond
\nits prime can still feed us,
\nno matter how imperfect the food.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
3.\tThe Small Gods of Poetry<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It\u2019s silence most of the time, back here
\nby the rainbarrels, where the leaves
\nof last winter drift pile in drifts around
\nthe rainbarrel, thick enough to keep
\nthe ground damp, where a seed small
\nand hearty, might take hold
\nand struggle upward. There are places
\nstillness beckons language,
\nthough words, like fish, rarely come
\nwhen summoned. You can soak back here
\nin shadows, dream your way
\ninside the house, the kitchen filling
\nwith dusk light, the porch sprawled
\nin day\u2019s last full glare. Just before<\/p>\n
your eyes close, there will be motion
\nat the treeline where waking
\nand dreamlife blend. Then words might
\npad forth, trackless, low-shouldered
\npredatory as wolves. They circle
\nhouses whose windows are lit,
\nlooking for the dark ones where
\nthey might slide through the gates
\nof sleep and find their own way.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n\n\n
Al Maginnes has published four chapbooks and nine full length collections of poetry, most recently The Beasts That Vanish (<\/em>Blue Horse Press, 2021). Recent poems appear in Lake Effect, MacGuffin, Inflectionist Review, American Journal of Poetry<\/em> and many others. I live in Raleigh NC and teach at Louisburg College in Louisburg NC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" for Jim Harrison 1. The Naming We don\u2019t know what they call each other or even how they communicate. Their tongue might lie in the cycle-sound crickets call or the rise and fall white noise of tides. They may say nothing, only exchange sad glances at our stumblings. Somewhere trout bend like commas [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13113,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12953"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13218,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12953\/revisions\/13218"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}