Four new poems by alumna Rose McLarney (poetry, ’10) appear online in Waxwing:

Facing North

How articulate, the eyes

of silent animals when I chose

to shoot the sick goat. All day,

the dogs would not look at me, not

let me touch them, legs folding away from

the level to which I had lowered my hand.

…

Continue reading online. 

 

The Model Walks Aways From A Job

Tonight, when the trainload of coal, trailing ash

from the power plant, passed, I had no mournfulness left

for the suffering caused by the energy my lights

spend. Like the film images of the clouds that form

when the mountains are blown apart — how they pulse,

fill the screen, obscure everything — …

…

Continue reading online. 

 

I Float

When the river flooded, when

I was a child, I boated

around the fields. And so it began,

my myth-making. I recall that altered time

foremost. I float.

 

Transformative washes

over the world — the time of evening when

I can have a drink, being in love,

the lyric way of speaking — that’s what

I’ve turned out to live for.

…

Continue reading online.

 

What Music Should Accompany This

If there was a score to those years,

it was the somber percussion

 

of feed in a bucket, how we would

shake grain to call the cows, chickens,

 

kibble to call the dogs, call voicelessly

whatever would come. We spoke softly.

…

Continue reading online.