The Iowa Review

Parker, Stephen

UPON LEAVING MY TEACHER for Donald Justice 1 The clerks are jealous Over their places. It's Saturday. It's Sunday; they Sit, nevertheless, High upon their stools: White shirts, white faces. The lamps become dull. They are patiently Waiting to copy. Their quills tremble. Each of them stammers, Remembering, with His small conceits, The master's examples. 2 There is upon him The look of a Jew Leaving his ghetto, One of the dark ones. Inevitably Drawing attention At the first corner Perhaps, one whose papers Are not in order? 17 Stephen Parker University of Iowais collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access toThe Iowa Reviewwww.jstor.org®The very papers For which he had so Patientlv waited? And who must wait now, Watching the others As they pass safely. 3 The children appear, The bearded children? So many of us Aloft and drifting Back, on our crisp Little parachutes. How gently we come To the feet of The one who summons us. We choose up sides. One by one we're chosen. The evening rises Out of the grass, slowly. It's dark, there's no one Calling us home. 4 Our wives grow uneasy. They gather the lengths Of our empty silence. 18 Stephen Parker What can we say, Now that we do not Know what to think? We meet in hotels. We meet like the sons Of two marriages Upon the father's Death?distant, oddly Repeating ourselves : Who will abuse us With the precision Of self-abuse? 19 Stephen Parker 

English

Upon Leaving My Teacher

Nolledo, Wilfrido D.

Encantada

Snyder, Gary

Willow the pussy of the pussy-willow unfolds into fuzz on the leaf. blonde glow on a cheek; willow pussy hair. Civilization Those are the people who do complicated things. they'll grab us by the thousands and put us to work. World's going to hell, with all these villages and trails. Wild duck flocks aren't what they used to be. Aurochs grow rare. Fetch me my feathers and amber 91 Criticism University of Iowais collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access toThe Iowa Reviewwww.jstor.org®

Willow

Gary Snyder The Good Earth The empty shell of a snail By a dry log. Warm grass seeds in an old cookpot playing, we were starving, Playing "The Good Earth" Why I Laugh when Kai Cries Nothing's to blame: daily hunger, baby rage? the Buddha's Lion Roar and hymns of praise. Belly and nerves, floating gathering mind feel pain and wail, he's getting fat I have to laugh at that 90 University of Iowais collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access toThe Iowa Reviewwww.jstor.org®

Why I Laugh When Kai Cries

Hanson, Kenneth O.

IN THIS SQUARE ROOM I listen to a round rain falling on the anarchic trees. A car or two is stitching its mechanical progress up the hill. The wheels sound like zippers being opened. Athens I hear has put up a papier mach? figure of a discus thrower in Syntagma Square assembled slowly from the ground floor up? the thighs, the crotch a flying penis pointing toward American Express and there it stayed three days exciting tourists to photography Greek women to their private jokes and men to say it's time they put a prick on a pedestal in Constitution Square three days and then the project was complete the head the torso and the disc the whole thing painted bronze three other copies in the squares in town? and slowly slowly rain came down. The orange trees in Athens bore their fruit. The windblown flowers in my yard hang on. The slow cars zipper up the street. September 5, winter began. 9 Kenneth O. Hanson University of Iowais collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access toThe Iowa Reviewwww.jstor.org®

In This Square Room

Berg, Stephen

GOOD It's a little thing, the word my wife says to me unexpectedly in the middle of a page I'm reading, but it opens a door I can t see, don't want to see, and I turn both eyes in its direction where a light swells, where I thought nobody lived anymore. Remember that spot on the beach in Margate where there were no people? well, one morning while you and the kids were asleep I went there. Thousands of miniature crab shells washed up in a border of foam just above the water, cigarettes too. I heard the waves hiss as if I had forgotten how they sounded, and I thought it's because the sun fell into the ocean. It was my daughters running down the beach, screaming "Daddy!", waves collapsing against the jetty, the word finding its home in the third body of my mind. Like whose mouth on my mouth at the beginning of death? The light has grown over us and covers us and, I don't know, maybe we'll never understand "the foot says because I am not the hand, the ear says because I am not the eye" 4 Stephen Berg University of Iowais collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access toThe Iowa Reviewwww.jstor.org®

Good

Browne, Michael Dennis

HIGH LEVEL I looked through her violin, it was the microscope she played at her shoulder; through it I saw a map of the floor of the Indian Ocean where music crawled in fixed ranges, pods of rock, stems of the continents; all the world was her instrument, & through it I saw the blackness outside, all the blackness her instrument, the tower, the microscope. It froze at her shoulder. Or, if you want, it was burning. THE PEACH TERRACE for George & Amy The bishop has narrowly escaped the hands of George's trees again. How his mitre glitters with paranoia! To sit beneath this tree is an act of God, like a blue peach kneeling, to pray in this sunlight, a log in her harness of wine. My neighbors are knitting small wools of rumors all around me. To sit on this terrace is to be a shepherd, bruising no one. From here, my blessing to the world & urban areas, from here my sticky little thoughts take off, each like a hairbrush with a mission to comb the storms of God. On this terrace I write my decree for George. If only he would swoop to the rail for a minute, relinquishing Amy, I could throw the crumbs of appointment at him from deep in the valley of the white & invaluable white glove. 10 Michael Dennis Browne University of Iowais collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access toThe Iowa Reviewwww.jstor.org®

The Peach Terrace

Rutsala, Vern

BEING AWAY Changed by distance the shapes of old friends appear? rectangular, stamped with wavy kisses, ghost-money brought by the man in gray. They haunt, they call me back with words like tiny hooks. Each phrase is the noose that waits at the end of a leash, I am tripped and snared by the loops of g's and y's. It makes no difference. I am here. Away. Forgetting those faces. Spending whole evenings erasing a nose or a chin, moving my mind back and forth slowly with the care of a forger until nothing is left but a blur, thumbprints where their faces were. This is best. The fine art of forgetfulness is best to drift without memory through a deep winter lonely as a man in a coma, free as a sleeping bear, or at most writing myself, saying: Keep in touch. The above address is unknown. It is hopeless to try to reach me. There is no good news. 8 Vern Rutsala University of Iowais collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access toThe Iowa Reviewwww.jstor.org®

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