Current Issue About Editorial Note Archives Submitting Links		Featured Poet: Duane Ackerson   A Mirror Is a bank in which we deposit our faces each day.   No matter how much we put in all we get back is change. From author's collection The Bird at the End of the Universe (TM Press; 1997)   Old Movie Blues The Europeans, who only have to visit our dreams, are right: still stalked by Capone men and blood-faced Apaches, we move through a forest of tenements and feathered shadows, and blood is in our blood.   In dark tunnels under the wrist, bulls are waiting at the gates to charge and guns are being cocked. Touching the pulse, we can feel them click inside our veins. Published in Cafe Solo; reprinted in author's collections Old Movie House (Dragonfly Press; 1972), Wounds Filled With Light (Dragonfly Press; 1978), and The Bird at the End of the Universe (TM Press; 1997)   A Murder in Austin, Texas The energetic Indian pushed his wife, his heavy squaw, up into the sky.   He kicked her to death one night. But we didn't see that; we only saw him the day before, smiling and shoving her on a swing, higher and higher till she was gone. Published in Northwest Review; reprinted in author's collection UA Flight to Chicago (The Best Cellar Press; 1971)   What This Country Needs is a Good... A cigar rises from the ash tray, inhales, and exhales a man. Published in author's collection Poems About Hard Times (Dragonfly Press; 1971)   Leaf Skeleton a shipwreck: all the green men swept overboard, drowning in oxygen. Published in Lillabullero; included in author's collection Weathering (West Coast Poetry Review; 1973)   Umbrella I push a button, and this black flower with its warped pistil broods over me, tears dripping from a dozen silver stamens. It catches water, this flower, and sheds it, consents to wilt in a closet like some wrinkled mourner between funerals. Published in Pebble; reprinted in author's collection Weathering (West Coast Poetry Review; 1973) and in Barbara Drake's textbook Writing Poetry (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; 1983)   Weathering You told us about chairs made for out of doors, rough-hewn and left outside so the joints could fill and grow together in the rain. These chairs could last fifty years on the front porch, you said, and fall apart with a year of the parlor.   Watching you at dinner, tan face, knotted arms, your wife pale as fresh cut timber, I could see you knew what sort of carpentry you were. Published in Pebble; reprinted in author's collections UA Flight to Chicago (Best Cellar Press; 1971) and Weathering (West Coast Poetry Review; 1973)   When Daddy Died His spirit went into the television he'd loved so well since the early days of the magic medium. Sometimes, flickering through between commercials at a station break, we'd see a pale face, smiling, a hand holding up a product that hadn't been on the market for twenty years. When we turned the knob, the small speck sinking into the darkness of the screen seemed almost a personal loss. Published in Hanging Loose; included in William Cole anthology Poems One Line & Longer (Grossman; 1973) & in author's collection Poems About Hard Times (Dragonfly Press; 1971)   Regrets The story of Lot's wife is incomplete as she stands.   Turning back, she first turned to tears, then melted down to the less bitter wound that could be plastered over with white.   Time heals all, the soldiers rationalize, closing with salt the green mouths of the spring. Published in the author's collection The Bird at the End of the Universe (TM Press; 1997)   Windows that open like wounds filled with light Published in author's collection Wounds Filled With Light (Dragonfly Press; 1978)   Readers who mention ALBA in ordering can receive The Bird at the End of the Universe (TM Press; 1997), a collection of poems and prose poems by Duane Ackerson and drawings by Cathy Ackerson, at a discounted rate (cover price originally $5.00) of $4.00, inclusive of postage & handling. Make check payable to "Duane Ackerson" at 1850 Corina Dr. SE., Salem, OR. 97302.   Next Poem
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