What hid behind the curtains?
In other rooms, we stuttered the blinds.
Sotto voce, we spoke of rugs.
Winter stayed on the windows.
The rain ran away, alone.
The plates a cupboard of ancient relations.
The mirror muttered a river of revision.
The moon told the mirror Wait.
The moon looking like a plate or an uncle.
A week later, a cradle, a canoe.
The house of us afloat, boat rocking.
Dream a line of ants, river of hunger crossing linoleum.
In sleep, the country an oyster full of sand.
The sand in the hourglass a river down.
–Joannie Stangeland
Joannie Stangeland is the author of In Both Hands and Into the Rumored Spring from Ravenna Press, plus three chapbooks. Her poems have also appeared or are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Cimarron Review, The Southern Review, and other journals.
–Art: “Botanical” Construction by Ira Joel Haber
Ira Joel Haber was born and lives in Brooklyn. He is a sculptor, painter, writer, book dealer, photographer and teacher. His work has been seen in numerous group shows both in the USA and Europe and he has had 9 one man shows including several retrospectives of his sculpture.
Copyright 2017, Joannie Stangeland. Copyright 2017, Ira Joel Haber