Cloudbank 12 includes poetry by Kimo Reder, Kirsten Rian, Amy Bracken Sparks, and many others. Book reviews for Lichen Songs: New and Selected Poems by George Venn, OK By Me by Sheila Sanderson, and Physics for Beginners by John Peter Harn are included.
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PRIZE-WINNING POEM
“Migration” by Kirsten Rian
Suppose, then, all the birds in the world line up
and perch along the equator—for luck, for love.
It is spring and migrating patterns confluence
back and forth—give me what I need in the guise
of what I want, call it north, south, be it marriage,
divorce. Yesterday while walking the dog my boy
tells me he still cries alone in his room a lot.
Suppose, then, we wake from hibernation—
for light, for longer days. It is spring and my daughter
mows the lawn with our hand pusher. Later,
she yells at me, I tell her to clean up her mouth,
she emerges from her room 30 minutes later
with silence is everything scrawled up and down
and around her right arm, she walks around the house
with her arm held up like a banner, like a drawn sword,
like an estuary jutting off from the river toward some ocean
I can hear but can’t see. But it’s there,
covering seventy-one percent of my earth, it’s there
pounding my shore, the one she’s headed for
while I wait here for the coroner’s report that will arrive
in week eight and now in week six I’m thinking no one
dies of nothing, no one walks into a hospital and
dies of nothing, do they? Suppose, then, all the birds
of the world line on the wire strung in front of our house
like a forecast, like a sign, like a treaty delivered on wings
through air in place of your apology for leaving us here.
Poets and writers in Cloudbank 12
Jessie Atkin
David Axelrod
Larry Beckett
Michael Bowden
John Brehm
Bill Brown
Margaret Chula
Amy M. Clark
Carrie Conners
Barbara Drake
Meg Files
Tim Gillespie
Dennis Hinrichsen
Andrea Hollander
B. W. Jackson
Richard Jones
Mercedes Lawry
Katharyn Howd Machan
Brad Maxfield
Kevin J. McDaniel
Kathleen McGookey
Karen McPherson
Jeff McRae
D. C. Miller
Robert Morgan
Linnea Nelson
Joel Peckham
David Pratt
Kimo Reder
Kirsten Rian
Dennis Schmitz
L.B. Sedlacek
Amy Bracken Sparks
Matthew J. Spireng
Phillip Sterling
Robert Joe Stout
Patti Sullivan
Anne F. Walker
Marty Walsh
Tom Wayman
Paul Willis
Francine Witte
Donald Wolff