From WTP Vol. VI #7

Drang Valley 1965
By Carl Boon

As the world begins to break in three—
three hawks fleeing, three sailboats
in different and uncompromising winds—
I see myself as stone and blood again.
I touch my sunburned throat, I say to her
who cannot listen, there is, after all,
no God inside of chaos and nothing
on these hillsides worth firing upon.
The phosphorescent flecks we watch
at night disappear at dawn. Their helmets
must be fashioned from the earth itself.
How would she know in sad but still
Nebraska the fervor they are, all movement
without substance, still hopeful
as they die and die? She kneels
to take Communion—I can almost see
the wine inside her lips, reach to hold
St. Christopher on silver she locked
around my throat a century ago.
As she peels potatoes for Thanksgiving,
I command these men afraid to die, and I’m
afraid to die, gazing, trying to decipher
what in other worlds would be a postcard.

Carl Boon lives in Izmir, Turkey, where he teaches courses in American culture and literature at 9 Eylül University. His poems have appeared in many magazines, including Posit, The Maine Review, and Diagram. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Boon recently edited a volume on the sublime in American cultural studies.