Issue 10 – Summer 2006 – Nathan Hauke

Nathan Hauke

 

Deerfield (3)

Turning back to see        a dead birch coupling against the           
thin trunk of a cedar, the cedar straining.  
Crossed by branches, I am constrained to acknowledge large sections of the birch’s paper 
sag loosely around its trunk—a chrysalis, covered    in orange      stretches of light.  
There is, there must be            a higher origin of events than the will 
I call mine.

Rotted branches and wraps of birch skin             litter the wood’s floor, white-gray 
with black flecks—a clear distinction from moss, orange-brown 
dried needles, and brown and gray leaves             that have drifted in from 
neighboring maples.

 

 

 

“Of New Noise and Affection”

                This-that morning stammer—
Jet black, navy and white magpies take flight, thread magnolia 
branches, pushing the courtyard’s shadowy skin                        forward—
building momentum which—even the light, stammering               to hold
“magnolia.” Each impression writes in mind a fleeting                memorial.  True because 
believe it—
that the same yellow-green light colors  the trees—the same material of 
atoms—Noah passes on his way            to school.  My chest, a bottle

emptying into the current.  Magpies opening holes    in the heat—steam 
rising audible, in drifts, semi-transparencies; falling—up—over there
            the singular feather—We are   rushing to meet—failing—
foundling

 

 

Nathan Hauke lives in Salt Lake City where he is enrolled in the MFA program at the University of Utah.  He also has an MA from Central Michigan University.  His poems have appeared in—or are forthcoming from—Colorado ReviewNew American Writing, XANTIPPE,Twenty SixElectronic Poetry Review, Word for / Word, Can We Have Our Ball Back,and The Tiny.  Donald Revell selected his poem “Fear of Falling” as a finalist for Electronic Poetry Review’s Discovery Award (2005).

 

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