Ann Michael
Alterations
What do you think of pansies deeply blue
that in half-shade take on a violet hue
more suited to the species (viola)
in a white windowbox in rural Iowa
and hybridized within an inch of being
some other plant, entirely out of keeping
with an imagined "heartland"? Look instead
at insurrections genetics has bred
so that the life forms known as "corn" or "cow"
possess altered DNA strands now
and antecedents vanish altogether
as we adapt our produce to the weather
we may have brought, unmeaning, on ourselves:
the drought, the flood. Or, a dry river tells
you how the suburbs crowd the rural spread,
that days of family farms are almost dead,
that ethanol means monoculture, too
(so often it's solutions that we rue).
The highways pulse. And now, the satellites
beam unexpected wavelengths through our nights.
The little violets are wild and tough;
they may prevail--given time enough.
Versus
"The night was soft and persuasive."
--Edith Wharton, House of Mirth
It's easy sometimes to settle, convinced
by all the minor points that drag each hour
through scrutiny; and once we've done the tour
of reasons why our bodies should unclinch,
it's easier still to spurn the rhetoric
and turn to the opposing argument.
A palm against an inner thigh presents
compelling pulse-beats, promises that lick
the prosecution's careful, planned debate:
no contest. Yet it was not hard pursuit
that won this case, nor solid facts relayed,
but soft persuasion, that moist, shadowed mood--
lips opened by quick breaths, night on skin--
in such a court, impossible not to win. |
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| AUTHOR BIO |
| Ann Michael is the writing coordinator at DeSales University of Center Valley, PA, and the author of three chapbooks, most recently The Minor Fauna (Finishing Line). She's also a librettist, essayist and radio commentator. She lives in eastern Pennsylvania surrounded by domestic animals. Her work has appeared in Poem, Runes, 9th Letter, Natural Bridge, Dogwood, Painted Bride Quarterly, ISLE, and many other journals and anthologies.
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| POETRY CONTRIBUTORS |
 Mary Kathryn Arnold
Barbara Crooker
Josephine Jacobsen
Elizabeth M. Johnson
Athena Kildegaard
April Lindner
Ann Michael
Joyce Wilson
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| Meredith Bergmann: My work has always seemed cut out for me. I give myself assignments or I take commissions to find challenges to make heroic work in which the themes must be expressed with beauty and with irony. Light touches on dark subjects help me break away what's monolithic or opaque. No thing, for me, embodies mystery, gives life to clay, or conveys narrative enduringly as can the human form. Loving to sculpt and to manipulate ideas, I'm happiest when I can give new meaning to old urges, or can warm a concept into art that's worth its weight. |
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