Waking Up

Look if you like, but you will have to leap. – Auden

In waiting there is hope—there is hope,

and dread: both somehow preferable

to certainty, if outwardly appropriate,

that may scathe. You are due your ineffable

deliberation, but I’ll concede

in the flash of my waking (in guilt

you hadn’t let me drive,

                                                you fetched a quilt,

                                                            closed

your eyes—

morning caught us hungover and clothed

though no accountability exists,

no reason to diminish, fear, or forgo

this                        ) I was happy. Yeah, I said so.

-by Jen Coleman

Jen Coleman is from Lynchburg, Virginia, where she dropped out of high school. She received a fellowship from the MFA program at Hollins University. “Waking Up” is featured in the Fall 2011 edition of Jackson Hole Review, www.jhreview.com.

Destiny Is a Red

Light filters through a crystal glass of red

Wine smoky and pure merlot

shines a color down to your very soul.

Heart red sounds a pure note

like a Flugel horn from a deep canyon

quiet, then suddenly full of chesty call.

In these passing storms of love,

one minute drenched, the next thundering dry,

A note echoes—in white porticoes

whose columns frame winsome gestures

of tender touch enfolding a young face

in time’s winnowing hand-held by some design.

In these corridors, where destiny walks naked

for all to see, hang ornate tapestries of time

scriven on by human multitudes unguided

save for some design because destiny dances

to a far off horn, blushing the color of dawn’s

light through a crystal glass of red.

-by Monte Rosen

Monte Rosen is the assistant facilities manager at the Center for the Arts. His poetry has been published in Birdcage Review, Dakota Home Journal, and other publications. He lives in Victor, Idaho.

Kicking Cairns

Nothing recommends this boulder

over the ten thousand others

in the field, except that

someone else, as lost as you,

thought to pile some stones here.

The chaos that confronts you

will evolve into a pattern

that bigger things broke into.

The freedom measured by each fall:

No one knows where you are.

It’s easy to make a statement out of

stones piled up within arm’s reach:

Here I have been; harder to know

which of the piles you come upon

you should kick down.

-by Rick Kempa

Rick Kempa lives in Rock Springs, Wyoming, where he teaches writing and philosophy at Western Wyoming College. “Kicking Cairns” is featured in the Fall 2011 edition of Jackson Hole Review, www.jhreview.com.

The Choice

My body and soul are entwined,

chained unto yours

until the mental sword releases us.

What then…?

Will my heart be finally silenced,

or will it quicken and bloom again?

Is there a spark in these dying embers –

one to allow mending, to reweave the chains,

transforming them into golden threads of an

exquisite tapestry – a design woven to flow

from me to you and back again,

devoid of the strangling tentacles.

The essence of that choice

hangs in the air like smoke from burning incense,

            and yet

I cannot choose, oh God…

            not yet…

-by Claudia Gillette

Claudia Gillette lives in Jackson, Wyoming.

Whole list teabags dance on desks

                            Bones of the dresser sound elegant

ability, drag and sweep stairs. Far farm studio shakes all

different nuts to chew loud pieces.    

Paramedics save energy laughing all over the country. 

Worse than plans in glass “won’t recognize me the street

started fishing well, frozen pond. A long time remembered

emergency room.

Huggy people erase the legs of a chair and all this paper. 

Daughters came in fear of lunch pitied by Geppetto’s

forceful finish. Stealing across the square,

the legs of The Wooden Chair. Fell dogs fuss perfectly mountains of

confetti on the tongue. Bench journals lunch. James Page mittens documentary.

The poor don’t want, are happy only earthlight weaves to the spot,

moves on to the best received innocence written on tables,

enwreathed in ghosts.

I’ll disappear if one were to ask how erasing any awkwardness

candles in the street. Angles bend the line fish a busy room full of

shoes need repair.

Deep peg grocery bags change his sign to closed.

Guests arrive having picked the familiar face  I ‘ m  s u p p o s e d  t o 

think is insistent upon the faith of a trombone someone plays.

In the flash of a cackle, she warns, like me, the morning will capture,

needs to be praised.

-by Hanz Olson

Hanz Olson is currently a writer of poetry living in Casper, Wyoming after finishing school in Laramie. His poems have been selected for publication and appeared in Expression Literary and Arts Magazine, Open Window Literary Magazine, and Haggard and Halloo Publications.