The Arava Review

A long walk on the way back,
downhill, after the glare of sun and snow
on the top, the heat of the sun
we loved at once and did not fear,
the heat in the chest at noon
in the stark steel blue.
A long walk back after the rest
on the top, where a snow block
crashed from the hut roof at our feet
leaving just a new
silence in the sun’s heat
filled later only by our steps,
precarious on the crests and cracks in the snow of the path
and the stones and sticks and mulch
going downhill, witnessing
unevenness and lastingness
in the earth’s will.

A staggering walk
on the way back downhill,
cheeks still flushed
from the heat of the sun, in the air
that has made us drunk.
Slow steps, imperfect
like the myriads
of jerks and shifts and touches of the days.
The dogs run and play
downhill, part of the scattering
stones and sticks, they let
themselves roll, teeth at one
with any windfall.

And a big sun-bleached stick keeps
falling and rolling on with us,
picked up and grasped by stubborn jaws
as if it wanted to become a token of a sort,
what we in our tiredness happen to gaze at
while it drops at our ankles, or we sense it
tumbling behind our heels, while we walk
on the long threads of land above
the thereafter of the plain,
a sun-bleached stick, honed
by air, saliva and teeth,
with this mouth at our side carrying it-
and a pair of brown eyes
and a wagging tail.

A token of a sort
that will rattle
in the ravines of memory.

Davide Trame

Davide Trame is an Italian teacher of English. He was born and lives in Venice-Italy. He has been writing exclusively in English for twenty years. His poems began appearing in journals since 1999. His poetry collection Re-emerging was published as a downloadable online book by www.gattopublishing.com.

I string barbed wire from post to post
at the edge of pasture,
trapping the wire with steel brackets
against battered cedar. My
cracked hickory-handled hammer
barely stays together through
so many strikes
in the November frost. I spill
my tools onto stunted
foxtails and shards
of sword grass, already
scotched with ice. So heavy,
and cold, they land
without clatter or voice.
Then I curse
and kneel
to gather nails.

Gregory Lawless

Young then, I poured a bottle
of water onto my mother’s grave
thinking she would grow
out of it: death, the ground, her sad
sleep

each year I came
back to the mother-tree

its branches
like chapped hands
holding snow
the crushed leaves

her feet busy
in the dirt writhing
for water

and sometimes I poured
it, sometimes I
did not.

Gregory Lawless

Gregory Lawless is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’Workshop. His work
has appeared in or is forthcoming from Ampersand, Apple Valley Review,
“Best of the Net 2007″, Blood Orange Review, Contrary, The Cortland
Review, Drunken Boat, Front Porch Journal, Gander Press Review,
H_NGM_N, La Petite Zine, Memorious, My Name Is Mud, nth position,
Sonora Review, Stride, and 2River. BlazeVOX will publish his
collection of poems, I Thought I Was New Here, in 2009. He lives in
Waltham, Massachusetts.

bones, the scalpel and the pen.
Each nail, each wrinkle on the knuckled

skin.
Every home
swung onto trees. These are the blind
days of spring, the broken days of leafy
mud and rag.

I am searching for your lips
and the secret tongue
you hide in the pockets of moon.
I have followed you home to a door in this wall.

In an instant you are
gone, sunlight on glossy leaves and then
silence.

Squirrels wrestle in their heavy nests, sky stretches and yawns
and again the earth fools us, somersaulting
out where brushes swish in silent caverns of dream.

Stephen Klepetar

Steve Klepetar, the son of Holocaust survivors, was born in Shanghai and grew up in New York City. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, and currently teaches literature and writing at Saint Cloud State University in Minnesota. His work has received nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.