a November 12 Otherthan Poetry Review The Other Press Page 9 enact Tavern’s Aid Ice creeps into the earth here, though the root’s arch, Splayed in moss so crisP your footprints gasp And lie still behind you. And copper dribbles From the stout forest’s imploding furnace while west Wind heaps up a leaf-hoard for the ice to seal. The tourist daughters have left us and we drink Not less: the waitresses’ tips increase. Trappers In town a last night badmouth the women who know cold, Who were styled ‘‘Cmon Honey,’’ standing in the alley, An hour past. Broken glasses, mud and a wailing band. I am sloughing through yards that fill like bins With the first fixing snow. Moccasin Flats. The natives’ stoves inch out their first teeth of ice. Every year these shacks burn like cardboard boxes. Killings. The mind’s arch s naps under the cabin fever. From hilltop to hilltop noise of traffic carries, But neither trucking nor narrow guage impinge Cacaophony on the frozen vision I am in: River Yukon clicks with ice chips and a moon Whose fragments, flying, remain a pool of blank unrest. A chipmonk scampers up a jackpine in front of me (A shade building its store for the long night), And screams. The guitar picker grins with some teeth. I generate mandala through a red frost as I reach Drawing by Kathy Norrish Down for spilled change on the stickv floor. ‘I have been living and writing in Alberta’s north (& south)for about 5 years. Before then I lived and wrote in B.C.. I find that environment subtly affects form, which means, I guess that I write ‘open verse’ Alex Kazuk Review Editor : Jody Gilbert Reader: Alex Jones SELECTIONS FROM THIS AND FUTURE OTHER THAN POETRY REVIEWS ARE GOING TO BE PUBLISHED -IN BOOK FORM IN JANUARY. Daymoon in a Waving Sky A budless oak pricks up its ears This happens when I’m very upset The northern spring wants me to do some thinking So I look at the drugstore calendar, my my The Older I get the more time I spend indoors I want to sit down and write out my love for you Sometimes I feel I am love’s exile But I could use my brain and incubate perhaps | should Hatch out images, beside themselves, where non- love is Ah, sitting here with such confidence A combine thresher springy on its four tires When I lived in forests forests were three Jewish tailors Now in a city I think about the cohesion of a calf’s afterbirth Because everything slips by in a city a North American City never ages What I need I already have What I don’t need is this poem I don’t want it anyway, humming like the machine I’m using Poem get greasy like country roads in spring Oak, listen to me when I sing about her Poems by Alex Kazuk . Night Piece As Eden rode on a snake Wind blew vanes for the butterfly (When Adam rolled over to Eve Wind fanned her grasp) Wind raps ice-twigs on the glass wind shoves in my backdoor Wind gores the slow body Tosses snake-thin willow leaves Ear rings from wind-hiss Eye blears from its abyss Nose twitches from its smells Mouth howls with its spells Laugh in the evergreen, wind Suck chimney-smoke, wind Twirl storm-cloud, wind *hurl round that white moon Wind, heave want into heaven; Fill my empty head with smoke. Flying outside No time to hitch-hike back, the way I came, Down a highway loudest with flies. No time to finish the cabin, a half-work To be sealed under the palimpest of snows. Out of the wailing, taverns, winds, Out of the clay crucible, flying outside. Abaridoned my tent on the bank, flying outside, My cash of mushrooms and pasta, Nightly mice trying to escape my dream. Alirdoned a mother’s blue grief on the drifts. Whitehorse, a whitewater in my mind, Droning over Atlin Lake, flying outside. My naming birds wheeling, driven Into the mouth of a wine bottle Two Chipewayans shed beneath my tent, Their laughter harsh ululation, their love. Leave them that Mental icon, draped by green water, River-gold in a chest of ice, A wreath of currents of bleek force. No way to a waiting place, flying outside, No way to remember the dream, Fearful, flying, knowing only A planet’s pain.