BY RITA MAE REESE

The word is the making of the world.
Wallace Stevens

It’s a filmstrip afternoon
           and we’re all grateful
to the humming projector
           in the middle of our desks,
the closed blinds, the absence of a real adult.

There’s a vague promise of revelation
           from the title
and the dark, tree-lined streets, the voice
           calling from a house
carrying within it our freedom not to answer.

Inside another house, a little girl in a pretty dress
           is falling asleep
at her father’s desk, turning into
           Alice in Wonderland
as her mind falls down the rabbit holes of grammar.

The Madhatter and Jabberwocky
           tell her to lure
the letters into a trap so they can beat them
           to death with mallets.
We’d like to see that. Without words

no one could tell us what to do.
           We know grammar is just a byproduct,
like schizophrenia, of a brain that grew
           too fast for its own good
and that history is a series of conspiracies

by accidental despots. Mrs. Bradford is
           falling asleep on the …MORE

BY LIZZIE HUTTON

At 28 I saw that my flat flowered ring had cracked.
          At 35: spring’s slaughter house. The old
                    stone house, its wild kept food.

They told me it was made of rose gold, how I liked
          the name. Furred poppy stems and jagged leaves
                    persisting from the white-washed cracks.

That “rose” more real to me than just plain
          gold, although the jewelers told me—
                    weeds, they nodded in their place

Their open-faced red heads—that mine was of a type
          once common, inexpensive. My boy glued there
                    to see the baby pigs released, swell down the hill

To forage on their short blunt freckled legs for fallen nuts.
          A “cigar ring” they called it, made of giant
                    sheets of heated gold.

Even so, the sloping pebbled road was beautiful
          at night. The wallpaper designs were rolled on
                    in repeating frames. I couldn’t tell, though, if

Their squeals were greedy grunts or pained—then
          machine-sliced and cut to size, formed into rings
                    and put to harden—even wondered if it was …MORE