I C E

From Repair                                             

By  C. K. Williams
                                                                                         

That astonishing thing that happens when you crack a needle-awl into a
             block of ice:
the way a perfect section through it crazes into gleaming fault-lines, frac-
             tures, facets; 
dazzling silvery deltas that that in one too-quick-to-capture instant madly
              complicate the cosmos of its innards.
Radiant now with spines and spikes, aggressive barbs of glittering light, a
               treasure hoard of light,
when you stab it again it comes apart in nearly equal segments, both
               faces grainy, gnawed at, dull.

An icehouse was a dark, low place of raw, unpainted wood,
                always dank and black with melting ice.
There was sawdust and sawdust’s tantalizing, half sweet odor, which, so
                Cold, seemed to pierce directly to the brain.
You’d step onto a low-roofed porch, someone would materialize,
take up great tongs and with precise, placating movements like a lion-
                tamer’s slide an ice-block from its row.
Take the awl yourself now, thrust, and when the block splits again,
                yet again; 
watch it disassemble into smaller fragments, crystal after fusses crystal.
Or if not the puncturing pick, try to make a metaphor, like Kafka’s
                 frozen sea within:
take into your arms the cake of actual ice, make a figure out of its ponderous
                 inertness,
of how its quickly wetting chill against your breast would frighten you
                 and make you let it drop.

 Imagine how even if it shattered and began to liquefy
the hope would still remain that if you quickly gathered up the slithery,
                 perversely skittish chips,
they might be refrozen and the mass reconstituted, with precious little of
                  its brilliance lost,
just this lucent shimmer on the rough, raised grain of water-rotten floor,
                  just this single drop, as sweet and warm as blood, evaporating on your
                                               tongue.    

O R A N G E

By: Shawn Sethi

Inspired by ICE
 

That astonishing thing happens when you dig your fingers into an
             orange:
the way the rough skin begins to grow weak and show the
              spider-web cracks;

shredding the only protection between you and the firm,
               pieces of orange.

As you open up the fruit, the sugary juice flows down you fingers
                and on to the counter,

the fingers dividing segments and separating them from each other,
                 the smooth insides sliding across the table.

I was imagining a large warehouse shining in the Florida sun, in the middle of
                  the orchard groves.

I could smell the orange mist sprayed on all of the crates, so sweet it
                   made you go to sleep dreaming about them.

Standing in the middle of the vast open warehouse, with sun coming
in, filled to the top with crates and boxes of the sweet fruit, is like
                   taking an orange juice shower.

Tearing apart at each little segment with your fingers, to pop them
                    in one at a time;

Crushing the segment to release the juice from inside.
                    So good, that it will make you forget the other pieces in your hand,
                    or not anymore, when the fall to the ground;

the segments of oranges falling to the ground like unusually large raindrops,
                     hitting innocent people on the head.

The pieces bounding off of the heads and umbrellas just to fall
                      even further,

to the ground with a soft and gentle touch to the road or sidewalk.
                       Then violently busting open with juice and pulp everywhere.

Drenching the innocent civilians one by one and covering them with,
                                           orange.

From Repair

By C.K Williams

Even when the rain falls relatively hard,
only one leaf at a time of the little tree                                                       
you planted on the balcony last year,
then another leaf at its time, and one more,
is set trembling by the constant droplet,

But the rain, the clouds flock over the city,
you at the piano inside, you hesitant music,
mingling with the din of the downpour,
the gush of rivulets loosed from the eaves,
the iron railing and flowing gutters,

All of it fuses in me with such intensity,
that I cannot help wondering why my longing
to live forever has so abated that it hardly
comes to me anymore, and never as it did,
as regret from what I might not live to live,

 but rather as a layering of instance like this,
|transient at the mist drawn from the rooftops,
yet emphatic as any note of the nocturne
you practice and the storm faltering, fading
into its own radiant passing, you practice again.    

S N O W F L A K E S                                                                                 

By Shawn Sethi                                     

Inspired by "Droplets"
 

Even when the snow falls relatively hard,
you can still pick out one flake at a time,
landing on the trees like paper-thin slices,
in the soft frozen wind of the afternoon,
dropping like misguided parachutes,

But the snow, the clouds flock over the city,
like puffed up marshmallow birds,
drifting around in the thin white sky,
waiting to bust, like piñatas over a party,
releasing the soft white confetti on the people,

When the people who have always lived with snow,
find the snow littering the ground all over,
it is part of them, and is just there like always,
the snow blanketing everything in sight,
a white sheet placed over the evening cities for decoration,

The people can see that lone piano player at the roof,
on a dark night, playing out the tune in the snowy wind,
his shiny, large, black piano shimmering by the moon,
the big yellowy white ball staring down through the clouds,
at the city blanketed by the flakes of snow.