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Maureen Alsop and Joshua Gottlieb-Miller :: Four poems


Trinity River

Dear birds building a nest in the dry river,
are you expecting to rise up from water surge,
from lying by unseen fence and wire
as the dam mists up with a heavy horn

in a deep bleat. Under hummingbird heart 
remember an irredeemable dream,
wine’s multiplicity, pale splendor
of snow. Just beyond touch more

letters fold toward the chain-link fence
than your flock. What multiplicity of flight, what unlikely
life you have made for yourself, little bird,
that requires you hide from yourself. 
                        

Trinity River II

It is not symmetry in the glass
membrane between glaze
of silver mica and the low hum
of fire bells, but sun cloud's randomized

movement as the pleasure I get
a delicate swift orange finch setting smolder
a palm tree the top first on the horizon then low
to the ground from my angle

but at a great height from yours, pollen drifts sipped
blanched haze silvered julep
from the babbling tower an oblivious sky
gives chase the sky


Desert cinema

In the Texas of your dreams
(desert air motel, one cactus

plaza, the quarry, helpfully
labeled “quarry” in place

of a town square,
three mile draw)

you drank the worst coffee
you’ve ever had in your life,

the sunrise came over the canyons
behind us, cops waving

at strangers—us—and buzzards
not talking in a bush.

A twine of Texas tanks sprawl through darkness, a river
metes out under the fat moon; I finish
at Midnight Hill, alone in the 5am streets
my sneakers caked in a brawl of mud, sleet, stars,
eternity.  Laughter falls in the May wind
bars closing.  The road remembers
each turn, tastes electric tremble, butterfly
silence growing fire like Hell.

A language for clouds
passing over mountains,

aspen among flowering cacti,
eagle sun-bathing as it flies

the supply trains only in rear-view
trailing behind canyon’s peaks. Dry well.

we couldn’t get the buzzards to circle.
Scorpion in the out-house in the desert.

Coin laundry next to the chamber of commerce.
Just totally over the mountains, bowing

off the back edges. Cut-out looking.
Eagle sun-bathing wings stretched—


Water

The virgin lies down:
changing the direction
of the axis of the morning’s brass river.

Bronze ribs glow.
Sheaves of wheat keep
a virgin pure. Years from now the virgin

will trade places
with another virgin.
Sacrifice means we hide one meaning

behind another
meaning—nothing is
hidden, only it matters less why or

what for. Milk
afternoon, wild tarnish,
heat behind the horizon’s eyes,  sea-

glass green imprint:
that is how a God would
tell her that God sees her. Treating

the symptoms of water
with thirst.



Maureen Alsop, PhD is the author of four poetry collections: Apparition Wren, Mantic, Mirror Inside Coffin, and Later, Knives & Trees. She lives on an island in the Coral Sea.

Joshua Gottlieb-Miller holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Houston, where he has returned to pursue his PhD and currently serves as Gulf Coast's Digital Nonfiction Editor. His poems can be found in Seneca Review, Four Way Review, Pleiades, Indiana Review and elsewhere, and a nonfiction/poetry hybrid can be found at Pacifica Lit Review. Joshua lives in Houston with his wife, Lauren, and son, Owen.

 

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issue twenty-seven :: January/February 2022

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about :: where is the river

where is the river :: a poetry experiment is a bi-monthly poetry journal open to a variety of aesthetics, forms and experiences, with a preference towards showcasing work by emerging writers. There is no single path, nor any single way. Founded in September 2017. Edited by Kiefer JD Logan.