Steven Winn




Tomb Relief
    Egyptian, Dynasty 25-26

The haunch of beef he’s shouldered
Is the size of a scythe, its handle
Tapered to a knife-point hoof.
Close behind a second servant bears
A tray of twenty leavened loaves
Balanced in a wobbly pyramid.

Each man also holds a duck,
One cradled in the hand from back
To keel, the other gripped so firmly
By the neck the wings expand
And tail flares out, each incised
Feather a last wish for flight.

How grand a feast was this to be,
What jars and unguents, other lavishments
In store for Mentuemhat’s long night?
No clue from these servants’ stony eyes.
And anyway, as stories sometimes do,
This one shears off just beyond the haunch.


Bubbles

They’re down the left field line blowing bubbles,
tearing after them, under them as they rise
like aimless high fly balls toward an empty
center field.  No league game today, again.
A sprinkler set near second base hiss-thocks
a silver arc across the infield grass,
greening it for whenever games resume,
the men in numbered uniforms in place  
across the diamond.  So for now they’re free,
these children chasing bubbles in the park,
the careful breaths they’ve caught and sent adrift
to glint and shimmer in the sun-glazed sky,
free to track them as they go, the frantic
thrill they feel at what they’ve lost for good.



Steven Winn is a San Francisco arts critic and former Wallace Stegner Fellow. His poetry has appeared in 32 Poems, Antioch Review, Cimarron Review, Nimrod, Poet Lore, Poetry Daily, Prairie Schooner, Southern Poetry Review, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. His memoir, Come Back, Como (Harper), has been translated into nine languages.









                                    

 

Home
Current Issue
Submissions
Contributors' Notes


Email this poem Printer friendly page

A CLOSER LOOK: Louis Jenkins

John Barr

Bruce Bennett

Jane Blanchard

Lucia Cherciu

Robert Claps

Don Colburn

Geraldine Connolly

Barbara Lydecker Crane

John Delaney

Peter Grandbois

Edison Jennings

Mary Ann Larkin

Daniel Lusk

Dave Malone

Laura Manuelidis

Ethna McKiernan

Dan Memmolo

Roger Mitchell

Paul Nelson

Richard Newman

Jean Nordhaus

Jennifer O’Riordan

Barbara Orton

Beth Paulson

Patric Pepper

Roger Pfingston

Michele Rappoport

John L. Stanizzi

Steven Winn

Rosemary Winslow

Richard Lee Zuras



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       

 

 

 

 

 


Last Updated: Mar 10, 2021 - 2:35:35 PM

Copyright 2005 - 2021 Cook Communication.