Jean Donnelly   from ANTHEM villainous handkerchief of coastline & crabtraps buckled with miles of lilies & lost socks in Delaware Leslie turns the music up how does one country prepare for invasion or strap a border with an angry smell pieces of the moment stay to gender perception & nourish the air with authorship for the dead ****** Montana predicts the height of chairs & the sunflower genus lodged in a gritty window postcard bottom filled creek of usual farewells merchants say good-bye too their burden of witness is collaboration an air of darning houses kid engines a metaphysical flag it pulls & whittles my starry pledge outside the trees are empty ******       most children enjoy the sound of their own voice let's go look at something & talk about it the Indiana skyline for example its brave 400 year old tree a tin of tobacco (we weren't meant to move our bodies faster than they can carry our souls so they arrive a bit later which explains the sense of delay & growing accustomed to foreign places) children are also kind kindly for real reasons of kindliness which throws us a bit when we expect them to share ***** how do I look beside madness a bit lemony & all cluttered to pledge is not a sound to follow a flag a long pause in the photograph Iowa's industries in birth & death choosing the perfect awning to part in a mother's body extends a civic frontier a banner calling me to kneel ***** nothing magnificent translates dissatisfaction seagulls on the soccer field woman shot in back of head rabbit hutches trash compactors giant pecan trees all populate the fondly local while commentary demands a face a bewildered aesthetic figure loose at the landscape Missouri's quick glow of sorrow anything mouthed or mentioned with gentleness ***** that we have nothing bare means we are restless the mind is a fist in repose a pebble slipped from a lemon the next morning he appears sad in blue pants in Massachusetts he says the ancient future rags on him not one thing makes me quicker but you ***** West Virginia I hear you I can't stop hearing you selecting fragments of everything every past the eloquent senator the shape of a boy's eyebrow people who die or live & rock in the mystery of separation language the next spiritual plane in which the poem rages because Ted & Jack & Gertrude are dancing in it with friendly partners & children of course the children Jean Donnelly studied poetry at the creative writing program at George Mason University, where she co-founded the journal So To Speak: A Feminist Journal of Language & Art. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, among them Big Allis, Fence, The Germ, Lingo, Situation, and Volt. A chapbook, the julia set, was published in 1995 by Edge Books. Her first full-length collection, Anthem, was selected by Charles Bernstein for the 2000 National Poetry Award Series and has just been published by Sun & Moon Press. She has co-curated the In Your Ear reading series at the District of Columbia Arts Center and has taught poetry at Georgetown University in the District of Columbia where she lives with her husband, Arthur Linde, and sons Alex, Jack, and Naish. Published in Volume 3, Number 1, Winter 2002.