Text Box: Issue 12: Fall 2007 Text Box: associate editor: michelle cronk editor and publisher: rick stansberger

Some folks like to tout our “four gentle seasons,” but really we have eight gentle seasons: the usual four and then Wind, Dust, Fire, and Monsoon.

 

“Hey! That doesn’t sound gentle!” you might say. 

 

But au contraire, ma petite chou —

· the wind is no Hurricane Katrina (& we never have tornadoes);

· the dust is no Iraqi simoom, and merely causes scratchy eyes and some bumper thumpers;

· the fire eats trees and waters eyes, but it actually smells incense-like from a distance, and no houses get killed in the making of the season; 

· and though the monsoon floods out streets and brings in some federal aid, most folks are glad for the light show, the rainbows and the rain.

 

And the more colorful seasons are short and sporadic.  Sometimes we have no fire or dust at all.

 

Writers published here are, or have been — residents of anywhere around Grant County, New Mexico. Authors retain all rights. This is a labor of love: nobody gets paid.

 

If you would like to appear on this site, send an email to rickstan@zianet.com

Rick  Stansberger
Text Box: Featured Poet Bill Toth Text Box: Along New Mexico Highway 180 Seventeen miles north of Silver City I notice the four-winged feathered tangle in the power lines, grotesque, suspended by wires. I pull over, stop, turn off the engine, and get out. Up there, two red-tailed hawks, large males, Twirl in the early evening breeze Talons still clinched. In death, one bird. How do I explain Two hawks held by the wires, Twenty feet above the pavement, at mile marker 95? How would anyone? How would you? Maybe this way. Higher and earlier, The two met in a collision of desires, A puff of loosened secondaries and excrement. And a signal clearer than any human language: This is mine! The claws interlock, hold fast, And then without compromise, A single unyielding descent, Through sky too blue to save them Towards the cottonwoods, Yuccas, and bear grass, along Mangas Springs, And the power lines. This is how it must have been With no loser that afternoon, In this small pocket of Western sky. Before the surge of voltage ended the fall and froze them. A blinding nano-second of blossom, whose fiery petals unfold to reveal no fragrance. Farther down the road, At the same instant the hawks strike the lines: A ranch house. Inside, the lighted TV screen flickers momentarily, Struggles to stabilize itself, then resumes—missing the point, Missing everything. What can I do? I climb back in my truck and drive Toward the Gila River, Toward a sunset burning the sky orange. At a curve, I brake slightly, Looking at what could be that ranch house. Behind me the darkening sky is still And almost empty. Leaving the hawks for others, I think of the point I may have missed at mile marker 95 And what dark possibilities. Bill D. Toth Western New Mexico University This poem and “On L.S. Mesa” first appeared in ISLE 11.2 (2004): 250-125. On L.S. Mesa In the headlights the eyes are luminescent --five or six does and two bucks in near darkness. The does browse contentedly while the bucks, circling each other, prepare to fight. I stop the truck, shut off the engine, and wait. But you can’t really call this a fight. There is no anger here. They approach each other tentatively --like farm boys at a dance when there’s just one girl left not dancing and one boy too many. They move in closer and interlock antlers so delicately you’d think they are made of clay, or like a kid’s church house made of brittle bone fingers. Once the antlers lock, each pushes steadily against the other, neither giving much ground, their necks engorged and rigid. On this cool November evening the does seem oblivious to most of this. They munch the dried grama grasses plentiful and protein-rich while their ova wait in warm silence. On this cool November evening they will not lose. Finally the younger of the two bucks is forced backward fifteen, maybe twenty, feet, and just like that it’s over. They disentangle and he moves to the edge of the circle, biding his time until next year. I re-start the diesel engine. The deer stop and look, mute and motionless as lawn ornaments. In the half-light of evening, I take one last look: They’re all still there, waiting for me to move on before resuming deer reality. Beneath sleek hides, muscles twitch. Semen ready, ova ready. Waiting. Bill Toth Western New Mexico University The Secret Life of a Freshman Point Guard (for Jessica Levan) In freshman English she seems so sluggish, trying her best to stay awake, resisting the lure of mid-lecture nap and dreams in which she always nails the game-wining three with no time on the clock. Occasionally, though, the kid fails, nods off briefly, her head heavy as a medicine ball, and then wakes with startled eyes wide only to doze off once more, --the ball rimming out. That same night, on the court, This sluggishness is gone. Against a taller opponent her defense is hard-edged, tenacious, yielding almost nothing but turn-overs and missed shots. And her transition to offense is seamless. Weaving through defenders, tastefully ignoring the ranting coach who seems to think now is a good time for a time-out, she bounce passes to the small forward, cutting along the wing, who drives inside, then kicks it back out. A good three feet beyond the line, she catches, squares up, lets it go: A three-ball that will make enough difference, arcing upward with a geometry too perfect for formula, hanging in the light like one of her answers . . . For a second I am able to see more clearly. This is her time now, as she watches the slow rotation of the ball, suspended in its certain trajectory, before finding the mute net. And me jumping to my feet pleased she is in my class, so pleased she got enough sleep in English 101 to hit the game-winner. Bill Toth Western New Mexico University Teaching Hawthorne in Silver City, New Mexico, on the Night Mark McGwire Hits # 62 In Silver City New Mexico I look down the long table and note the faces --empty dishes on white linen. The Blithedale Romance, tonight’s topic, advances and retreats timidly like Hollingsworth at a barn dance. Why does Zenobia plunge to her icy fate? How pure is Priscilla, and will she ever give herself to anyone? And Westervelt, that sonofabitch. Meanwhile. The trajectory of the baseball --thread-like and swift-- and the swing of wood, meet in one perfect instant. The kiss of ash and horsehide hopelessly perfect and the ball sent toward the fence in a trajectory too flat to ever reach it. At the long table the faces look up, And Hawthorne pressed harder yields up his only bad pitch --Coverdale’s final admission. Across the distance, in St. Louis, a ball closes the gap between itself and Cooperstown. McGwire returns to first, making sure to firmly connect this time then continuing. I put questions to them again: How reliable is Coverdale’s narration? How evil is Westervelt? Don’t you see? Outside, beyond the dusk and seminar room, life happens, And somewhere near the oblique marriage of the Mississippi and the Missouri a baseball barely clears a left field fence and rolls mutely towards a groundskeeper’s feet. He picks it up. McGwire rounds second and celebrates his way toward third. At 6:40 Hollingsworth’s simple sin is revealed. Chairs push back. Books close. Deaf to the ovation I remind them “Ethan Brand” is on deck. You’d better read him for Thursday. And we file out into twilight to home, the library, to the sober decorum of the Double Eagle Saloon. At last McGwire reaches home plate, crosses its dusty surface, and closes the circle. Unaware of what has just happened, unaware of any of this. This first appeared in Algonquin, Vol 5, (1999-2000): 79-80. Text Box: A thrice-degreed born-again redneck from the Ohio River valley, Bill Toth teaches courses in Western American literature, nature writing, and a lot of other stuff at Western New Mexico University. He lives in a blue house with his wife, son, two dogs, and a delusional cat.

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