Pushcart Nominees

CREDO

I don’t believe in God, but I do

believe in godwits.

How they give up the shore

to stream by hundreds,

to be one feather

on the same fluid body.

How they swing over the water

this way and that,

a loose boom of birds, flare

right or snap left—visible,

golden, invisible, as sun catches

or releases them all—

a semaphore wink from the deck

of the ship

bearing no message but spark.

I believe then, at least,

existence is a marvelous trick

of the light

as the godwits keep flocking

seen, unseen, seen.

Susan Cohen

Berkeley, California

STOP #1: FRANKLIN K. LANE GROVE

The road is 40 miles, then it ends here,

and sloughs us back onto the freeway,

going southward—

south—southward.

But star flower!, trillium!, the heart sings,

remembering their shy ways,

and the blood hums the green

and liquid songs of ferns,

and the skin relishes the cool of the fog,

and the soul breathes

slowly in and out and in

savoring its finite cache

of redwood-flavored air

and the mind, in its pragmatism, steels itself

against homesickness,

placing word next to word,

beginning to consider the poem.

Gillian Wegener

Modesto, California

A portrait of winds (Excerpts)

ii.

Which currents shall I ride towards you?

Hand me a moving map:

water feathers from the equator,

whorls along coastlines.

I will reckon.

I will drift.

I will propel myself.

I will swirl in Coriolis blossoms.

iii.

My breath glances off your ear

and returns to caress the space above my lips.

I could draw you with my eyes closed:

a portrait of winds.

iv.

Excavate. Lay bare

the strata of my history:

the reversal of poles long ago

written in layers of rock,

the slow drift of plates

once solid as pledges of love.

I have as many names as past lovers,

exotic terrain left by collision.

You will find their names written beneath my skin.

h = a/d,

where d is distance,

a, the apparent height of objects,

h, the true height.

When he kissed me daily, I knew him by the bend in his neck.

His silhouette is now the size of my palm.

The distance between us is the ratio: then to now.

I knew his apparition only.

If I had gauged the distance between us,

I would have known who he was.

viii.

No single map can mark

this expanse from me to you.

I can only offer an atlas of charts,

each a modest moment:

this evening I listen to the ring

of your finger on bisque porcelain;

I note the tessellation of cracks

on the earthen surface of your statues.

Above us, the moon continues beyond metaphor.

xii.

Mountain is slow wave;

wave, quickened mountain.

Travel through me.

Bonnie Kwong

Richmond, California

Caitlin roberts: redwing, 1888

He’d read to me long summer afternoons

the poems of William Cullen Bryant, each

strong line like gravity shared by twin moons

held by a single planet. And he’d teach

me symmetry, the way our hands could join

in balanced touch of palm to palm, skin’s heat

a way to meld, connected. Like a coin

with different sides fused at smooth edge to meet,

we found ourselves one being. How to know

why time and luck can bring together two

to love each other through their loving so

another’s words of light and life, one who

appreciated gifts of air and earth,

green seasons singing long before their birth?

Katharyn Howd Machan

Ithaca, New York

UNTITLED

In the same year that

time came to our house

the mapmaker returned

to my dreams and

if I called him

it was in a dark language

of animal faces.

Solitary before

bridges made of

the 4 a.m. rain.

Or in temporary

pairs while light

falls on hollow trees.

We spoke once and I

showed you this despair.

Beneath the surface

fish turned gold in

black water and

swam through

folded paper.

Rachel Blum

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

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