“Raven was the one who brought light to the darkness”
Miwok Myth
...
</>You turn to meand I stroke your
red, red hair.
Softly I lay your
head on my lap,
...
My mouth is filled
with the taste of rust
and sex. I sweat above her
& a dropp falls
...
Death Listens to Mahler
The night is heavy
Time slips by on muffled hooves
...
Christopher Leibow is a poet, a visual artist and a performer of small slights of hand. He is an MFA graduate of Antioch and has been published in numerous journals and online, including Juked, Interim, and Barrow Street and Cricket Online Review. His art has appeared in Lumina,491 Magazine and has been a featured artist online with Cha: A Journal of Asian Writing and OFZOOs. He is a two time Pushcart Award nominee and a Utah Book Award Nominee and the winner of the Writers@Work Writers Advocate Award in 2008.currently lives in Salt Lake City, with his cat El Guapo.)
Banvard's Folly
'Does anyone still want to go with me into a panorama? '
—Max Brod
The sun floats down river
Resting from a long day.
As Banvard draws love
Birds in the sand.
She tries to explain
How his deformity angers her.
Unable, she leaves him
On the other side of the shore.
Banvard becomes a traveling salesman,
A campfire fiddler,
A drunk, a painter of shores.
Yearning for her—
He turns her into the Mississippi shore.
Riding the long river, floating
On a brush, he paints her portrait.
Huge bolts of love
The canvas sags from longing
Immense wood contraption
(Gears-pulleys crank machinery)
Three miles of canvas.
An uninterrupted portrait.
The papers publish the spectacle
'The hunch back painter and his panorama! '
He builds a wooden stage
Winds up river then down.
The lines are long, (.50 cents.)
They wait for hours...
He sits in the middle
Of hungry brush stroke
Up river
Down. Up river down
Eyes straining—
To find her.
Nominated for a Pushcart Award 2008 Juked.com