The Laurel Review 42.2

The Laurel Review
Summer 2008
Is Very Late
But It’s Available!


Diana Adams / Sally Ball / Erin M. Bertram / Mark Bibbins / Mary Biddinger / Jaswinder Bolina / Laynie Browne / Paula Cisewski / Cynthia Cruz / Brett DeFries / Wayne Dodd / Dobby Gibson / Albert Goldbarth / Jennifer Gravley / Leilani R. Hall / Rebecca Keith / David Dodd Lee / Heller Levinson / Lisa Lewis / Tim Lilburn / Kristi Maxwell / Michael Mclane/ Rusty Morrison / TaraShea Nesbit / Caitlin Newcomer / Eric Pankey / Ethan Paquin /Chad Parmenter/ Allan Peterson / Stephany Prodromides / Kevin Rabas / Brad Richard / Henry Ronan-Daniell / Zachary Schomburg / Lisa Sewell / Glenn Shaheen / Kent Shaw / Will Smiley / Maggie Smith / Sally Smits / Katherine Soniat / Gene Tanta / Bronwen Tate / Catherine Taylor / Dannyka Taylor / Craig Morgan Teicher / Lawrence L. White / Tyrone Williams / Sam Witt / Andrew Zawacki

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The Winter 2009 Issue is at the printer right now.
It will be available for AWP.
(More on that next week.)

Rusty Morrison
An Intersection Of Leaves Not Likeness



No corrections can be further sketched, the sapling is already antiqued by sunset’s shadow.

Only the stain of perspective left after nightfall.

Heard the earth inventing gravel.

Never turn your back.

Tonight’s full moon pulls a scythe of light across the grassy field.

Wind, shaking the heads of ragweed, asks for no assent.

I wanted winter to tell me which of its watchings was celibate. Its answer surrounded me
like a globe.

Today, sky alliterates with a sculpted smoothness. Tomorrow, the scraped
rind of oranges.

See morning sometimes disperse rather than condense the shape of things attempting
to reconstitute from darkness.

Catch a certain thinness to the air that brings out its best features.



An Intersection Of Leaves Not Likeness


Shadows, moving across grass, never touch the clouds that make them.

A little damage on both sides of the thought, when a thought is the gathering force.

The dead make thin every surface where I listen for them. Today, the white skin of birch.

To mistake pine cones for beaks and watch each open and caw.

Bright stone after stone on the gravel path. Calamitous collecting, then only clamorous.

Leaned back against pine, as if to brace and then branch. Leafed shut my eyes.

Atmosphere assessed me accurately as yet un-released from my useless acts.

Brazenly I grasp branch after branch, hoping any part of the inevitable might rub off.

The jay lands, cocks his head and stares, louder than any squawk or squall.



An Intersection Of Leaves Not Likeness



Elegantly bare shoulder of pear-colored cloud.

Rocks I pick up to toss into tall grass are already weightless with classical rendering.

The fog filled with a choir-box emptiness.

To walk lighter between the intervals of mortality and keep each step utterly convinced,
convincing.

On the back of late day, a clabbered shine. I am thick with fussiness, my wasted luck.

Narrative established in each chance attitude of grass. The view was not good, but flecked,
and already redundant of background value.

Walked off the first skin. Its search for the scale of common tree and tried-for silence.

Itchy, the palm picking up each stone.

Not too proud to call it tiresome, this inescapable setting of goals.