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CROSS-COUNTRY SKIING
In fatigue, the
body, disguised by disappointment,
Speaks what once spoken still remains true:
Like the woman asleep beside you,
A rolling horizon
Across
The sweeping valley
Of white sheets, magnetic fields
At the geographic center of motion
Sloping the landscape to the flash of northern lights.
The sky cleaves the mountains where the coyotes range;
Daydreaming about her breasts, I near
Until, unknown, the night
Has crept up behind,
As if
To strike, or to stalk
Or to covet, and all goes dark
Over the white distances; the slender
Skis glide, one, then the other, always forward.
Asleep against her, who would not dream of the plains
Between, cold, open distances,
Regrettable, forgivable.
Two continents
Adrift,
Receding West
And North respectively,
The rift between us, an angle done,
A mode of pleasure: breath, snow, and night.
Copyright
© David Koehn
First published in Alaska Quarterly Review
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David’s poetry has been published, or is forthcoming in, a wide range of journals including The Bitter Oleander, Chain, Diner, Artful Dodge, Painted Bride, Poems and Plays, Permafrost, Aethlon, Calapooya, Birmingham Poetry Review, Wisconsin Review, West Wind Review, Southern Indiana Review, Confluence, Oxford Magazine, Whiskey Island, Snake Nation, Cutbank, Apalachee Quarterly, New Millennium Writings, Euphony, Waterways, and Alaska Quarterly. Online David’s work has appeared in (or is forthcoming in) a wide range of locations including McSweeney’s, Three Candles, Paumanok Review, Blue Fifth Review, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, Maverick, Poetry Midwest, Pedestal, and Diagram. Also, David won the Midnight Sun Chapbook Contest, held by Permafrost of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. David has an MFA from the University of Florida, a BA in Professional and Creative Writing from Carnegie Mellon, an M.Ed (equiv.) from the University of Alaska, and was a Breadloaf Rural Teacher Fellow at Middlebury Breadloaf School of English.
email: David Koehn
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| This site designed and composed by Diane Kirsten Martin. Technical and graphics assistance from Nathaniel Martin. Copyright © 2005 Diane K. Martin. All poems the properties of the original authors. Blackbird graphic scanned from a woodcut by Thomas Bewick (1752-1828), source: 1800 Woodcuts by Thomas Bewick and his School, Dover Publications, Inc. This site last updated: August 13, 2005 |
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