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Amaina

by David Wolf

_

the wild dogs of Santiago

the sleeping dogs of Santiago

the Andes disappearing into lavender haze

~

smoke pouring from the palace—
“you and your pisco-washed plowings”

Dreamt an amaranthine bloom adrift—
as autumn’s ore unearths itself once more

A huaso stomp wakes me
from my facsimile of ease—

I was once fierce as
the Valley of the Moon

Now I’m coco loco
trailing the horsefly’s glint, the prawn’s shadow

Call me a taxi
while the lamb trembles beneath the volcano

My old ideas splay, a fern,
a dead fern and

I’ve no ray of ministry
to distress the long queue of grief

Sure, I’ll lead the coalition
of trash

Tip the potter,
don’t tip the potter

In a thin country
wearing your summer fat

dream a razor clam or two
for me

~

Wacky trident of a
lone cactus shooting up
from the sloped vineyard—

“Syrah, Syrah, glamorous nymph with an arrow and bow”

~

Humbolt Air

Noon autumn light
peach-veiling
the village across the bay

and the stilted feet
free to flee to their resurrected cribs
(terror of quicksand glowing through the mesh)

I fill the pitcher I requested from the hotel maid with amused swirls of disappointment

The giant sugared rock in the sea below my window
is not a cream puff—
“that’s seagull shit”
draping it

Night will kill off more castings—

I’ll sleep

till the ocean lines

blue dawn

David Wolf is the author of three collections of poetry: Open Season, The Moment Forever, and Sablier. His work has appeared in The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Hiram Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, Poet & Critic, River Styx Magazine, and numerous other literary magazines and journals. He lives in Des Moines, Iowa, and teaches writing and literature at Simpson College.

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China Man by Henry Tonn

NONFICTION | China Man by Henry Tonn

by Henry F. Tonn

_

Jasmine tea and incense stir the senses in the Chinatown sector of Shanghai—yes, there is such a place—on a clear, fall evening with the many residents milling about, eating, snapping pictures of themselves, talking animatedly to each other, and our group has been instructed not to give money to beggars and aggressive hawkers, an admonition I have dutifully obeyed for three weeks, but now I spy a tiny figure in the swirling crowd, not a beggar, hunch-backed, in a rumpled blue shirt and baggy pants, a woman’s handbag curiously slung over his shoulder, face hideously burned, one eye closed, staring about in wonderment—what is he doing here?—and I work my way through the throng to his side, offer a rolled up American dollar bill—the average Chinese peasant lives on two dollars a day, I have learned—which he takes in a gnarled hand and slowly unrolls, stares at it with perplexity, then lifts his round head with its few remaining tufts of hair and peers at me through the slit of his left eye, placing his hands together in Buddhist prayer, in gratitude, and bows deeply, forever sealing a memory for me to share.

Henry F. Tonn is a semi-retired psychologist whose recent work has appeared in the Front Porch Journal, Weave Magazine, Prick of the Spindle, and NewPages.com.