NORTHEAST WINGS

by W.F. Lantry

Small unfamiliar birds with opened wings—

their feathers leaving patterns in the snow

each time they light beside hand scattered seed—

gather just now past dawn along the fence

and in the pine bough drifts, as if to wait

for some break in the lengthening cascades

falling around them everywhere. Now wind

twirls the needles, shakes the laden twigs,

and great clusters of light, in unison,

fall silently to earth. It is a sign

I cannot read or hope to understand

but universal to those sunrise wings.

And each, in harmony, flits to the rail,

then leaps down gently to the crystal drift

where millet, fallen from the feeders, spreads

rough patterns, as bird shadows interweave

bright multicolored leaping mirrored forms

against the silken backdrop of new snow.

W.F. Lantry spent many years gardening in his native San Diego and in the South of France. Currently he lives in the frozen North of DC. He has two full-length collections: The Structure of Desire (Little Red Tree), winner of a 2013 Nautilus Award, and The Terraced Mountain (Little Red Tree). Honors include: The National Hackney Literary Award, Lindberg Foundation International Poetry for Peace Prize (Israel), CutBank Patricia Goedicke Prize, Crucible Editors' Prize, Old Red Kimono Paris Lake Poetry Prize, and Potomac Review Prize. He is the editor of Peacock Journal. 

KHALED AL-ASSAD

by W.F. Lantry

Photo: Khaled al-Asaad in 2002. Marc DEVILLE / Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images via NBC News. 

Small birds, protected, flutter ceaselessly
in trees behind our house. Even the deer
serenely ravage gardens as they feed,
browsing their peaceful way from yard to yard.
Kingdom of thunderstorm and thistleseed,
each day leads to another without fear:
no rifle shots resound from our far shore.

But somewhere in a desert there were more
unjustified mortalities today.
Each life’s worth every other, but one man,
devoted, spent his days among the scarred
Palmyran ruins. He opposed a plan
to steal every relic, would not say
where what he’d found was hidden. After prayer

they hung his body in the central square.
As warning? Advertisement? To recruit
new followers? I hesitate to guess.
That mountainside is littered with the charred
relics of warfare: columns, motionless,
have seen such things for centuries, the fruit
of ruthless battles pursued endlessly.


W.F. Lantry’s poetry collections are The Structure of Desire (Little Red Tree 2012), winner of a 2013 Nautilus Award in Poetry, The Language of Birds (Finishing Line 2011), and a forthcoming collection The Book of Maps. Honors include the National Hackney Literary Award in Poetry, CutBank Patricia Goedicke Prize, Crucible Editors' Poetry Prize, Lindberg Foundation International Poetry for Peace Prize (Israel), and the Potomac Review and LaNelle Daniel Prizes. His work has appeared in Asian Cha, Gulf Coast and Valparaiso Poetry Review. He currently works in Washington, DC and is an associate fiction editor at JMWW.

IMPRESSION

by W.F. Lantry

Our marbled cherry trees have lost their leaves.

It’s not yet solstice. Birds are gathering

in hidden trees along the riverside.

I listen to them from the forest’s edge

and mark the dew on willows, heavy pods

of wisteria, weighing down each separate vine,

disordered grass stems tangling Mary’s feet.

We’ve each spent lifetimes learning all these signs:

our Fall is coming, even though the days

seem long enough to finish everything.

I take on so little. I take on far too much:

the red clay pond, half dug and filled with rain

beckons. It’s pleasant work, but other tasks

with other frames conspire. Is there time?

And yesterday, at dusk, we crossed a field.

I offered her my shirt against the cold

and noticed how the hawks have disappeared

replaced by owls and foxes, how the deer

made bold by wind, invade, how sedum change

from white to rose. Some moving into red

presage feathered designs of ice-framed ponds.

W.F. Lantry’s poetry collections are The Structure of Desire (Little Red Tree 2012), winner of a 2013 Nautilus Award in Poetry, The Language of Birds(Finishing Line 2011), and a forthcoming collection The Book of Maps. Honors include the National Hackney Literary Award in Poetry, CutBank Patricia Goedicke Prize, Crucible Editors' Poetry Prize, Lindberg Foundation International Poetry for Peace Prize (Israel), and the Potomac Review and LaNelle Daniel Prizes. His work has appeared in Atlanta Review, Asian Cha and Aesthetica. He works in Washington, DC and is an associate fiction editor at JMWW.