We are happy to announce our first publication by the Upper New Review – Four Poems by Jim Minick. We believe you will enjoy all four poems, and we would love to know your thoughts.
Table Of Contents
To Spoon
by Jim Minick
To spoon is not to fork— that’s what we do to steaks and roads and manure.
To fork is to pierce, penetrate, puncture. To fork is to split and branch, to pay up and cough out,
but also to tune. We forklift crates. We pitchfork hay. The devil never carries a spoon.
Can you bang forks and get a song?
To spoon is not to knife— that’s what we do too often to bodies and silence.
To knife is to slice, to stab and wound, to skin, filet, and butcher.
To knife is to dam water that once spooned the land.
Can you play knives without getting hurt?
Yet the tool is innocent: a fork feeds or gigs; a spoon ladles soup or cooks H—
and a knife? To scalp and to scalpel both require a sharp blade.
Listen to the drumming of the spoons.
To spoon is to slip into sleep and the same soft, slow breath,
To listen to the rain
with one ear.
Earth Diving
by Jim Minick
Ray needs no goggles, no snorkel, no tank, no wetsuit for his Boxer-Bull, all muscle, all focused self. Besides, the goggles wouldn’t work— the cleft between his eyes that’s like a sliding board for my thumb is too deep for such gear. He swims these woods just fine in his own fierce and goofy way, chasing chipmunks and black bears, following the currents of luxurious smells.
When Ray finds something good like the slimy rot of a dead squirrel, or the fresh green ooze of calf pie, or his favorite—crawdad-inflected, fish-scale glittered, neatly deposited otter shit—he doesn’t roll like most dogs, he dives—head down, shoulder leading, quick, again and again, the only way to rub that odiferous joy into just the right spot— a smear from jowl to ear, from cheek to neck, a perfume no bottle can hold, no towel can wipe away.
And why should my pal Jim be yelling so much? He need not be jealous. I’d gladly share.
Ode to a Basket
by Jim Minick
Two reeds to hold the shape of your hands, two turning to four turning to eight turning to something to hold the loneliness I want to carry away to bury or to burn.
A basket is never empty.
Hunger is another name for basket. To market we journey loaded with expectation, our punnets filled with red of pepper and strawberry, red of Pontiac, red of desire.
A basket is never full.
This summer I cracked a rib, and the basket of my body turned fragile, the contents unsure of its weavers and spokes. To laugh hurt. To breathe hurt. The ache at night for your touch hurt.
If I weave my fingers with yours, we can hold for a little while that loneliness, that hurt.
Hawk Says Finally
by Jim Minick
Once in the gap between hills Hawk hovered against hard blue sky for so long—
no twitch no strain each muscle twining with wind red tail coppering the sun—
the blustering air turned Hawk into a cluster of stars a sudden constellation
outshining Orion and Bear a new god to kneel to in song and prayer.
About Jim Minick
About the POET
Jim Minick
Jim Minick is the author or editor of eight books, including Without Warning: The Tornado of Udall, Kansas (nonfiction), The Intimacy of Spoons (poetry, forthcoming), Fire Is Your Water (novel), and The Blueberry Years: A Memoir of Farm and Family.
His work has appeared in many publications, including the New York Times, Poets & Writers, Oxford American, Orion, Shenandoah, Appalachian Journal, Wind, and The Sun.
He serves as Coeditor of Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel.
Jim’s home watershed (HUC) is South Fork Reed Creek-Reed Creek (050500010903). This means he is a resident creator.
His website is http://www.jim-minick.com
