M A R G I E  The American Journal of Poetry     www.margiereview.com

Published Annually in the Fall                                     MARGIE  P. O. BOX 250, CHESTERFIELD, MO 63006-0250

Girl working her footsteps down into snowcrust,

Flat black back dissolving in snowmist & fog,

Now comes her brother walking behind her, walking

Sweetly, directly in her footsteps, as if he were

Being careful not to disturb her, as if she might

Be one thing all to herself, on her own workshift,

And he didn’t want to change anything, nothing at

All.  He had something big to say, said it,

Said it, and had nothing more to say, he found

Some stairs, a fire and a funny story, he found

Some sheep, a sleeping donkey & some funky angels

Sleeping in a pasture, he found a splinter,

Found a note he’d been looking for, found more

Room somewhere there was no room before, found

A short yellow pencil with toothmarks in it,

Some dirt on the knees of his jeans, found

Himself waiting and waiting and he found that

Fine by him, no where to go, to have to be,

And afterwards he found himself at home,

And soon enough he put on his coat to leave again,

He walked through a cloud to get to where his sister

Was, she was breaking a stick of chalk into small

Bitesize pieces, his mouth was dry, her eyes were bronze

Tablets into which fabulous secrets had been burned.

DARA WIER's Voyages in English appeared last year from Carnegie-Mellon University Press.  Her newest book is Hat on a Pond (Verse Press, 2002).  Recently her work has been awarded a Massachusetts Cultural Council fellowship and the Jerome J. Shestack Poetry Prize from American Poetry Review.  She lives in Amherst where she teaches in the program for poets and writers at the University of Massachusetts.