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Lucky

I'm late, need to pay, but he's ahead of me,
ordering ice cream for his dog. No chocolate.
The waitress suggests vanilla with just a tiny bit of fudge.
No chocolate, he says again. The exchange goes on like this
for a long time. Finally they settle on strawberry.

Now he wants a coffee, one sugar, no milk so he'll have
something to drink while the dog's eating. The bill
comes to three dollars. He empties a pocket,
gliding quarter after quarter across the counter,
savoring the slow slide of each cool coin.

By now, I'm so late there's no chance I'll get to where
I thought I was supposed to be so I give up and ask
What kind of dog? He takes his time in turning
to answer, Pit bull. A leashless pause.
And part Borzoi. A rescue. Her first trip downtown.

I wanted to get her something special so she'd know
it's safe among strangers. He's in his sixties
and handsome in the way that distant mountains
seem both beautiful and private. Now, late
is starting to feel like right on time. Grateful, I stop

outside to watch him drink, with such pleasure,
hot coffee in ninety degree weather. Gently,
he leans over to steady the paper cup of ice cream
for his dog, Lucky. Her tail's tucked between her legs
and I see in the way she looks up

that in her life before this there was never
the smallest pleasure without punishment.
She's afraid anyone, even the man holding the cup,
might start kicking her again. Except it all
tastes so rich and sweet and cool that she can't help

but give herself to the goodness of it with the almost
unbearable joy the abandoned feel when someone
kind finally turns to them, sees them,
really sees them and says, You. It's you
I have been waiting for all this time.

Mekeel McBride, UNH professor of English, has published five books, most recently The Deepest Part of the River. The recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts grants, she has been a Radcliffe Institute fellow and a MacDowell Colony resident, and has taught at Wheaton, Harvard and Princeton. "Lucky" is from her new book, Dog Star Delicatessen: New and Selected Poems, due out in 2006.

Portal

          In our hallucination, the children are instructed
in the ways of finding shelter
          when the rain of our bombs comes down
on their small villages and schools. The children
          can identify our planes
and what our planes can do to them. They
          sleep the sleep of weary warriors,
beaten down and left for nothing in their lonely deaths
          that come so slowly you would wish your own heart empty of blood.
I watched people gather in the streets
          to stop the war that is the war against ourselves, and against the children
who practice finding our planes before they're touched up
          into dust nobody sees, but that makes a sound like the vanquished.

Bruce Weigl '75 is the author of 12 collections of poetry, most recently The Unraveling Strangeness. He has translated three books of poetry from Vietnamese and Romanian and has edited or co-edited three collections of criticism, most recently Charles Simic: Essays on the Poetry. Weigl's poetry has been translated into nine languages, and his awards include the Pushcart Prize (twice), the Academy of American Poets, Breadloaf and Yaddo Foundation fellowships, and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. In 2003, he chaired the judging panel for the National Book Award in Poetry. "Portal" is from his book, Declension in the Village of Chung Loung (2005).

Rudiments

Thursdays... The sticks wild birds fluttering
over skins they beat life back into,
my father squeezing off buzz rolls rising
into a carol of Zildjians... I remember
my first contact, how the snare snapped off concrete.
Snug in the belly of our home, I learned
the flams and paradiddles, and even
with my reckless ratamacues, his discipline
was quiet and repetitive, the same
as it was that fall when he went cold turkey,
quit the club gigs and went back to night school
to secure his "real" job— the Thursdays
coming and going on into winter, basement
growing cold and damp, the whole house hushed.

James Rioux '92 earned an M.F.A. from Georgia State University, where he received the Gerard Manley Hopkins Award for poetry. His poems and reviews have appeared in many publications. Rioux teaches writing at UNH and lives in Exeter, N.H., with his wife, Amanda. "Rudiments" is from Fistfuls of the Invisible, due out this fall from Penhallow Press.

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