Wild River Review

Wild River Review

WRR 4.4 — 1 AUGUST 2007

MASTHEAD | STORE | SUBMISSIONS | PRESS | MEDIA KIT | LINKS | MISSION | CONTACT

NEW IN WILD RIVER REVIEW

Ice Ages

by Sandra Becker

Any moment the Antarctic Ross ice shelf
can calve an iceberg and melt:
New York gone, Florida,
the whole Atlantic coast.

There are things that take ages
of slow melting to dismantle,
each glacial drop sweats
from its rock-hard mountain of ice.

My father died when I was five
but my dammed grief burst suddenly
upon the white-shirted chest of a stranger
when I was twenty-three.

One casual word, evocative melody,
cinematic scene, enough to nudge
wide open the crack in one’s own grave weight.

How many swelling lakes, how large the quake
to wake a dormant tidal wave? How ready
the two-billion tons to burst that which stands fixed
and frozen in one’s dwindling years?

Sandra Becker

Sandra Becker

Sandra Becker’s chapbook, Foreign Bodies, was published Spring 2004 by Carolina Wren Press. Other poems have been published in the Bucks County Writer, Comstock Review, Concrete Wolf, Flesh & Bone, Freshet, Mad Poets Review, Rexdale Publishing, Schuylkill Valley Journal of the Arts, Out of Line. She was a runner-up in the 2004 Robert Fraser Poetry Contest and recipient of a writing award from the National League of American Pen Women/Simi Valley Branch, placing first in their 2000 Poetry Contest for her poem, “Honor the Stones.”

SANDRA BECKER IN THIS EDITION:
POETRY: Ice Ages

IN POETRY

The Beautiful Girl is Disturbed

The Bhagavad-Gita, Canto 11

Burma and Iraq: For DC Poets Against War

Canticum, Turicum

FIRST BYLINE: Design

A Different Concept

FIRST BYLINE: First Communion

Gaucho (Español)

Great Day in the Cows House

Hamra Night (Red Night — English)

Hamra Night (Red Night — Arabic)

Instant of Turbulence

Kicking the Leaves

Look! This is Love

The Man in the Dead Machine

Map of Remembering

Moon in March with Fieldstone

Mount Kearsarge Shines

Necklace of Silence

Shelled Almonds

Tall Naked Ships in Spike Heels

Three Months After

Untitled Temple Poem

Weeds and Peonies

What She Wanted

Why I Never Came (Apology to My Mother)

COLUMN: Fire and Blood of Poetry