Poetry from The Dominion Review

Looking at Glass
Marjorie Maddox

Walking on Ice, Thinking of Rasputin
S. C. Hahn

Katherine Soniat The Oils of Europe The fish chased Captain Smith, and on her tail was a poison stinger which she stuck an inch and one half into the wrist of his arm. --Dr. Walter Russell, John Smith's Travels and Works The task is always greater than conceived, and so it was as we set sail to perform a discovery--in and out of islands, coves, with a wind so blustery we named one the Isle of Limbo, last howling stop before Hell. When sun rose out of the east's softland, we came to see the natives most respected grazing the water with shot. That and, of course, they loved our prized white beads. These cause the greatest consternation as gold does amongst the Christians. The only glittering I saw was of fish so thick we scooped them up with frying pans, which brings me to that Flapping One who speared my flesh with her great sword tail. Swollen and blue, I commanded my grave be dug, and stood therein, waiting, while the good doctor rubbed me with all the oils of Europe. Greased with such knowledge I came unpuffed, and so dined on "enemy" for supper. But first I gave that fish the honors afforded our dead, naming the land Sting Ray Isle to celebrate another discovery-- this time that I was still most blessedly alive. Marjorie Maddox Looking at Glass Alice had it right. You step in and become not what you are but what you think you want. Snow White, in her clear coffin, was the chic her stepmom hunted in the mirror. Wherever she went, that shadow followed, white as wafers and pure. Beauty is beyond our own beasts but before that are shards of glass where you put your head through or your foot in, slicing heel-toe, heel-toe to fit the slipper. In glass, we all smile cheshire. Which way to go depends on the angle of light and mirror. S. C. Hahn Walking on Ice, Thinking of Rasputin In the parking lot's sheet of ice gray as a winter Russian lake a bubble of air is trapped, an icon for each footstep. Rasputin's last pearl of breath glistened within the Neva's crystal setting, lustrous as any stone that cooled the Czarina's breast. After the bullets, the poisoned cakes, they will dump me into the river: the current will fondle my hair. All of the lovers I have used will press their blue hands over my open mouth. The Dominion Review Poetry Page Two