Selected Work

          by C. John Graham










          WATERWHEEL


          Whatever is under doesn't mind
          the turning. You might think it terrible
          to be threshed so, pummeled to the point
          of not knowing the difference between yourself
          and water. But silt is silt. Hay is hay. I will show you
          the way the light shines off the water. The way
          the water braids your hair. The way millions
          float and shine like stars. Like the great comet
          that brightens the horizon while you toss in
          your sleep. As you dream of the water-bearer
          who falls from the sky for the sake of
          rearranging his atoms, for the sake of
          the fall, while you lie there dreaming,
          ankle-deep in the river.

          NU CITY


          She spent two days in bed with
            the same god and declared it
          dull. The incompatibility, she admits, should have been
            evident: her chakras are like
          the stems of pears, his, broccoli leaves.
            But her latest paramour has arms
          like test tubes and burrows
            in the back yard for the perfect

          amethyst crystal. For an insignificant sum, he will manufacture
            stalagmites out of thin air and rescue
          small children from the mouths of trombones.
            She is studying to be a virgin and is
          encouraged by earthquakes and maladjusted
            asteroids. Foundations are at this minute
          being challenged, she says. The man who used to
            turn on a dime can no longer be trusted

          to grease the wheels. And we must invest only
            in celery seeds--by this,
          our path will be clear. The space people lately
            said as much when they set their hats down
          in the desert. Yet no one
            invited them to sweat (thereby we were
          a mockery). Still, there is time
            to turn ourselves inside out.

          On the outskirts of town, a flock of mockingbirds
          sits on a telephone wire, waiting
            for someone to speak.

          C. John Graham lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico and serves as the safety manager for the LANSCE particle accelerator facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He was the poetry editor for The Santa Fe Sun in the mid-1990s. His poetry has appeared in Birmingham Poetry Review, Blue Mesa Review, Black Moon, and Moria, among other publications, and also in the first issue of The New Mexico Poetry Review. (September 09)