Here is a link to the Best American Poetry 2006 Table of Contents:
If you scroll down, you will see that Reb Livingston’s poem, “That’s Not Butter” was chosen. That poem first appeared in MiPoesias, an online journal created by Didi Menendez and edited by Amy King.
Does this mean that the online poetry community has finally caught up with print journals? Perhaps.
after WCW
So much is lost in the seasons,
so much slips between
that infinitesimal sliver
of change: cold to hot in an instant,
one night’s sleep that becomes years
stretched out into the waking hours.
Here is where the crumpled red
paint of the barrow crouches
in the aged fist of the barn.
Here is where some old poet
used to walk, noticing everything,
taking note of the simple runnel
of rain that glazed the wood.
Nothing can make this landscape
walk backwards. How would we know,
anyway, which is better: yesterday’s bright
color, today’s comfortable weariness?
If we remember the white chickens
and the rain that slicked everything,
who is to say why the barn, once
shiny and upright with paint
and use, became ordinary,
now slouches into the horizon
like an old and familiar poem?
© 2006 Christine Klocek-Lim
Christine Klocek-Lim 