ISSN # 1549-0327

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R o c k   S a l t   P l u m   R e v i e w                                 Spring 2006

Duane Ackerson

Notes on Decoding Snowflakes

All those books full of

sure-fire formulas

for writing books,

all those instructions

for stained glass windows or doilies,

all this must come from somewhere

and be pointing someplace.

One more workshop should do it;

the vat of molten lead

come to a point;

the phoenix,

push aside ashes

and re-feather the fire.

Class, take note;

take flight.

The apter students take fingerprints

off the rain,

convinced it's cutting

piano rolls on the side.

The less apt try to unravel

the DNA for Rhapsody in Blue,

derive the formula for Fats Waller or Monet,

while cummings protests:

careful, you'll crush

the tiny hands of the rain.

Duane Ackerson

My poetry, prose poetry, and fiction has appeared in periodicals that

include Rolling Stone, The Christian Science Monitor, Yankee, Prairie Schooner,

and Chelsea, and in a number of anthologies that include Imperial Messages

(Avon), Poems One Line & Longer (Grossman), Best SF:1974 (Bobbs-Merrill), 100 Great Science Fiction Short Short Stories (Doubleday), and The Poetry Train: A Collection of North American Prose Poetry (New Rivers Press). I have also received an NEA creative writing fellowship. My latest poetry collection is The Bird at the End of the Universe (TM Press).

We know that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day's work at Auschwitz in the morning.

                                       – George Steiner

Jalina Mhyana