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        Anniversary Issue: Winter 2005

Josh Hanson

Book I, Canto One

per una selva oscura

I am dowsing this same road over

With the witching tremor of my legs,

Air clogged with rain, and garbage

Over-piling the grates, the gutters swamp,

It's not the water I seek

But whatever rises with it:

The second one came with the water,

A rush and slick into the midwife's hands.

I want the blood and water of another birth

Or the stench of crucifixion, for this road

Was built on crumbling sands, a footprint

Fills rapidly with the rising sea:

I have divined my way to the sea-scent

Of your sweat, what rises in the wet,

And I have come to the West's end

And send my youth into the foam, beauty

May rise, or wretchedness, just so it rises,

Here, furthest from the East, together,

So that it rises, so that we rise with it.

Josh Hanson

I am a graduate of the University of Montana Writing Program and currently live in Humboldt County, California with my wife and two daughters. My

manuscript, From the Rushes, was recently named first runner-up in the

Anabiosis Press Chapbook Contest, and my work has appeared or is forthcoming in Diagram, Stirring, Three Candles, Rock Salt Plum, Megaera, Ginbender, Red River Review, Slow Trains, Pegasus, and others.

But the bold daydream soars up, sly, impudent, varied, to the rhythm of the needle...inflames the pale little hand, the cheek where the shadow of the eyelash flutters.

                                                    - Colette

Susan Elaine