April Ossmann
I suppose it's about juxtaposition. Afterwards,
Bill said he could hear the wheels turning, when in fact, they weren't
churning out a poem about the restaurant staff viewing the eclipse,
but of course, as soon as he said it, they were. I'm sure you see
how it's too perfect to resist. While the dumpster's various fetid
odors rose
in the fresh spring air, a flurry of white-uniformed cooks elegant
as swans against the stained back stoop in watery light, each with a
handmade eclipse viewer, (pin-holed pieces of paper, pie-tins,
cardboard to-go container tops), each rendition, reflecting one
or a multitude of modified camera obscura eclipses. Bill's of course
was a whole skyful, like stars--Chef said only two more
strategically placed
and he'd have had a smiley face of eclipses. And Jeffrey, the sous-chef
who's really a kind of scientist? Well, his of course was an actual
camera obscura, a cardboard box complete with cut-out lens and viewfinder.
And the waitress/poet running down the steps to look directly
through a paper's single pinhole at the sun, and being gently chided,
then guided, into projecting its shadow on the stoop?
Well, the radio said to look through a pinhole, she protested, while inside
fine dining continued uninterrupted; the gentle susurration of
clinking forks
accompanying the faculty club's well-modulated, professorial explication.
Tables of Content
Seventeen (Fall 2003)
Sixteen (Spring 2003)
Fifteen (Fall 2002) Fourteen (Spring 2002)
Thirteen
(Fall 2001) Twelve (Spring 2001)
Eleven (Fall 2000)
Ten (Spring 2000)
Nine (Fall 1999) Eight (Spring 1999)
Seven, (Fall 1998) Six, (Spring 1998)
Five (Fall 1997) Four (Winter/Spring 1997)
Three (Summer/Fall 1996) Two (Winter 1996)