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Three poems by Gwen Hutchinson

It’s All Been Done Before

You can go in that way
If you choose.
But don’t say I didn’t warn you—
others have tried and returned home limping.

Creaky tales dying to unfold.
Look for clues; they are there
in the once upright bony portals
of all things possible are all things possible?

Slivers clothe an impish palette
with subtle hues, alive but ailing,
as the drying sprout that beckons.
Give it life if life can be given by you.

But giving life requires a muse,
seminal gum on which to chew.
You might inquire, if listening is something you do.
Make it so now—if you go in that way.

You can go in that way
If you choose,
But don’t say I didn’t warn you

Stranger in my land

A voice
storms the room.
Under God,
it says, will be inserted into the
Pledge of Allegiance. It follows
the daily prayer to Jesus.
My head is bent—
in retreat.
I can see my desk
and me,
sitting in a class between
2nd and 4th grades.
Why do they need me?
I can see me and my arms
on the desk, my forehead
resting on hands
that itch to cover my ears.

Pickles

The goat jumped into the dogwood at twenty-two past four,
and the Governor of Utopiland said he would run no more.
The tropical storm is east of us but dribbling to a snore,
and the shrub is going down in flames outside my bedroom door

The pressure cooker has been replaced by a spoon and flexistraw
inserted through a wi-fi crawler with always-on to draw
the target you’ve been trawling for, a billion more or less,
but infinite growth elects the boss on the bottom-line express.

There’s a definite advantage to be outside looking in
the interior is filled with noise that rankles skin to skin
while living in the borderlands allows a pot to boil
then simmer to a fountainhead where pickles never spoil.


Gwen Hutchinson is soon to get her Masters in English at California State University in Sacramento, doing Creative Writing and being certified for teaching college composition. She has three grown children, and will be graduating from CSU with one of them in the spring of 2006. She appeared at Ariga in 2004 with Time-Step and other poems

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