FEATURE
December 2006

Michael Salcman


THE CORTLAND REVIEW

E
SSAY
Tony Barnstone
  "A Manifesto on the Contemporary Sonnet: A Personal Aesthetics"
Tony Barnstone considers the sonnet from its formal beginnings to its evolution into the twenty-first century, including some generative techniques for sonnets of your own


S
ONNETS
Tony Barnstone

Willis Barnstone
Lorna Knowles Blake
Kim Bridgford
Billy Collins
Leisha Douglas
Barry Ergang
Ross A. Gay
Soheila Ghaussy This marks an author's first online publication
Miranda Girard This marks an author's first online publication
Myrna Goodman This marks an author's first online publication
Susan Gubernat
Heidi Hart
Jay Leeming This marks an author's first online publication
Anne Marie Macari

Patricia O'Hara
John Poch
Michael Salcman
Patricia Smith
A.E. Stallings

Gerald Stern
Joyce Sutphen
Jeet Thayil
Meredith Trede This marks an author's first online publication

 

Michael Salcman, a physician, brain scientist, and essayist on the visual arts, was chairman of neurosurgery at the University of Maryland and president of the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore. Recent poems have or will appear in Notre Dame Review, Ontario Review, Harvard Review, Raritan, Southern Poetry Review, River Styx, and New York Quarterly. His fourth chapbook, Stones In Our Pockets (Parallel Press, University of Wisconsin-Madison), and his first full-length collection, The Clock Made of Confetti (Orchises, Washington, DC), are both forthcoming in 2007.

For Naked Sheep They Killed The Shepherd    Click to hear in real audio


Our sheep are too mild
to be blasphemous,
they respect our fenced pastures
they eat near city lights.

Our sheep are too mild
to recall how God made them naked
nor gambol in green diapers
to hide sex from their shepherd.

Our sheep are too mild
to hide exploding death
behind their black wooly heads—
not one would kill a shepherd

for being too kind;
our sheep are too mild.

 

 

Michael Salcman: Poetry
Copyright ©2006 The Cortland Review December 2006 FeatureThe Cortland Review