ISSUE 32
June 2006

A. E. Stallings

 

A.E. Stallings A.E. Stallings' first poetry collection, Archaic Smile, received the Richard Wilbur award and was published by the University of Evansville. A second collection, Hapax, is just out from TriQuarterly. Her verse translation of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura (The Nature of Things) is due out from Penguin Classics. She lives in Greece with her husband, John Psaropulos, and their son Jason.
Four Fibs*    


1.
Did
Eve
believe
or grapple
over the apple?
Eavesdropping Adam heard her say
to the snake-oil salesman she was not born yesterday.

2.
"Miss,
This
is not
Bliss. Wisdom
is not the abyss,
but visceral innocence. Kiss
the windfall of the world," she heard him whisper, or hiss.


3.
Not
me.
Not me!
Cried all three.
"You shall creep the earth.
And you shall labor giving birth.
And as for you, you shall toil and sweat for all you're worth."


4.
Cross
your
heart and     
hope to die,
stick a needle in
your eye. That is the awful oath
of childhood, chapter and verse, genesis of the lie.




*A fib is a form invented by Gregory K. Pincus of L.A., which uses the
Fibonacci sequence of numbers to govern the number of syllables per line
.
 

 

 

A. E. Stallings: Poetry
Copyright ©2006 The Cortland Review Issue 32The Cortland Review