Ralph Angel is the author of four books of poetry: Exceptions and Melancholies: Poems 1986-2006 (2007 PEN USA Poetry Award); Twice Removed; Neither World (James Laughlin Award of The Academy of American Poets); and Anxious Latitudes; as well as a translation of the Federico García Lorca collection, Poema del cante jondo / Poem of the Deep Song. His poems have appeared in scores of magazines and anthologies, both here and abroad, and recent literary awards include a gift from the Elgin Cox Trust, a Pushcart Prize, a Gertrude Stein Award, the Willis Barnstone Poetry Translation Prize, a Fulbright Foundation fellowship and the Bess Hokin Award of the Modern Poetry Association. Mr. Angel is the Edith R. White Distinguished Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Redlands, and a member of the MFA Program in Writing faculty at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Originally from Seattle, he lives in Los Angeles.

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Murmured in loneliness, round and round. 

Let’s not go inside. It doesn’t exist. The cliffs drop off, and the ocean’s

a friend—on the boardwalk

enough people alone

have died. 

So relax, take your feet

off—nobody’s

missing. There are many parts

of the mind. On that old

open day we let out our long green grass. A night’s passed

and you expected it

to be there. 

You’re the rub—the love

that loves the love. I like especially the puddles

and your wire. I like your mud. 

I like your part

of it.

DOUG VAN GUNDY’S poems and essays have appeared in many journals, including The Oxford American, Ecotone, The Louisville Review, The Fretboard Journal, and Goldenseal.   His work has also been featured online at From the Fishouse: an audio archive of emerging poets. Doug teaches English at West Virginia Wesleyan College in Buckhannon and plays fiddle, guitar, and mandolin in the old-time music duo Born Old.  His book of poems, A Life Above Water is published by Red Hen Press.

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 Slagheap

 

The playground beside

my elementary school

was built on a slagheap

over the lateral shafts

 

of the old Norton mines. 

The sealed-off seam that ran

under the baseball diamond

still smoldered as the result

 

of some decades-old fire,

hundreds of feet below,

keeping the surface dirt so warm

that no matter how deep

 

elsewhere, snow would never

stay on the infield and the grass   

behind the bleachers lay exposed

and green, even in January.