Wondrous Strange
{An Umbrella Special Feature}


Stephen Bunch’s

work has appeared recently in Fickle Muses and The Literary Bohemian.

From 1978 to 1988, he published Tellus, a magazine featuring work by Edward Dorn, Jane Hirshfield, Paul Metcalf and many others. He also published collections of poems by Victor Contoski (A Kansas Sequence) and Donald Levering (Carpool).

He recently received the Langston Hughes Award for Poetry from the Lawrence (Kansas) Arts Center.




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Signs and Wonders

On a wall behind the TV’s rabbit ears
a hand-painted twelve-inch circular saw blade
depicts the faithful holding serpents aloft.
Women with eyes closed lay their palms
on the heads of the handlers as ecstatic lines
radiate from celebrants to sawteeth.

After the mill shut down and the town
expired, after the pills and the whiskey,
the unpaid bills, past the breaking
and entering conviction, the shame and repentance,
a swelling hand with two puncture wounds
finally grasps the remote.



 
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