New American Writing 26

Take a look at our New American Writing website, beautifully updated by Jerrold Shiroma: www.newamericanwriting.blogspot.com. The cover art is by Enrique Chagoya: detail from The Pastoral or Arcadian State, Illegal Aliens Guide to Greater America, 2006. With permission of Enrique Chagoya and Bud Shark, Shark's Ink, publishers of contemporary prints, www.sharksink.com. Some of the work in No. 26 can be accessed on the website; you can also subscribe or order copies there. Lu Chi (translated by Sam Hammill): "The discourse [shuo] should be both radiant / and cunning."

Sylvia Legris
Three-Note Wing Chords . . .

1
of Irruptive
Bronchial-
Tree
Nesters.

Cartilage
architecture.
Acoustics

2
of sticks
and ligature,
membrana

tympaniformis,
variable-

3
sweep
syrinx.

Oscine-
swing

4
Passing-through
Passerines.
Stinging

wind,
Wax-

winging
hiatus.
Migratory

5
aperture.
Gap-
trajectory (hap
-hazard sparrow*)

6
Diagram

7
a diaphrag-
matic
absence.

Lung-

excursion,
peripatetic
trip-

8
switch.

Tsee-
tseee-
tseee-

pitched
pulmonary-

9
circuit-

broken

passage.


*"a haphazard sparrow is a phrase from Will Alexander's poem "Provision for the Higher Ozone Body," in Above the Human Nerve Domain, Pavement Saw Press, 1998.