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Be sure to check out the latest Festival of the Trees at treeblog.
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I'm Dave Bonta, a poet and literary magazine editor from the eastern edge of western Pennsylvania. For background on the site, see the About page. For more about me, see my Google profile.

Order from the press or Contact me for a signed copy or to barter for your own book. Central PA residents can buy it at Webster's.
Metaphors for the Moon
Early marriage is a wetland, a marsh
of co-mingling reeds, breeding birds.
Cleaning My Attic
Cast-iron Royal, weighty and not regal at all but seriously proletarian, ostensibly portable in your anonymous black case: my secret unmusical instrument, which I lugged to cafes before they were wireless or even wired...
Clumps and Voids
The program description, however, devolves into the fey. "The lingam (or linga) is a cylindrical votary object that represents the Hindu god Shiva, and a dispute about its meaning has been going on for many centuries." When a phallus is tagged with the museum label of "cylindrical votary object," I lose hope that the speaker will be introduced as Professor Wendy Doniger: don of dongs.
botanizing
On calm days, the soil swirls and rises in isolated twisters. On a windy day when the wheat is being harvested — a day like today — the soil lifts like a yellow curtain, obliterating the sky.
The Twitching Line
My uncle, gutting a fish:
removing the fins from either side,
tipping the knife below
the little anus, pointing the tail-
end away, slitting it to the gills,
then plunging in a hand
to scoop the organs out, soft
and scarlet as a litter of kittens.
The Ordinary and the Wild
I had a dream the other night about a tall machine, like a crane or an android giraffe, lanky with angles of metal that reach up to the sky when they should somehow be digging. When I woke I felt taller for a moment, and also deeper, as if the soles of my feet had met up with some spilled honey or errant tar while I walked in my sleep.
Busily Seeking... Continual Change
So the mountain was steep? I threw a couple of windbreakers, yogurts and miscellaneous snacks (really, whatever I could lay my hands on at the last minute), wallet, phone, bottles of water--yes, just the things I thought to grab into a new REI bright yellow daypack--and off we went. That was it. Toss things in a bag and go.
Chatoyance
And on the other side, what I
set in motion: the open field, the low hill,
a crease scored in bent blades of grass
where I forgot the wall stood,
my footsteps blurring as the
grass unbends.
Velveteen Rabbi
There are trade-offs: in the womb we knew perfect intimacy, but couldn't meet. Now we are separate, which is at once the source of loneliness (especially for him, I'm guessing) and the source of our ability to connect.
Will Buckingham
My small guide and I then did our double-act of worshipping at the shrine, at which point the monk then declared that, once again, I was not doing it right. There followed another twenty minute lesson in proper bowing -- different from the previous lesson, in fact -- and if I have retained anything it is that one’s feet must be aligned like the lines in the number 8 -- an auspicious number in China.
"On the whole I concentrated on things and people that I found charming and splendid; my notes are also full of poems and observations on trees and plants, birds and insects."
— Sei Shonagon, 994 A.D.
beautiful–
Eye for an eye,
thanks for this one!
Love these! Great title too.
Thanks for looking. I actually spent a couple hours composing text for this post yeasterday afternoon, but became dissatisfied with it and decided to just post the photos by themselves for once (along with the Festival of the Trees link, which is well worth following up). Felt a little guilty for not putting up something more substantial for all the Super Bowl refugees online last night.
I think you have a highly advanced worm civilization going on in the Hollow. These might be epics.
Actually, they’re bark beetle larvae — don’t ask me what species. Not quite as highly civilized as ambrosia beetles, which tend to burrow more into the wood. Ambrosia beetles have mastered agriculture and regularly practice incest, so they qualify for civilization by any measure.
Dave, these are both so lovely–my eyes felt filled up by those very different blues. Good title, too.
Hi Marly – I’m glad you liked. I’m still trying to figure out what those glyphs might say.
[...] or a Big Dipper. A set of random squiggles on a tree trunk, revealed by peeling the bark, seems a communication in some unknown language. Sometimes they’re in the corner, sometimes they’re by the door, Sometimes [...]