Naomi Guttman’s second book, Wet Apples, Wet Blood, will be published inthe Hugh MacLennan Poetry Series of McGill-Queen’s University Press inthe spring of 2007:online catalog. At the publisher’s request, her chapbook selection published in Spring/Summer 2005 has been downsized in October, 2006. For more poetry in this issue

Naomi Guttman from Wet Apples, White Blood ULTRASOUNDS Subrosa, amoroso, single shiver of my flesh restless shadow, flickerspirit, silhouette caught in a flash. Tough muscle, tenderecho, tissue goblin, holy ghost little skiff in brackish waters,tethered to the braided mast. Hieroglyph homunculus, apercolating pulse of flame ambiguous circumfluous, I do not evenknow your name. Horses thunder, trains à banjo, throbbingbone and humming thrum mysterious celebrity, you’re coming home,you’re coming home. WARD Three shifts, each with its strangers. I fling for sleep on theslippery cot and wake each time the door opens to a newlanguage: they take vitals, give meds. In his tent the anxioussleeper trips alarms that bring white masks. Trained for emergency, they strive to mix kindness with method,chanting a cheery singsong as they check tubes, change fluids andsheets. I try not to mind the rupture of people doing their jobs, laboriouscare. Each meal time, two trays: for him mush toast and Jello. For me some soothing institutional meal I alwaysswallow, down to the rice pudding. The nursing mother gets her own tray. But his food stays untouched. He sleeps unevenlywhile I zip around channels— sad Albanians bunched inmakeshift mountain tents, Anna in Siam: her lilac satin skirts splash acrossthe screen as she waltzes with the king. She hopes to sway him, makehim see, even slaves, even wives, have rights. But hefulfills his Darwinian destiny: one hundred and six children andfive on the way. He sings his facts of life: A girl is like a blossom, with honey for justone man; but a man is like a honey bee who gathers where he can. Because the baby sleeps hours in his damp cocoon, I pump my milk for his sake and for mine. Cold comfort of the plastic flange hugs my brown nipple, the machine’ssusurration another sterile wind. Once I had a tabby who sang to me from the back of his throat for sixteen years. How we kept company.Each month I made his food, freezing small portions as for a child. His vocabulary of moods expressed itself inpostures—hat, bun, snake— and games he taught us. When hestopped eating I kept him going for weeks, feeding fluid with a needle under the loose skin of his neck, until one night Icame home to shit, vomit all over the rugs. We found him sleeping in a corner, a little heap of soiled fur. Hecould barely stand. We made our pact then. The next day sitting in the vet’s lot, holding the still-warm body wrapped in atorn towel, we cried a little over what we’d donemurder,replaying over and over that final insufficient cry—cry of the poisonedmoment, edge of the dark dawn. Wearing the plucky, white-glovedmouse on his tie, the specialist visits, gingers possibilities: cystic, tuber— a list of osis. He counselsbiopsy. Without a specimen, he says, we’ll never reallyknow. Ambition can be good, I think, but not this. I’d rathertrust in prayer, though I do not pray. A bishop comes, theenvoy of a friend: I hold the baby while he prays for us: “Our father,” he chants, voice hushed and grainy above the gusting oxygen, “Hallowed be thy name.” It’s theprayer of Earth, Heaven, Trespass, Bread, Evil—important nounsall. Faith in this life or the next, scholars are equivocal, though they recognize its Jewish roots—praise, petition,yearning. Who knows but words could heal? He ends by rubbing threesmall crosses on the baby’s forehead, one on his chest, “forever and ever, Amen.” Omeyn. Om. O, O and O, then flies to catch aplane, leaving a prescription of psalms: 16, 46, 91 and the reassurance that sickness brings us closer to God. I, thegodless one, but never clever enough, do I seek wings for shelter,fortress, tower, sign of signs? I who have always been fearful but should not fear,who always feel death near and will surely die, I thank the gods,my stars, my lucky luck that we are here, not slaves in Egypt or Siam, notcarrying babies—even sick ones over mountain tops in theshivering spring sun. May winds keep me,                                  take my breathaway. *** Naomi Guttman was born and raised in Montreal, Canada, where her book,Reasons for Winter, (Brick Books, 1991), won the A.M. Klein Awardfor Poetry and was short listed for The League of Canadian Poets’ PatLowther Memorial Award. She has received grants from the Canada Councilfor the Arts (2000) and the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for theArts (2002) as well as an Artist’s Fellowship from the New YorkFoundation for the Arts (2001). Her work has appeared in numerousjournals and anthologies, including Southern Poetry Review,Connecticut Review, The Marlboro Review, The Malahat Review, The EmilyDickinson Awards Anthology, Rattapallax, River Styx, and SadLittle Breathings & Other Acts of Ventriloquism, edited by HeatherMcHugh (PublishingOnline, 2001). She teaches English and creativewriting at Hamilton College in central New York. Her second book, WetApples, Wet Blood will be published in the Hugh MacLennan PoetrySeries of McGill-Queen’s University Press in the spring of 2007: McGill-Queen’s University Press