Steeple Chase by Elizabeth Brunazzi

Young Buddha escaping the sleeping castle, your beautiful young wife, your infant son, your horse’s hooves velveted, silent over the pavement stones, the cosmos conspiring in your mission,

You ascend on your white mount charging over rooftops, then steeple tops,

Young Chagall loved his wife to tears, his horse still white riding over Russian rooftops after her death in Paris he painted her white against the still cobalt sky, the hearts and flowers he offers her still red as ever, and his cow who keeps jumping over the moon,

I’m the dish round as a silver full moon running hand in hand with my spoon big as a house

and you’re the cow jumping over me again, and from the ground the big brown dog and the little black and white dog are still laughing their heads off as we take off into the sky,

Just ahead in the near distance three white dwarf girls with monkey faces, bound together like a packet of cigars, float in the ether, and what are they telling us not to hear, to see, to speak of? Hold onto my hand, moonie spoon.

Anthropology By Karen Weber

Anthropology, what use are you

in these days of singular, weekly visits to the market

seeing only masked faces searching

for a carton of eggs, a can of tomato soup, a bunch of celery stalks?

Anthropology, can you tell us why

the Pueblo people deserted the Chacoan plain,

leaving the intricate star-viewing portals,

the footways between settlements?

Anthropology, will you show a way to leave

the crisis of burnt forests and homes sprawling into their depths,

of the orca carrying her dead baby in the poison waters of the Salish Sea,

of the puffin bird becoming only a cartoon on a cereal box?

Anthropology, you sweep off the dust of the ancient,

speak of cultures and evolution,

of tools made and kinships formed,

can you tell us the way as we dim the stars we once navigated by?

Karen Weber is a writer, educator, activist, and frequent visitor to Taos County. She resides in Santa Fe. For more visit her blog at karenweber.net