ISSUE 25
Winter 2004

Dain Smoland

 

Dain Smoland This marks an author's first online publication Dain Smoland has poems in the latest Red Rock Review and Goodfoot Poetry Magazine. He is a graduate of, and a graduate student in, Northern Arizona University, in Flagstaff.
Travelling across Ailefroide    


To pronounce it correctly, you have to be
choking on petals, singed petals.
You have to be holding a breast
then behold a mugging. Half
the letters are unpronounced.
The others invisible to the
naked eye. When someone asks
you about it, pretend to be occupied
by your drug garden. Say "the truth is
I'd barely arrived there before
arriving somewhere else." Then
describe the inside of a light bulb:
Hot, crowded, season-less, but
you loved the hospitality of
the citizens, the fresh cherries
with wild butterflies. The flying
fish and melted bee-legs. The Signaibacalao
which translates "luscious disappearances."
Make sure to tell them blueberries are
bad luck. And sitting down is bad
luck. Not understanding me is bad luck.  
Tell them Ailefroide is in or near the
mountains, roughly 200 symbolic kilometers
from Rome. It's a train ride and two long
walks in the rain to get there from anywhere,
and you've never been out of Nimrod, OR.

 

 

Dain Smoland: Poetry
Copyright © 2004 The Cortland Review Issue 25The Cortland Review