M.A. Schaffner- Three Poems

Unnamed Alley By the Mall

Awful, and yet pathways between the towers

though landscaped professionally lead one through

to destinations not wholly preformed.

Even a starling makes a statement; even

a squirrel finds resources enough for life

outside the approved planning document.

A short stroll from ATM to Starbucks

finds the homeless and laborers alike

relevant and alive, fearful only

as storm-blown migrants flying home at last.

Turnpike

Rest stop superlatives along the road,

like the civil engineering once thought

critical to every party, a wealth

literally concrete, the intangible

the province of art rather than finance.

Only now the nostalgia of decline

feeding sideways into lugubrious song

and a wry kind of sloganeering hubris.

No one can afford their dreams anymore –

the disconnection of propaganda

from material reality makes

wise-acre North Koreans of us all.

The Dear Leaders make good television

and always know who their enemies are.

Sleigh Ride

The snowdrops are early and hawks have stayed

in numbers swelled by migrants from the north.

Winter hardly started before spring came

more as harbinger than relief. Days past

seasons led us to think of life and death,

but only lately of apocalypse,

as sweetly as bouquets at a funeral;

subtle as sleet falling in place of snow.

If no older than we feel, the species

will change its games to play in every clime.

Silly to want the sets to stay the same,

with the same trees giving shade, the same birds

serenading changes in the weather

that interrupt their fragile, pretty lives.

Short Bio:

M. A. Schaffner has work recently published or forthcoming in The Hollins Critic, Magma, Tulane Review, Gargoyle, and The Delinquent. Other writings include the poetry collection The Good Opinion of Squirrels, and the novel War Boys. Schaffner spends most days in Arlington, Virginia or the 19^th century.