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University of Northern Iowa Parenthesis Author(s): Christopher Bakken Source: The North American Review, Vol. 292, No. 2, The National Poetry Month Issue (Mar. - Apr., 2007), p. 37 Published by: University of Northern Iowa Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25478883 . Accessed: 12/06/2014 13:14 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . University of Northern Iowa is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The North American Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 91.229.248.152 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 13:14:19 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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University of Northern Iowa

ParenthesisAuthor(s): Christopher BakkenSource: The North American Review, Vol. 292, No. 2, The National Poetry Month Issue (Mar. -Apr., 2007), p. 37Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25478883 .

Accessed: 12/06/2014 13:14

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

University of Northern Iowa is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The NorthAmerican Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 91.229.248.152 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 13:14:19 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

NAR

AL HUDGINS

Bats at twilight

Shouldering shadow, the mid-October sky loses its religion, turning trees in stained-glass colors

gray as stone.

The sun slips out the back, late for a party out of town;

my friend at the front door buttons up his coat before saying goodbye.

Passing over the ashes of this congregation, silhouettes of wings prompt me to remark about birds flying south, but my friend (following our history of amiable contradiction) says no, they're bats.

Gloom tucks in the corners of the groomed lawns, as these dark acolytes,

darting about in the dying light, set up their acoustic Eucharist,

and long after my friend has disappeared into the charcoal neighborhood, I stand in my dim doorway watching the eerie masquerade that dusk offers

these naked wings.

CHRISTOPHER BAKKEN

Parenthesis

Monteverdi there, a background purpled by mezzo soprano,

and other thoughts lifting like incense from the metered lines of open books. Even the cat,

my Dionysian prowler, once a marauder of all light, is afire with concentration

where she's dying on the kilim. On the table, cut for nothing, a lemon flaunts its open wounds.

JASON MICHAEL MacLEOD

The Desmodontinae They need blood at least once every few days to survive. If they can t get blood,

they'll approach another bat whilst roosting, asking for a blood 'transfusion. The blood is exchanged mouth-to-mouth in a motion

that looks very much like kissing.

?"Vampire bat" <wikipedia.org>

What survival comes, comes of us,

Comes of our bodies asking outward

for another body, for the flow of this flawed vessel to that one, the slow

sharp merge that always ends in motion apart.

Still, be this mammal that lives at night,

winged, sanguivorous: each long flutter hastens the wide rhythm:

this arc of absence, then,

back to those slender roosts where we converge.

March-April 2007 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW 37

This content downloaded from 91.229.248.152 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 13:14:19 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions