Post on 17-Jan-2017
University of Northern Iowa
Rave on, Buddy HollyAuthor(s): Barry BensonSource: The North American Review, Vol. 288, No. 2, National Poetry Month Issue (Mar. -Apr., 2003), p. 23Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25126941 .
Accessed: 12/06/2014 17:31
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N A R
BARRY BENSON
Rave On, Buddy Holly
Rave on, Buddy Holly, like Dylan
Raging against the dying of the light. Rave on, Buddy Holly, you wild man, And catch the sun at the end of the day.
Rage on, Buddy Holly, for the golden friends
And for the light-footed boys? For the brooks too broad for leaping.
Rage on, Buddy Holly, Rave on.
Rage on for us who are left,
Buddy Holly, one of these days, oh yeah! Our midnight candle sways to your music.
We hear and see your brightening glance.
We remember so early in the morning,
Buddy, getting up a game, calling our friends
To run, laugh, yell, that'll be the day. And then it's so easy to not go gently.
So rage on, rave on, Buddy Holly, For us who are left, rage on
And sing to us that it doesn't matter,
Buddy Holly, any more any more any more
KRISTEN TRACY
Worry
Because I have a new religion and believe
that I will always exist, I have stopped running like a gray mouse away from death?still,
once a month I stand in the shower's flood
and feel my breasts for lumps. As far as I know
I am cancer-free, unlike my aunt who wouldn't let
the doctors take her breast, gave them one small
piece and then acted like a wolf, always defending herself against them. Before cancer, she thought
I can t get cancer. Science tells us to weigh our risks. She counted on Mormon pioneers
to deliver her a blonde-haired, tumorless body. I have never loved my picky aunt. I'll smell
whatever the air gives me, eat the too soft
peach, ride a simple yellow bus, exhaust fumes
sometimes worming their way in through the cracks. After this body I'll take
another. Or so I think. Let's move on to what?
I love birds. A sparrow pecks the horse's grain, swallows the dog's kibbles, shits on the field grass and flies into an apple-weighted tree. Compared to it, my body is a block, my cells may split
whether I eat the Twinkie or not. The earth turns.
Trees fall down. If you aren't standing under them,
you persist?this is life. The earth irons
its own wrinkles and you, for a while, live. I'm ready for something else, to be a bird now,
watching from a mid-level branch suspended in
air, where it would be hard not to extend
my wing tips and let the world take over. The world takes over too much, the small things say. Now that
I am small I watch as it takes over an ant hill in the shape of three boys with sticks. No chaos, as the ants decide collectively to resist the impulse of each boy's heart. The colony teems. I flutter,
the sun reflects off my black beak and blinking eyes. And it feels good to exist, above this worried ground.
March-April 2003 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW 23
This content downloaded from 91.229.248.187 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 17:31:29 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions