Stevedore Suite
1.
You Asked
You asked for a quotation,
a few lines, on the theme
The Pitch of the Pine Guitar:
Half a batard,
butter, butter and cress.
Every ship, any sea,
the little birds from nowhere
suddenly there, on the deck.
Extra butter, extra cress.
Dolphins, breaking
in pairs (in wet silhouette).
One remembers,
the other forgets.
2.
Missing Mural
That day not long ago
somewhere in northern Mexico,
we saw it in The Globe,
that day the flock of blackbirds--
yellow-heads--fell to earth,
hundreds dropping dead
or dying from the sky,
covering fields and roads,
rooftops, people hurrying home--
a dark volcanic snow.
3.
You Wondered
You wondered on the phrase
(or inkling) "the chance
that memory stands outside,
like lichen on the bark of a tree."
*
Things call
and fall into place.
Call like a curlew or a loon.
Call hair "yellower
than porchlight," children
in from play...
Call like a hoopoe or a crane.
*
Sancerre was there.
And those crows
at Grandfather Mountain,
they share every shred
of knowledge like an air.
4.
A Note on the Milk River Drawing,
Those Lavenders and Heliotropes
Slept down there
not far from the river,
drove off south after coffee
next morning,
paused at a curve
to look back on the valley,
and there they were.
5.
As With Arvo Pärt
Hoping to see
through the slant snow
your loping wolverine.
Merrill Gilfillan
Merrill Gilfillan was born in Ohio in 1945 and raised there. He attended the University of Michigan, graduating in 1967, where he won the Major Hopwood Prize for poetry in his senior year. He attended the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop for two years, studying with Ted Berrigan, Anselm Hollo, and George Starbuck, among others. Gilfillan's recent publications include: Talk Across Water: Stories Selected and New (Flood editions); Old River, New River: a Miscellany (Red Dragonfly Press); A Walkable Rain (Oxeye Press); and Three Roans in the Shallows, One of Them Blue: Selected Poems, just out from Flood. He lived and worked in New York City for eight years, and then moved to Colorado, where he wrote several books of sketches from the Great Plains, including Magpie Rising, which won a PEN award. He now makes his home in Asheville, North Carolina.
Alberto Regueira
Alberto Regueira, born in 1994 in Havana, Cuba, is a visual artist currently living and working in Havana. His primary focus is painting, though he also explores printmaking, and drawing.
He began his studies in 2011 at the “San Alejandro” Academy of Visual Arts, where he experimented with sculpture, printmaking, and installation. In 2016, he enrolled at the Superior Institute of Art (ISA), concentrating solely on painting. In 2020, he completed his graduation and earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Visual Arts.
His artwork serves as a narrative expression of esoteric themes, weaving analogies and symbols into a rich tapestry of meanings that connect the everyday with the mystical. His painting style centers on the oil technique and draws inspiration from classic painting landscapes, infused with surrealistic elements.
Regueira has showcased his work in numerous exhibitions, both in Cuba and internationally, including in Switzerland and the United States.