Game Design

She stops for the evening,
puts away pens and ink,
shuts down the screen,
walks toward the door.
Just then, the scaly tip of a
tail rounds the corner.
Wait until tomorrow,
she thinks, shaking her head.
There will be time enough
to create you in the morning.

 

Wingmaker

I drew designs on a flat stone,
penciled angles, measured
length and breadth,
calculated the tensile
strength of feathers and wax,
did the best I could with
cold scientific fact,
the heat of imperfect art.

 

Winden

I worked long days to
lay iron bars,
craft cement,
smooth surfaces,
check measurements
and weight,
footprint and height.
I didn’t know my creation
would send Black Forest
children through time.
I was only doing my job,
dropping my own
glowing breadcrumbs.

 

Poet Vivian Wagner is an associate professor of English at Muskingum University in New Concord, Ohio. Her work has appeared in Muse /A Journal, Forage Poetry Journal, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Creative Nonfiction, The Atlantic, The Ilanot Review, Silk Road Review, Zone 3, Eyedrum Periodically, 3QR, and other publications. She’s also the author of a memoir, Fiddle: One Woman, Four Strings, and 8,000 Miles of Music (Citadel-Kensington), a poetry collection, The Village (Kelsay Books), and a micro-chapbook, Making (Origami Poems Project).

Artist Judson Evans is a full-time Instructor in the Liberal Arts department at The Boston Conservatory at Berklee where he has taught a range of courses, from a Poetry Workshop on haiku, prose poetry and haibun, to a course on theories of cave art and the role of the cave in ritual and philosophy. In 2007 he was chosen by John Yau as an Emerging Poet for The Academy of American Poets. He was one of the founding members of Off the Park Press, and published work in each of its three anthologies responding to provocative contemporary painters. His most recent work has been published in (print journals) Laurel Review, Folio, Volt; 1913: a journal of forms; and Green Mountains Review, and (online journals) White Whale Review and Amethyst Arsenic. He won The Phillip Booth Poetry Award from Salt Hill Review in 2013. He has collaborated with composers, such Mohammed Fairouz, Mart Epstein, and Rudolf Rojhan, who set several of his poems to music, as well as with choreographers, dancers, musicians and other poets, including Gale Batchelder, and videographers Nate Tucker and Ray Klimek.