YURTMASTER

by Lucia Pizzo

When he named them,
              he held his fingers
              webbed

              At the bottom of his
mind,
              a filed of pennies

Beard full of fingers
of old soup

He had a horse once,
let the hair grow wild;
he matched his teeth
to horse hide, slipped
them behind his stretched
lips
              starched.

*

Seventeen years ago
and on a train.

He never could whistle,
fingers stuck with spit
and cheeks red raw,
filled thimbles with wishing
and set them to sea.

He liked the way
his face fit in a jar
when the light was just
              his nose in an O
his lips hidden under.

He could whistle at night
when his lips would flit
to other faces, the heavy skin:
plight of a seed, of lowing.

*

He left his shoes
              his pockets
              his oiled rags
              left streaks in the
              mirror

In rain, he left his lips
              to pucker, grow long
              again

He experimented with vowel
sounds, left he baby out
              carved freckles

Loved, in the stoop of his
back leaning, loved
between the bones and in
wood grain.

And he smothered
his fingers with buds.

*

Later
he became a stone,
spoke with quick lips,
paced.

He collected:
              leaves
              (soil)
              his own teeth
              the curled bodies of cicadas
left
              in his windowsill

He filled boxes to mail
              changed his mind
              taught his fingers to forget
the way they’d cup around his
mouth to call out and back,
call through old maps, old roads.

.

THE YURT MASTERS

by Pablo Peschiera

In the felt-dulled light a million threads rampant and wrecked.

Slats run in finch steps crushing the cold, forgotten, dumb,
pitching in silence. Onto steppes and grasslands—

winds and yak milk like bitter chocolate.
Trotting—when the smoke blows

the taste of meat hangs in the mouth. A loud whistle.
The horses arrive—ridden bare. We beckon twice,

their blissful manes swinging and drunk.
The wounds and the bows strapped to our backs

like deadly children. We return a tribe, piled and bruised,
hood the falcons, drink our mares’ milk,

and on the rugs dare our brothers to raise our uncles
whose ashes lie and foam like broth.

In the tent we in the cupboard loll with abandon
near our sisters’ pallets rolled like skins.

We ask the storms buffeting the iris smoke sneaks through
where our legs end and earth begins. Sky’s bright sliver.

We pretend the ger is the world as reflected
in horses’ thighs —a ripple’s graze in our horses’ eyes.

The broken cricks fade to twinges. The crept-in night
dried and fetid. The moon shuttles across constellations.

.

THE YURT MASTER

by Ryan Smith

goes flying, arrives @ Fujiama
@ 6:02am & expects delays,
expect to bleed RFID-tagged
cells, the cute blue-to-red
trick of the mind & body
being one, soul lagging out
over the ocean somewhere,
stopping to fish for beluga & sunken
Somalis still smiling & from up here
the melange of satellite dishes
like cues for base-jumping,
NOW IS GOOD THE WIND
IS FAINT with all that messy
fluidic loss.

.

THE YURT MASTER

by Mathias Svalina

But why here
with my brother.

He has a good
handshake.

In the forest,
on the drive home,

In the fields
of known snow,

he did not breathe
a wet word

of the inked
skull, the base

of the lamp
unlightable.

.

THE YURT MASTER

by Robert Miltner

Yarrow ripening in the meadow, rippling
paprika, cinnamon, cream, and yellow.

The yurt master brought his crew of plow
men to the deserted shelter. Not a farmer’s

daughter for miles on this lane-off-a-lane.
Not a Roma, tinker, or gypsy to find a line

on a palm to encourage a singer to sidle
up to such an entourage in a stone hut.

He felt the walls: rough. Felt his hands:
soft. Left the crew in the loft and walked,

yearning to find a yurt of melodies, lyrics,
ballads that mirrored the meager earnings

of the yeomen, his yes men, at year end.
So said, he sought songs of apprentices

assumed to be soldiers seducing milkmaids
and goat-fudge makers, the course chorus

more wit than nit, more maypole than not.
Nothing deterred? Then nothing’s incurred,

except tunes of May wine and late Riesling,
the deceit of the newly barreled and betrayal

of an aged vintage. In stone cottage cloister
it was done, was sung, was long into night

that both Master and crew crowed and cawed.
Dawn, they’ll be sleeping around the barrow.

.

THE YURTMASTER

by Jennifer Militello

Substitute its cockeyed geometry for a precinct of sudden flowers.
Let your fingerprints membrane along its naked scythe.
Let its lyres trace your past along the banks of a now-dry river.

Its struggle diagrams your profile, the gallop of your gaze,
where heads are bowed and bulls sacrificed
and a zodiac alluded to: the fragment of the hour.

It is full of the miles, curtsy of them, certain of the lace
they ache, as velvet lasts, a letter—

Above the gnaw of time, a wild that shimmers with wind.
Your pulse can be felt trembling, rustic and mad, waxing
as autumn lattices, as it stews. Exquisite. As it roams.

Open the snow of your eyes: such cold.

Our minds are bright with limits. Quiets soar,
sag-weary and dashed to adieu.

Thrust like tusks at the cognizant moon.

Let death void the beautiful construction.

.

THE YURTMASTER

By Will Schutt

You can’t do to it what you can
do to a hole. Holes are nearer;
you can get your arms around them
and fit them to your purpose.
Here I hit a wall. The furniture
has been prebuilt and shipped
from Sweden and all you have to
do is slide the tongue bits into
the, well, hole bits. Mostly I wanted
to dig my hole and get sad in it.
How could I get sad in something
called a sod iglu or a wickiup?
I refuse to drag indigenous populations
into this debate. But that’s another
thing pretty good to wring a tear.
.