Tree of Life Review

SEPTEMBER 2007

NEW IN THE TREE OF LIFE REVIEW

AIRMAIL: Bodhi Blues — A Year in India: Questioning The Maitreya Project by Jessica Falcone

COLUMN: Storiedmusic — The Night I Walked Out by DJ T’challah

NOVEL EXCERPT: In a State of Partition by Aneesha Capur

UP THE CREEK: Editor’s Notes — Art, Yoga, and Abu Ghraib



What I Became

I blame it on
the wind’s unhinging
the drive-by elms,

the ’56 Pontiac’s
engine hum, the swing
of my backseat body outward

and in again around
curves as if I were airborne,
just skimming that sudden

cut-out of sound
the upshift left.
I was ten, in a darkness

weightless as the stratosphere
where Glenn had gone,
the stars flickering

at hyperspeed
into the slipstream beyond
our rear windshield

like the fireflies
he saw heading into reentry
over Canton Island —

billions, beyond reason
or telemetry —
before he drove home

to pedestrian
Ohio.


Steve Myers

Steve Myers

Steve Myers grew up in Holicong, Pennsylvania and since has lived for extended periods in various corners of the state as well as in Rochester, N.Y. and Glasgow, Scotland. His poetry collection, Memory's Dog, appeared from FootHills Publishing in 2004; his chapbook, Work Site, was published by FootHills in 2003. Individual poems have recently appeared or will soon appear in Atlanta Review, caesura, The Dark Horse, Kestrel, The Malahat Review, Potomac Review, Quarter After Eight, and Sentence, as well as in the anthology Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania. He is Professor of English at DeSales University in Center Valley.

STEVE MYERS IN THIS EDITION:
POETRY: Moon in March with Fieldstone
POETRY: What I Became