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Greensboro poet Rhett Iseman Trull and her husband, Jeff, continue to publish a poetry magazine of unflagging quality. The sixth edition of “Cave Wall” (Cave Wall Press: Greensboro; 67 pages, paperback $5) includes poems by two poets in North Carolina who’ve earned national reputations: Michael Chitwood and Michael McFee. Both teach at UNC-Chapel Hill, where McFee directs the creative writing program.

Chitwood’s “First Church” is vintage North Carolina. An uncomfortable young minister joins, uninvited, a group of men outside on coffee break “…five proud bellies/ beneath coveralls, boots bright with clay….”

The poem later describes the encounter:

He had stopped a story or joke.
They cleared their throats. One spat.
He stood one step too far back
but knew he couldn’t change it now.
He prayed for something to say
if prayer is a hot, mute wish.
“I’ll get by and open that drainage ditch
for you,” one said. Was his name Ray?
They knew his hands fit no tool.
“Yes, thank you.” He had been dismissed.
He knew better than to shake
any hands. Their trucks growled.
Dozer, torque wrench, jackhammer, nail gun,
they rang the world right and true.
Silence was what he knew best, and loved.

The issue includes a long poem by McFee about the death and burial of a husband and the – I can’t help myself – fallout from it. Here’s an excerpt titled “Desenex:”

Flurry of powder haunting
the bedside rug where she’d knelt to dust his itchy feet
when he couldn’t bend or lift –

she can’t stop staring into
its light-years-distant solar system, a vague luminous swirl,

wishing his fresh ghost would rise
from this collapsed cloud that once surrounded his skin,

this desiccated last breath
whose small burst of spilled-flour particulate blankness
she may never vacuum up.

Other poets with North Carolina connections in this issue are Paul Fisher, who lives in Nags Head, and Christina Stoddard, who earned an MFA in creative writing at UNCG.

Here’s a stanza from Stoddard’s “The Easiest Death You Can Give Me:”

Remind me of the afternoon we ate fat ripe peaches
under the market’s bright awning
and happiness pierced us like scissors.
Take a pencil and teach me again how to write
our city’s name in Japanese.

This is from Fisher’s “Tunnel Vision:”

When our slender
passage narrows,
we lengthen into worms.

In darkness, we remember
noon, light’s thin fingers
under doors,

dust lit up like angels
in shafts of fluted air.
Only then do we break through,

turn root-rugged ceilings
into floors, squint again
at far flung stars –

“Cave Wall” doesn’t confine itself to state or regional poets. The editors read established and relatively unknown poets across the country to come up with extraordinary selections. It’s published twice a year, and at $5 a copy, it might be the best bargain out there among poetry magazines. If you haven’t seen it, here’s how to get it:
www.cavewallpress.com

You should take a look.