University of Northern Iowa

Rave on, Buddy HollyAuthor(s): Barry BensonSource: The North American Review, Vol. 288, No. 2, National Poetry Month Issue (Mar. -Apr., 2003), p. 23Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25126941 .

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N A R

BARRY BENSON

Rave On, Buddy Holly

Rave on, Buddy Holly, like Dylan

Raging against the dying of the light. Rave on, Buddy Holly, you wild man, And catch the sun at the end of the day.

Rage on, Buddy Holly, for the golden friends

And for the light-footed boys? For the brooks too broad for leaping.

Rage on, Buddy Holly, Rave on.

Rage on for us who are left,

Buddy Holly, one of these days, oh yeah! Our midnight candle sways to your music.

We hear and see your brightening glance.

We remember so early in the morning,

Buddy, getting up a game, calling our friends

To run, laugh, yell, that'll be the day. And then it's so easy to not go gently.

So rage on, rave on, Buddy Holly, For us who are left, rage on

And sing to us that it doesn't matter,

Buddy Holly, any more any more any more

KRISTEN TRACY

Worry

Because I have a new religion and believe

that I will always exist, I have stopped running like a gray mouse away from death?still,

once a month I stand in the shower's flood

and feel my breasts for lumps. As far as I know

I am cancer-free, unlike my aunt who wouldn't let

the doctors take her breast, gave them one small

piece and then acted like a wolf, always defending herself against them. Before cancer, she thought

I can t get cancer. Science tells us to weigh our risks. She counted on Mormon pioneers

to deliver her a blonde-haired, tumorless body. I have never loved my picky aunt. I'll smell

whatever the air gives me, eat the too soft

peach, ride a simple yellow bus, exhaust fumes

sometimes worming their way in through the cracks. After this body I'll take

another. Or so I think. Let's move on to what?

I love birds. A sparrow pecks the horse's grain, swallows the dog's kibbles, shits on the field grass and flies into an apple-weighted tree. Compared to it, my body is a block, my cells may split

whether I eat the Twinkie or not. The earth turns.

Trees fall down. If you aren't standing under them,

you persist?this is life. The earth irons

its own wrinkles and you, for a while, live. I'm ready for something else, to be a bird now,

watching from a mid-level branch suspended in

air, where it would be hard not to extend

my wing tips and let the world take over. The world takes over too much, the small things say. Now that

I am small I watch as it takes over an ant hill in the shape of three boys with sticks. No chaos, as the ants decide collectively to resist the impulse of each boy's heart. The colony teems. I flutter,

the sun reflects off my black beak and blinking eyes. And it feels good to exist, above this worried ground.

March-April 2003 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW 23

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