Scapegoat is back with a wonderful issue for the Fall/Winter of 2010. It’s that time of year when many of us turn inward to write— perhaps more than we have during the summer months when warm weather activities are tempting.

We have an eclectic group of poets contributing to this issue—two professors, a lawyer/MFA student, a poet/fantasy fiction author, a poet living in Moscow, another MFA student, and a book publicist. The result is an interesting and challenging body of poems that I hope you will enjoy as much as we at Scapegoat have enjoyed them.

As the cool weather touches down it is also a time for reflection and I can think of no poem better suited to start off the Review with than the great Stanley Kunitz’s “Touch Me”. Enjoy the issue, pass it around and let us know your thinking.

Best, June

Touch Me

Summer is late, my heart.
Words plucked out of the air
some forty years ago
when I was wild with love
and torn almost in two
scatter like leaves this night
of whistling wind and rain.
It is my heart that's late,
it is my song that's flown.
Outdoors all afternoon
under a gunmetal sky
staking my garden down,
I kneeled to the crickets trilling
underfoot as if about
to burst from their crusty shells;
and like a child again
marveled to hear so clear
and brave a music pour
from such a small machine.
What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.
One season only,
and it's done.
So let the battered old willow
thrash against the windowpanes
and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am.

Stanley Kunitz