Jeffrey Skinner’s new book of poems, Gender Studies, will be published in January 2002 by Miami University Press. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Georgia Review and Kenyon Review. He has been chosen as the 2002 Poet-in-Residence at the James Merrill House in Stonington, Connecticut.

Hell’s Bells

Inside me the many things I should not have done keep up a steady ringing, tinnitus, the medical term and I try to comfort myself that I am no longer doing those things, most of them at least,

that I have become another man with a new face not new of course but altered more frayed and crumpled and hopeful more trustworthy to others because of the fraying

or the hope, and have for some time been set on the path, as they say, though I hear Paul loud and clear when he says The good I would do I do not, and the evil I would not

I do–in a sense have joined a lineage of wakeful self-doubt, without which no waking beyond the self is possible so that sometimes for moments I am permitted

to sit with a dying friend without fear to sweep up the shattered bowl without resentment or when my daughter begs for a ride to the video rental not slam down the paper but simply rise

and lift the ring of keys from its hook hearing as I turn that pleasing toss of music and all these thoughts and actions by grace help quiet somewhat the incessant ringing

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Issue 77 Fall 2001