Archive 11
May, 2014
EJ Koh Brings Us Her Poem, "Division" EJ Koh
Division 1 My body is nobody. My skull is nobody. My eyes are nobody. I wake nobody. I sleep nobody. Happy is nobody. Suffer is nobody. 2 Little and nearsighted, one living thing. Then the dead in caskets underground Like gas pockets in rising dough. 3 Nobody looks for an incision at the mountaintop. Nobody is a prophet here. A dead whale floats, and gas-filled, explodes. There is food now. There is sleep. 4 Nobody is language. Nobody is a pink lake. Nobody is the sun. 5 Remember the human light is borrowed. Flaming spectacles to wear on the face. I am sorry to leave. Even the youngest brain glows. Nobody’s universe, I see you suspended between lashes. I love this terrible nobody of shadows. The cold goes out, pronged and star skinned. Read the poetry of EJ Koh Read a profile of EJ Koh "From Shadows," By Louise Hastings Louise Hastings
From Shadows Out there in the shadows of the tall trees, the branches tremble in mid-February wind, the leaves hold their breath, wait out the winter skies and snowfall. A robin lands in the gloom in a flash of scarlet, and something about all this falling reminds me of him, his voice, dark eyes, clothes on the floor, my body naked. Read the poetry of Louise Hastings Read a profile of Louise Hastings All New Haiku From Poet Alegria Imperial Alegria Imperial
English and Bilingual Haiku divorce the judge’s decision clips dead blossoms ❧ nepnep… agkaradapen dagiti buridek a bulan long rains… just beginning to crawl young moons ❧ window frame-- a gibbous moon sails on loneliness Read the poetry of Alegria Imperial Read a profile of Alegria Imperial Two New Poems From Poet Ellen Conserva Ellen Conserva
Done The paint was always stained, Where he hit and missed the light switch And felt along the wall Up the stairs. Hands grubby Because of all the bar tops and lamp posts and dirty whores he touched As he staggered home. Keep your hands to yourself. I am tired of repainting. Silver Footprints I take steady strides Unaware of dew on pant cuffs. Bending grass and flowers both As my feet leave silver footprints Which disappear and give no sign of how I shall return. The sun is on my nape And the breeze arrives in time to spur me on. Taking steady strides. Dew on pant cuffs. Sun and breeze. Silver footprints. I shall return. Read the poetry of Ellen Conserva Read a profile of Ellen Conserva A New Poem From Poet Kathleen Everett Kathleen Everett
it's not the weight but how you carry it its not the weight but how you carry it loaded onto your back like a pack mule or ahead of you wheel barrowing down the lane no it’s more how you think and feel and digest all manner of thoughts and feelings how your tongue feels as you voice those longings and fears or maybe how your lips part when you sing a love song or maybe it’s just that everything we think is heavy is just as light as a feather it’s all in how you carry it rising balloons tied to a string or tied to your heart maybe you are light hearted and drawn to whimsy and mirth or maybe glum and in need of a digestif or a good hearty pat on the back maybe you are light on your feet dancing up a storm or a jig or a pas de deux balancing between sky and earth its all a balancing act, you know we are not merely players on a stage but acrobats and clowns following the gypsy caravan with all our worldly goods tucked into our backpacks or pushed along in our barrows light hearted or not its all in how you carry it Read the poetry of Kathleen Everett Read a profile of Kathleen Everett Anne Graue Writes About The Forgotten One Anne Graue
Forgotten Her body felt unnatural under a forest canopy in Western Kenya. Dewy grass slapped her ankles wet and shiny; her leather sandals liquefied sliding her feet forward as she walked behind the two men-- sie Deutsch sprechen-- ignoring her. They stopped amid the tallest trees in Kakamega, the language musical to her; it mesmerized her so that she hardly noticed the crawling on her feet, her toes; they laughed-- sie mich vergessen haben-- began to walk toward the cabin. She looked down, stared at safari ant pincers, oblique exoskeletons, ant-creatures traveling roundabout her ankles, her legs bare beneath her skirt. Sensing her panic, they began to feast on her skin--wet, slippery, and right in their path. Read the poetry of Anne Graue Read a profile of Anne Graue Sherry Chandler's Lyrical "Feeding the Birds" Sherry Chandler
Feeding the Birds I watch you fill the feeders — raveled threads hanging from your out-at-elbows coat -- birds, squirrels, raccoons, the lame stray cat, you brave the wind and rain to see them fed. Hands dripping suds, I watch you, head and nape swaddled in your shapeless black sock cap -- its weave a snarl of lathe shavings, chisel chips. Coat and cap, your wing bars, your crown stripes. When our wide-mawed nestlings squawked for nurture I fancied I was caged by need. I fought -- a swift come down the flue and caught -- flinging against this window toward free air. No cage, of course, but my own hungering to stay, though I starved in the staying. Read the poetry of Sherry Chandler Read a profile of Sherry Chandler Now on VerseWrights: Sejla Srna Sejla Srna
Dwarves II I will endure all heartbreaks you are responsible for, because you are the person I envisioned when I decided to let myself breathe. You are the cliche-boy, with scruffy hair and skinny arms, and eyes big enough to replace the moon. I will never tire of writing of you, no matter how angry it makes me; You will forever be my poem, my book, my unsent letters, the words in my fingers, the epic in my bones. You are naive, and gullible - Forever lost in rivers of blue-eyed girls that think you are their’s. Forever lost in your mother’s arms, and your father’s unspoken love. I found you in a forest, I found you on a bench and let you find home in my eyes. When you pull apart the pillars I will build it back up with limbless trees, and keep you safe behind eyelash-curtains. Read the poetry of Sejla Srna Read a profile of Seija Srna A Poem From John Alwyine -Mosely (With Reading) John Alwyine-Mosely
A dead man when a tree cries ☊ 1 The Dead Man when a tree cries The dead man never wakes to the wail of a ghost frighten by the spite of a tree. For pines have no time for ghosts but a dead man can sit in any branch with or without candles. As flames are ghosts of trees the candles are never lit. The moon if big and bright makes trees cry and ghosts like that. Each tree gathers darkness from the earth and twists it with dead man laughter, spiced with kisses taken without love. Ghosts know this cold blackness and scream for what they lost but the dead man sleeps. 2 More on The Dead Man when a tree cries Dead man dreams are never of trees shaking away the moon. Ghosts leave no footprints by the seashore where the dead man waits for a boat of sun making water molten brass. The trees shaved and shorn are there as the boat pushing the water into fire. Pines cry on the shore but the dead man knows only what is seen and walks on the lines of fire. When a dead man wakes, the circle of trees is always nearer but the ghosts stop laughing. Read the poetry of John Alwyine-Mosely Read a profile of John Alwyine-Mosely Enjoy this poem in the PoetryAloud area From Mary Anne Rojas: A Poem And A Reading
 Mary Anne Rojas
you will want to avoid it ☊ you will want to avoid it but someone you love will eventually hurt you you will want to hang each breath on a clothesline watch the sun exhaust the effort each gasp came from but this will not be enough to calm the wound, to stop the weeping. You will believe every part of you is a plane crash, midair against thousands of birds- each feather will need a funeral. in between prayers for air you will remember how you brought him the sun in tea cups and late night massages, how the wrinkle of his smile resembled the circumference of a sliced lemon. he will not give you a straight answer to why your company is not needed anymore. but you will not accept it. you will remember how you fight for your black skin, protect her from the evil world of oppression. You will travel back to your first rally, how you chanted vigorously for a better world-a different kind of love, a new love that would sustain everything around you. and for that, you will remember you need people. he will suddenly look like a people. the mirror will try to convince you that you fail to love another. you will disagree. the clothesline suddenly will stop quivering and you will call him. you will fight for the good love. ask for an answer. and remind him that you love yourself more at that moment. and hope to always know when you need to love yourself, bring the fear out of each tear like the spill of blood from an opened cut. you will not get aggressive with silence, but stand above sound like that something that wakes you up each morning without an alarm- your body will know when the light arrived. |
Now On VerseWrights: Poet Archana Kapoor Nagpal Archana Kapoor Nagpal
Selected Haiku ripe mangoes on the kitchen table -- scented dawn ❧ child blows a dandelion seed – daylight moon ❧ starry night – jasmine buds drop from her braid ❧ first light-- pelting holy river with marigolds Read the poetry of Archana Nagpal Read a profile of Archana Nagpile Bing, Peggy, And E. Michael Desilets (With Audio) E. Michael Desilets
Bing Guy ☊ My father was a Bing guy, crooning “Where the blue of the night meets the gold of the day,” maybe on his way out the door, or “Please, lend your little ear to my pleas,” while he stood at the stove stirring spaghetti sauce, a dishtowel tucked into his waistband. Yet, every so often: “You had plenty of money in 1922 . . .” Ancient financial history. “But you let other women make a fool of you.” Dad in a blue mood, echoing a dark lady’s lament. “Why don’t you do right, like some other men do?” Then he’d sing solemnly into the simmering sauce: “Get out of here and get me some money too.” I was a resourceful lad, had a bike and paper route money, found the song at Balboni’s Drugs on a 99¢ RCA Camden anthology: Lil Green on vocal, Big Bill Broonzy on guitar. I saw the song was written by Kansas Joe McCoy, Memphis Minnie’s ex-husband. Not the old man’s musical neighborhood. He was a Bing guy. Years later I finally tuned in to the white lady who taught Dad to Do Right: Peggy Lee, Girl Singer and Goddess, holding her own at the mike in front of Benny Goodman’s Orchestra. My father was a Bing guy, but Peggy caught his ear and held on. Peggy. Also my mother’s name: a perfect poetic coincidence. Peggy, spinning Lil Green’s Bluebird 78 in neon hotel rooms on mean rainy Sundays. Something out of Edward Hopper. Something out of Cornell Woolrich. Something out of America the Beautiful and the Cool. Could be he heard it on his sister Viola’s Crosley or on Armed Forces Radio while I was lying in my crib in that Concord Street apartment, my mother reading True Confessions nearby. Peggy and Dad and Lil: a magnificent, melodic ménage a trois. Like Muddy Waters, Lil Green made her way from Clarksdale to Chicago, where she died on my 10th birthday, bequeathing to us the ultimate musical query. Ann Neuser Lederer's Poem, "Two Mowers" Ann Neuser Lederer
Two Mowers A whir of two mowers from angled directions muffle her mutter. We cannot know what she wanted. Her figure wanders farther away towards a leaf flecked path speckled in yellow. It is all so lovely—yet—we do not know her intent. Her few words masked by the mowers’ motors, seemingly competing: troops of tribes bedecked in red feathers, otherwise naked, rangy, pointing their spears. What was it she whispered? Was it for our ears only? Was its mystery serious? Would it reveal all secrets? Once, a phone rang, startling us awake. We would say it had been in the middle of the night, but really it was the dead dark hour of morning. We had thought she would live to be old, but then, at that moment, we doubted those words Read the poetry of Ann Neuser Lederer Read a profile of Ann Neuser Lederer "Ain't Mine Blues," By E. H. Ford: Poem And Video E. H. Ford
ain't mine blues ☊ gettin up sunday mornin comin down blue dress, black thighs ain’t mine; ain’t mine. blue dress, black thighs mornin comin down mornin; comin down. gettin up sunday ain’t mine, ain’t mine blue dress black thighs blue dress; black thighs. getting up sunday mornin comin down ain’t mine ain’t mine ain’t mine, ain’t mine gettin up; Sunday. "The Party," A New Poem From Marsailidh Groat Marsailidh Groat
The Party I press my face to a window, my breath clouding the glass, warm with confusion, and watch the people inside. Their marble faces morph before me, laughter grotesque and indulgent, as they sip champagne from goblets rimmed with extravagance - And why not? We all crave beauty. I love the feel of luxury against my skin. Should I try, with all the might of a child learning to run, to break this frame, this veneer? And, if my skin should not tear, take a sip, sharp and new, like the white wine in my orange juice poured by my grandmother; a taste I didn’t understand? I came here from a simpler place, clumsy and honest; the affliction of youth. Did I learn this vulgarity, hone it, till I became an insider looking on? I still tremble; but not as much. Here, a face turns to me, warm, welcoming. Cold, calculating. Come in, it says, enjoy the party. Read the poetry of Marsailidh Groat Read a profile of Marsailidh Groat VerseWrights Welcomes Poet Helen McCarthy Helen McCarthy
Haiku Bone dry stems stand tall Amid new growth – skeletons At spring’s waking-feast. ❧ Spring shoots from cold ground, Shyly, like a welcome guest Arriving early ❧ Silence howls and shrieks Muffling life’s small echoes, like Distant radio ❧ Fingers black with earth, Serene and proud my mother Planting the summer ❧ Read the poetry of Helen McCarthy Read a profile of Helen McCarthy A New Poem From Poet Debbie Strange Debbie Strange
Drive By Idlers and sidlers loiter behind the neighbourhood bar. Trash tumbleweeds skitter down the lurking alley. Plastic bags shroud the staggering fence. Old news roots around in the gritty gutters. Glinting shards of thirsty glass stab the oil-kissed pavement. Ominous shadows proposition pale circles of light. Graffiti gargoyles scream silent profanities, but not as loudly as the savage with brutal boots stomping a writhing head into blood’s dark pool - dealing death on the hostile street. Distant sirens keening. We drive by. Read the poetry of Debbie Strange Read a profile of Debbie Strange Two Short Poems From The Pen Of Liam Porter Liam Porter
Simply Static
Tune in, they said, but all I found was static. Crackling, crispy scrunched up musings. A ball of wrinkled, jagged paper rolling around my head. I twist and turn, search for clarity and try to escape the train of thought, dopplering as it sped that scratchy, hissing fizz screaming ever louder through my mind. But I am on, a different wavelength. Would that lovely silence come, if I simply pulled the plug? Switched off. For I am out of tune. Scratched Out Day I have scratched out, another day. Peeled away layer after layer. Tearing through, digging deeply, until each task was finally, done. But those long hours have left their pulpy, soft, sappy residue under my fingernails. So, I sit at my keyboard and try, to scrape it all away. Read the poetry of Liam Porter Read a profile of Liam Porter A New Poem from Poet Mark Windham Mark Windham
A Regular Customer We all recognize him — tips well, never rude or demanding, nothing complicated in his order — when he comes in, by himself late in the afternoon. He sits at a table facing the sea and takes his time ordering. The food may be different — today it is oysters – but he always drinks red wine. The surf holds his attention, and I often notice him following the progress of the beach walkers as they fill the void between land and waves. It is rare for him to have more than two drinks, always saving the last swallow for a toast to the sunset before he leaves. Today, there is no sun, and the storms in his eyes are a perfect match to those on the horizon. Read the poetry of Mark Windham Read a profile of Mark Windham Marie Anzalone's Love Song At Morning
 Marie Anzalone
what I write My mouth says good morning. My fingers type good morning. My hands write good morning. and what I mean by good morning could not be interred in a hundred years' writing by all the best novelists in Europe and North America. you might as well try to fit a quasar inside of a light pen. When I say good morning, I mean that this day I awoke smiling because your feet walk in my world I placed my hand upon my heart and imagined it, yours. I drew breath and thought I tasted you in my air I ran my hands down my sides using your fingertips I touched between my thighs and was warmed by your heat. I remembered dreaming pink roses and wanted to paint them in oils, in dewy soft understated brilliance, for you. As with so many other things I could find to tell you, if I tried. How inevitable annihilation is less scary if some part of you, would remember me; how golden light and morning mist make me want to be lost in a forest primeval, with you. How sometimes I am so certain you are there, I feel your weight shift off the mattress when I return to this world. And how none of this is anything I could ever actually say to you. So instead, I simply write, with a fond mental caress: good morning, my friend. Read the poetry of Marie Anzalone Read a profile of Marie Anzalone |
A New Poem From Poet Sarah Russell, "Reunion" Sarah Russell
Reunion For fifty years she wrote to Yolanda in foreign prose, sharing secrets as she once did walking home from school. Argentina and girlhood a lifetime ago. Reality: three kids, then grandkids, a troubled husband, an aging mother, an Arkansas farm. Yet every letter promised that someday she'd return. Now they are on the tarmac in Mendoza, stooped, with the uncertain step of age. Words catch in their throats as their hands caress the other's cheeks, wipe away the other's tears, and their eyes see only the girls they were – their secrets safe. Read the poetry of Sarah Russell Read a profile of Sarah Russell We Welcome Poet Michael Allyn Wells To VerseWrights Michael Allyn Wells
Visions in Red In the night of my many sighs I see the roofs of our village rushing with red. I sit along the way pretending not to see my wedding day this way. I am both in my own view but along the way as well, my bouquet in hand but I smell nothing though the taste of copper is strong in the air like I'm sucking on coins. My groom stands over us all and ladles the blood of every Passover on us all - even the Jew we call the Christ. I am clothed and yet nakedly vulnerable before my groom, before God, before the whole of the town. [This ekphrastic poem is based on the painting The Red Roofs, by Marc Chagall, 1954]. Click on the painting for a larger view.
VerseWrights Welcomes Poet R.H. Mustard To Our Pages R.H. Mustard
Mirage The wind arrives late at night, blowing sand across the highway of my dreams, like snow drifting in my headlights, beckoning even the most hesitant to follow. Some say it's a warning we will never quench our enormous thirst, will keep driving into the heart of the desert, forever searching, our parched lips, mouthing now only a hollow. meaningless sound. We drive for hours into nowhere, seeing billboards for newly built homes, available somewhere in the mirage ahead, disappearing as we draw near. White lizards scramble across the road, so supremely adapted, they know we're just an illusion, like all the others who came before. Read the poetry of R. H. mustard Read a profile of R. H. Mustard New Poems From Poet Bauke Kamstra Bauke Kamstra
Walking through the trees a bird hopping from pine to spruce keeping pace telling me stories selling dreams of flight. ❧ In the city the dark broken by lighted streets eating stars except those few I've saved for you. ❧ High above the bowl of salt that was once a lake the small shadow of a hawk. Read the poetry of Bauke Kamstra Read a profile of Bauke Kamstra Leslie Philibert: Two Poems About The Poem... Leslie Philibert
What is Happening to You Now Light from this page; the bleached wood Reflects; the cornea bends the wisdom, the Iris breathes each syllable and the retina sees All.Each phrase runs down the optic nerve Like a scalded cat in a greased alley. A banged-up neuronal room closed, locked And strange. What you started to read a few seconds ago has fallen apart and then been Joined again. Lights over the horizon; a reaching out, a new moment; a healing. The Lost Poem Shoved in a jacket, a folded heart a breakage of notes about the body fascism. Nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben ist barbarisch. So sing then a song about Oswiecim, about the ice on the Sola, about Silesian firs, tell me the story of a train hanging under the stars, late from Hannover. Tell me in hushed words about a hole in a roof, about rushed concrete, about the sinking to ash. Then throw this poem into the Sun. No paper can carry this weight Read the poetry of :Leslie Philibert Read a profile of Leslie Philibert A Welcome To Our Newest Poet: Kendra Ballesteros Kendra Ballesteros
The Night We Heard The Wolves Howl I took his little hand & led him to the back porch. Moon shining bright - frothy, misty sheen of of clouds floating whimsically. Both in awe Standing in our moment we heard the call. Not just one. We heard them all. He looked up at me smiling as bright as the lunar glow He reared back his head letting out a throaty howl. I Letting out my own. Trippin' P to the T S keeps getting me trippin' on the D Damn Damn Damn Not again Read the poetry of Kendra Ballesteros Read a profile of Kendra Ballesteros Rowyda Amin's Mock Epic Poem, "Barbies, Please!" Rowyda Amin
Barbies, Please! A golden bird keeps you from crossing the fourth wall of the Dreamhouse. Swivel-necked Barbies, do not worship the bird and its glittering solvents. Bury it in the centre of the earth. O shining calves! O breast-precious transmuters! Put on your pink space suits. It is dripping golden feathers that smolder. Do not be afraid of mirrors. Find the bird and beat it beyond the death of stars with your tennis rackets and skis. Wear your Malibu sunglasses, and a sidelong glance. Beat the glowing trail from your stick-on carpets. You’re the line in China, Barbies, do not wait for your Kens, your princes without fear. The fury of the air! The golden rain outshines your chandeliers and tiki lights. Hear the crash of your pink elevator. Kick off your plastic mules, Barbies, and run tip-toe down the spiral staircase before you singe. Barbies, can’t you hear, outside, the Dream Horses prance restless in their pen? Read the poetry of Rowyda Amin Read a profile of Rowyda Amin jacob erin-cilberto's Latest Is A Metaphorical Struggle jacob erin-cilberto
Posing for a Poetic Portrait the clever metaphor went to work as usual hoping for a wisp of genius to procure a spot with new contract a raise in pay and a chance for promotion to a new poem but went home that night still riding the cliche train pretentiously written off as just another lame attempt at applicable aptitude by the uninspired poet to advance without qualification to a level suitable for framing Read the poetry of jacob erin-cilberto Read a profile of jacob erin-cilberto Two Short Lyrics From Poet Kim Talon Kim Talon
The Curl of Dark Hours are numbered the same but the light is uneven dark curls around day and holds tight Sun bows her head admitting defeat letting candlelight battle gloom-- and valiant flame-keepers pierce the darkness like stars in a night sky Undone All of the words I did not say things I could have—should have—said if only I could shape consonants and vowels but I'm stuck in the silence before language unable to summon knowledge of speech swallowing the unspoken choking on shards of the words I did not say splinters of remorse and regret Read the poetry of Km Talon Read a profile of Kim Talon VerseWrights Welcomes Poet Charles Bane, Jr. Charles Bane, Jr.
Two It defies logic so Beautifully, this love. Fall my love and I will Rake the leaves. For My Son I will not waiver or protest that the wait is hard to bear; The parent-to-be is patient for the child he cannot see, knowing that eternity is rounding unknown seas to fishing nets. My beloved, I wait. I stand upon the beach, my arms are wide, you must swim to the sound of me and lights undreamed. We shall be coins of sides alike and sleep together in the shade. You are the growing length of me that lays upon a floor of leaves and says, there is no end to light or closing of the day. There are only clarions that pierce the dark with mirror songs like these. Read the poetry of Charles Bane, Jr. Read a profile of Charles Bane, Jr. Heather Feaga Offers Two Lyrical Poems
 Heather Feaga
Cotton A lick A love a taste Pursed lips Holding the kiss In the reds of her skin Her fingers gather Free Across his arm Over her hip Landscape wet Sweetened condensation Tight warm hills Shed their cotton Free Breathing in sun Melting her Waterfall sheer Dropped to him Measured pulse Each breath Free Slivers Like a sliver I will sleep In the crevices of night Like the night I will slip Into her shallow openings Like her I will seep the colors of day Across the tips of my fingers Like fingers I will discover How to move you Freely Like freedom I will blindfold you And lick you clean Read the poetry of Heather Feaga Read a profile of Heather Feaga |