VERSEWRIGHTS
  • Welcome
  • All Poets
  • PoetryAloud
  • Inbox Peace
  • The Press
  • Journal Archives


Archive #18
December, 2014

A Metaphor For Us All: Jacqueline Czel's "The Honeybee"

PictureJacqueline Czel
      The Honeybee

      Towards
      my hive,
      I drive,
      I drive,
and all too often
I sit and wait
in traffic,
and at
slow red lights
and behind
archaic life forms
called,
retired old ladies
that
make me late.

Towards
my honey comb
I speed,
I speed,
a worker
who wads up
bits of padded
paper,
and attends
buzzing meetings,
to pay for
a vassal's needs.

Towards
my colony
I race,
I race,
pass
my busy swarm
and
across
the sticky,
grey carpet
to find
my cubed place.

Towards
my waffle,
I fly,
I fly,
winged ideas
fanning others
as I productively;
chew
and spit,
and
chew,
and spit,
re-purposed nectar
until the day
I slow,
I slow,
and die.

Read the poetry of Jacqueline Czel
Read a profile of Jacqueline Czel



Shan Ellis Gives Us Her New Poem, "Crumble"

PictureShan Ellis
Crumble

No instruction booklet.
Fumbling in darkness, awkward
like thirty something year old babes
listening for the knowing click
of the child proof lids.

A little adrenaline perhaps?
our hands found each other
caressed, explored
strange, estranged
strangely shy without
urge of teenage hormones
driving.

Entice,
slowly inhaling
wafts of warm
citrus skin
heart rages
breath ceases

Lips crease

Crumble

Read the poetry of Shan Ellis
Read a profile of Shan Ellis


In Her New Poem, Poet Stefanie Bennett Mourns A Loss

PictureStefanie Bennett
   Temperance: Osip Mandelstam

   Most gracious is 
   Your head-standing
   In Heaven
   — Leaf of the outer limits.

Grave is the perpetual
Rhythm cup
That drips 
"Tristia's" black resin.

Ever near is
The pilgrim
Undulating
The Arcanum lore...

And tender is
This Earth
Learning 
To weep

Without you.

Read the poetry of Stefanie Bennett
Read a profile of Stefanie Bennett


Picture
Read the story of the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam. You can read some of his poems in translation here.


We Welcome Poet Richard Biddle To The Pages Of VerseWrights

PictureRichard Biddle



  Barefoot

  Slowly padding over
  weather-worn pebbles.
 
Every curve or jut
nudging my exposed tread
with its knotted emotions,
like knuckles kneading dough.

They are the dead
these sea-shaped stones.
Each carved capsule
a body's history.

I want to swallow them all.

 
I pick up a green one
Drop it on my tongue
Toss back my head
Gulp and its gone


One for joy
One for grief
One for a brief glimpse

of a forgotten moment.

I grind these feelings
beneath my bare feet
and stare at the sun's
departing white glare
blinding myself.

Nothing here is real.
 
This path.
This passing.
These waves

crushing and crashing.

One for fear
One for bliss
One for pain
One for loss
 
I step and step and step
and step.

 
All becomes sand.
My walk softens.


Read the poetry of Richard Biddle
Read a profile of Richard Biddle



Jessica L. Davis: Haiku and Shorter Poems

PictureJessica L. Davis

     sun loses height
     into black hungry arms
     her east darkens 


        ❧

                    when it is enough
                    to be held by blue perfection
                    Michigan's moon

                              ❧

                Morning Blush

                    sun spokes
                    through pines’ lashes
                    kiss her eyelids
                    and color each cheek 


Read the poetry of Jessica L. Davis
Read a profile of Jessica L. Davis



Jerry Danielsen's Poem, "The Little Chair," (With Video)

PictureJerry Danielsen

The Little Chair

    Held up a man
    who spoke to himself
    as he typed
    into a laptop

And the little wooden chair
didn't know about
circuitry
or words
or Starbucks

And she wondered
why these things
are more important
than her mother tree

Just so a man
can sit on her
while talking to himself
bewildered


Enjoy this poem in the PoetryAloud area
Read the poetry of Jerry Danielsen
Read a profile of Jerry Danielsen

Witty Fay Gives Us Her New Poem. "Eudaemonia"

PictureWitty Fay


Eudaimonia

This is a gracious lesson
On how to love me less,
For in soothing you,
My heart shall no longer
Crave the beat of the day.
First, bury my face
Under piles of other stories,
Eye-catching and promising.
Fade my eyes into oblivion,
Breaking the sockets open,
And wasting their glow.
Sprinkle salt on all
My nakedness,
So that the taste of me
Shall no longer numb your days.
Shape me into 
A cunning, all-too-loving
Creature of the flesh and silver.
As for the heart 
-mine or yours-
Smoke it into cinders,
And wither the flame 
Into clouds of fire flies.
Yes, pick a summer night,
For the morning shall clad
Me into a burst of glee,
And your freed spirit
Shall be my reward.


Read the poetry of Witty Fay
Read a profile of Witty Fay


A New Lyrical Poem From Poet Edjo Frank

PictureEdjo Frank


Failure

I touch her lily skin

she feels cold, I feel rejected
sweat beads on my arms
no final words are said
leaving helplessness behind

no sound, no movement
bedroom frozen in sunbeams
my eyes rest on the field bouquet
showing shameless beauty
instead of dreadful mourning

a snakelike flower smiles
I tear the white petals
the nakedness of her yellow heart
looks at me, bewildered
in the palm of my hand

horror screams escape my breast
drift silently on the wind
to shores I know of former times
where innocence saturates the soul
and love knows no restraints

I take my coat, I close the door
fists clenched in pockets deep
emphasize the failure of a row
the body has a way ahead
the mind ceased long ago


Read the poetry of Edjo Frank
Read a profile of Edjo Frank


Two Short Poems From Two VerseWrights Poets

PictureJohn Alwyine-Mosely







The Circle Turns

        ~ by John Alwyine-Mosely

I'm from a village built on blood and sweat so the old ones say
where mother and father played at weekend love
and kids sniffed out the lonely to hold with terrier teeth.

Friends were made by page and word
to talk away the bruise and make
shouts a war cry in distant lands.

Today, that past is embers 
ready to burn bright a page or word
so the old ones say.


Read the poetry of John Alwyine-Mosely
Read a profile of John Alwyine-Mosely

PictureNatalie Keller

A Wrong Interpretation
     ~ by Natalie Keller

The kind of rain she stands in
requires no umbrella; her job,
simply, to get soaked -
mine, to write about it.
The elements love her, love to know
that someone like her exists.
My pen loves her,
loves to know that a love
like that is worth existing.
The storm is her monologue;
the world spends its time wrongly
interpreting it, but she forgives it
enough to go on repeating.


Read the poetry of Natalie Keller
Read a profile of Natalie Keller


Sensory Memory Drives This Lyrical Poem By John Blair

PictureJohn Blair

Cowgirl Cinnamon Rolls


Margaret, you stoke the cook stove
fragrant pine kindling, radiant tinder
shiny black coal

I saddle the wheeled bier
with your plain pine casket
and remember cowgirl cinnamon rolls

you hold out your palms
olive face unwrinkled 
dark eyes serene

your breath crimson, your hair
an ebony streaked gray
cascading down your back

the well-brushed sheen
shares vermilion hues
with sunrise 

hand fans
from mortician’s plump wife
flutter like roped butterflies 

warm milk dawns pink
mixed with flour, you push down
and knead

my turn to pull, fold, flatten
it feels alive, fluid
purring

sweaty mourners
battle unbridled
sobs together

we sprinkle sugared raisins
roll the long end
find a thread to cut rounds

a winged white Cadillac
moseys lariat curves
you lead us to the cemetery

yeast and cinnamon
begged from the oven
warm and sticky rolls

where patiently
you linger
briefly

Read the poetry of John Blair
Read a profile of John Blair



A Not So Seasonal Poem, From Kathleen Rogers

PictureKathleen Rogers
  




 
Carol's Christmas

Ghost of Christmas Past

 
Hanging up my Christmas stocking
Angry with my mother’s mocking   
 
Neighbors gathering and gawking 
Mother’s body cops are chalking 
 
She won’t laugh again
She won’t laugh again
 

Ghost of Christmas Present
 
Daughter sparkles hope and light 
Our beloved Christmas sprite
 
Christmas Eve a joyful night
Christmas day is her delight
 
She won’t hurt at all
She won’t hurt at all
 

Ghost of Christmas Future
 
Left behind and all alone 
Christmas in a nursing home
 
Far away my child has grown
Busy family of her own
 
Please just pull the plug
Please just pull the plug 


Read the poetry of Kathleen Rogers
Read a profile of Kathleen Rogers


"His Voice," A New Poem From Charlie Brice

PictureCharlie Brice

His Voice
           ~for Phil Druker

Tea warms my throat
brings belonging     grounding
the sense of home--
 
but does Phil, dying
of cancer, feel this?
Does a man loosed
by morphine
know or care
about the pleasures
of home? Or is he
 
leaving home     waiting
to abandon that alluvial
gobbet called “I,”
that rickety shack of self
once strong and stark
now disappearing   
like the shimmer 
from a highway baking
in the sun?
 
The countdown     the march
beating drum     down
of a ticking clock     thread
that leaves the spool bare.
 
We hadn’t spoken for forty years.
Now his voice isn’t
his own, but a timbre
of unimaginable suffering:
the sonorous dissonance
of anti-nausea meds--
no longer his voice,
but that voice.

Read the poetry of Charlie Brice
Read a profile of Charlie Brice


jacob erin-cilberto Returns, With His Newest Poem...

Picturejacob erin-cilberto
   





the writing on the wall

vigilante poem
with jangling syllables in its pocket
in a dark subway station---
the flashing figurative language
posing an enticing threat

we get hammered on rhyme
then drop a dime in the slot
to take the ride
mugged by morose meaning
hidden under a trench coat
of tyrannical rants

i saw you get off, carrying your terse verse
beneath spelunking semantics
knowing it wasn't the dangerous city of cause
you were scared of,

it was that the train might pause
at my station,
and you were afraid you might aim
your love at me

and pull the trigger.

Read the poetry of jacob erin-cilberto
Read a profile of jacob erin-cilberto


E. Michael Desilets Captures One Moment in Dublin

PictureE. Michael Desilets

Dream Girl

There were a few old copper coins
on the cardboard, a flat piece of waste
from The Dessert Place.  The girl's
feet were bare and grimy, her gritty eyes
the color of the river, the coins,
the shawl draped forever over her
grandmother's head. 
 
The crossing was deserted now,
but the buses would be unloading soon
a block away, and the ensuing jingle-jangle
of coin on the carton would take her mind
away from the cold.  She stuck her thumb
into her bucktoothed face and tried
to burrow into the old woman's
bony lap.
..........Today the river made no noise. 
Later, she thought, she would walk on the water
as far as the Ha'penny Bridge.  It would be dark
then, the fog laced with ice, trash rattling
in the alleys, after her grandmother slid
back from the bake shop muttering as always
about magpies.


Read the poetry of E. Michael Desilets
Read a profile of E. Michael Desilets

Johannes Bjerg Returns With An "Ocular" Poem

Picture
Johannes Bjerg
Picture
Artwork for "Gondola" by Johannes Bjerg
Gondola

sleep well
world

a dry rustling of wings
against the windows
of my eyes

those lakes
I couldn't swim in
but wherein the sun
and the stars threw
bits of themselves
to blind me

in this hall
the night is
there's an organ playing
the deep notes only
it's the basic web
of darkness
surrounding, nay, besieges
the budding lotus
in the seahorse's pond

'keep your mind in hell
and fear not' he said
staring at his saviour
through the demons
filling his cell

with a fraction of his faith
I could get out of bed
and into the gondola
going down the lachrymal canal
under the Bridge of (my) Sighs

in a corner of my room
a spider plays his mandolin
in praise of tiny flies
and God's saints
in a very
Italian way

all is good

Read this poem in a bilingual presentation
Read the poetry of Johannes Bjerg
Read a profile of Johannes Bjerg\


Robert King Lets Us In On The Secret

PictureRobert King


The Secrets of Children

We were always wanting to find
the secret, a secret, some such thing
as secret. Gloried in our hiding,
the way children will, where no one
knew, invisible in our holes,
our bushes, woods, under the porch.


Gleeful, we giggled at the way
the world went on, oblivious
we were gone. This was funny then.
We didn’t realize that was how
it would always be. We’d found
the secret. And didn’t know it. 


Read the poetry of Robert King
Read a profile of Robert King

Reka Jellema's "Hunkered," With a Reading By J Matthew Waters

PictureReka Jellema





Hunkered  ☊

we hunkered down in the unholy holes behind newsprint
sleeves rolled all Wall Street
all auto mechanic
all greased & slicked
we hack-sawed concrete sidestepped knapsacks
asleep on park benches
we fouled pinafores spoke in pinpricks
pacifiers planted in pie-holes
we watched you evanesce with panache
we watched cocked and maned we watched
one thumb with silvery polish roll into a ditch
tin can cocktail weenie
someone said
pickled punks
someone said
boiled pigs feet
we hunkered down in a moshpit of unclaimed legs 
& crumpled bits
labia in pubic nests
ear lobe potato chips
a wad of chewed bubble gum
smeared lips
the color red
no one will ever read this
someone said
turn it off
your boy spilled Tinker Toys
dropped an f-bomb
we eye-rolled handed off
the remote

we tuned in
we hunkered down -- hamboned the gig
riffed & licked
cat-gutted it
chopped chords heads rolled spurt spurt
a kneecap snapped like a forest twig
we jukeboxed -- hair stiff on her cheek
an eye adrift sky-ward as-if
oh heavens above
someone said
while the doc dug earth from a socket with a toothpick
we hunkered down dirt-nailed hammered-home
wanted something to stick
in our hole
stop-gap
what we did to fill ourselves
what we did
carefully tread
missed our femurs our metatarsals
we missed our spleens our tongues our tonsils
we off-handed those harelipped kids
those kids flew into the vast indifference
those kids landed piecemeal
the Barbies we threw splayed
and indecent


Read the poetry of Reka Jellema
Read a profile of Reka Jellema
Read the poetry of J Matthew Waters
Read a profile of J Matthew Waters

David Chorlton's Latest Poem, "Okay"

PictureDavid Chorlton







Okay

Two men cast a single shadow
at noon on Fifteenth Avenue. They could
be balancing at oblivion’s edge;
 
the younger struggling to support
his friend as they slow dance to the sound
the traffic makes, passing the waste lot
 
where at first they appear to be fighting
but anyone close can see the effort
one makes to keep the other on his feet,
 
raising him by the arms before
he lets them go and stands back
while the other stumbles forward
 
with his legs growing shorter at each
of the five steps he attempts
before he is on his knees and unable to stop
 
his face from touching down
between dead grass and stones.
He rolls to one side, revealing his eyes
 
which roll as he is lifted again
and stands with his palms
open to receive the blessing of the sky
 
before his knees give way and it changes
place with the ground, the bus stop circles
his head, the double yellow lines peel
 
away from the middle of the road
and wind around the sun as it tumbles
to the pavement. No one on the street
 
appears concerned. I approach the men, venturing
a question as to the fallen one’s wellbeing
and offering to call Emergency. The upright one
 
takes a deep breath before the next lift,
his strength clearly challenged, but his patience
intact. He’ll be fine, he says, hauling the weight
 
with one arm now around his shoulder
as a labourer might carry a gunny sack.
He’s okay.

Read the poetry of David Chorlton
Read a profile of David Chorlton


How It Was, How It Is: A Poem From E.H. Ford

PictureE. H. Ford
Colorless

Why should city birds bother
to plume and preen?
Uncaring generations of earth ....keepers
have fouled the air so permanently
even they can no longer breathe it.
 
Birds realized this long ago
discarding colorful plumage for
an urban cloak of blue-black.
 
Now you tell me you saw a
white pigeon yesterday,
And I will observe, “Yes, but only one,
to remind us of how the world was meant to be,
before it was paved.”
 
You will nod, cough, and continue
down the path.
I will smile and won’t;
strolling back toward my serene
cottage overlooking the sea.

Read the poetry of E.H. Ford
Read a profile of E.H. Ford



A Dark Metaphor From the Pen Of Neil Fulwood

PictureNeil Fulwood






Platform Zero

This is not Adlestrop. No birds singing
and whether the dull parallel of the rails 
ends up in Oxfordshire or Gloucestershire
is anyone’s guess. It’s dark and I can’t see

the end of the platform. It rained earlier. 
The service was delayed shortly after 
the view stopped being worth the gift of sight. 
Two hours between a sewage treatment plant

and a haulage yard and it wasn’t even like
the trucks were those big gleaming rigs
you’d imagine hauling dangerous loads
across Alaska. Now I’m here, standing 

on platform zero and it’s either the railway 
equivalent of Bruckner’s 'die Nullte' or
my second-class Twilight Zone ticket
has brought me to the start of a journey

I never took. Either way, the café’s closed.


Read the poetry of Neil Fulwood
Read a profile of Neil Fulwood


Greet Our New Poet On VerseWrights: Amauri Solon

PictureAmauri Solon

The Goldfinch

A goldfinch
gently landed on my window sill

I woke up
and sat on my wheelchair
near the window
 
a clear invitation for a chat
came about
then occurred a long
conversation
 
We chatted on and on
about things that matter
and trifling events that do not
 
We chatted about trees
high branches and flowers

a long argument arose
about flight
quite well settled an hour later

flying at dawn
right in the direction of the rising sun
or at early night moon-bound
that was the question
 
We chatted about forests and rivers
at winter time, spring, summer and fall
autumn leaves or green grass
multi-coloured flowers or snowwhite fields

oh, long lost hours of quiet conversation
no preferences established
ending in harmonious
consensus
 
We chatted on animals in general
and men
furry wild beasts, featherly creatures, crawling ones
and galloping horses
small and large
tiny and tall

singing birds and men
not so easy to talk about
subtle glances exchanged
said it was break time
 
friendly farewell
both of us parted

the goldfinch took a straight up flight

I whirled my wheelchair
back to bed
weeping


Read the poetry of Amauri Solon
Read a profile of Amauri



Bethany Rohde's Poem Adds Perspective To This Day

PictureBethany Rohde
  





Over the Crowd

The slow work of defrost now fans across 
my breath-covered windshield. 
I force my hands deeper down 
into their pockets. Fingertips jam 
against the receipt-scraps of my evening.

I catch some movement through the glass: a girl,
half the height of a Christmas tree.
She's crawling up into a window display
that's advertising: Buy 
one get one free.

Her face is fixed on a tidy pyramid of ornaments.
They almost match her earmuffs 
of candy apple red. 
She's hanging the globes, shoulder to shoulder, on one 
brow-level branch.

With her back to the ever-scrolling crowd 
(which does not see her either) 
she dots the flocked tree with color. 
I leave my car in park.
She's making room for the last of the baubles, 

while occasionally sweeping their price tags
just out of her eyes.

Read the poetry of Bethany Rohde
Read a profile of Bethany Rohde


All New Poems In English And Croation From Milenko Županović

PictureMilenko Županović
    
   




Forgiveness

Bloody thorns
rain has washed
while on the ground
is intact
waiting for God
                           to take it
                           in the arms
                           and forgive
                           those
                           who had it spilled

                  ❧

    Oprost
 
      Krvavo trnje
      kiša je oprala
      dok na zemlji
      stoji netaknuto
      čeka Gospoda svog
      da ga odnese
      u zagrljaju
      oprosti
      onima
      koji su ga prosuli.


Read the poetry of Milenko Županović
Read a profile of Milenko Županović


It Is Between Time In This Poem From Lauren Lola

PictureLauren Lola

Bardo

Blue bay hills appear on the horizon
of the emerging night sky
as the sun fades away
and the rain clouds hang around

The water is still
the city lights twinkling
and the one lone plane
makes its way across the
light yet dark sky

This is a trance between time
a lingering moment between what has come to pass
and has yet to come

There is a word for this in Tibetan
 bardo
"in-between state"

The blue bay hills are visible now
but soon will not be
but they remain without question

All is mission
all is seen
all is tranquilly taken in and accepted

as I stare from this library window

Read the poetry of Lauren Lola
Read a profile of Lauren Lola


From Kelli Russell Agodon's Waltz Series...

PictureKelli Russell Agodon


Slow Waltz on a Hike with Damp Butterflies


What you unwrap is box
of yellowjackets, stinging
nettles, and jellyjars
 
becoming broken glass.
This is not for the cottonhearted.
This is for the man who holds fire
 
between his fingers and calls it love.
We are burnt
toast and prism jam.
 
We are rubbing ourselves with the underside
of a fern trying to make the stinging stop.
There are remedies everywhere--
 
from beekeeper’s honey to handmade soap
—we are what we keep near our skin.
We are the stained
 
towels we carry and the sainted
bohemian monarchs that can’t fly.
Or don’t want to.
 
I place the constellations in my hand, then
complain about the burning. Life sparks,
weighs me down when I am tired.
 
Let’s not say we have rocks
in our pockets. Though I pretend I am
the novelist and you are the river.

Read the poetry of Kelli Russell Agodon
Read a profile of Kelli Russell Agodon


We Welcome Poet Ali Znaidi To The Pages Of VerseWrights

PictureAli Znaidi
Tunisian Desert

Sand soaked
in sleek satin.
Touching it
resembles
kissing
the soft
cheek
of a blonde.
Kissing it--
a paradise
unraveled/
Satan
expelled.


a glass of red wine: a "Vispo"

Picture
Read the poetry of Ali Znaidi
Read a profile of Ali Znaidi

Cathedrals: Two Poems From Katherine Gallagher

PictureKatherine Gallagher


Chartres Cathedral

The spires lean
into the air
touch the blue inside
of the sky
 
lightly
a philosophy
 
a cathedral
about to lift the world
off its knees


The Long Reach Out of War

They will keep restoring the glass
in broken cathedrals
 
to carry the eye and the colours
that were shattered
 


They will keep restoring the stone
in bombed cathedrals
 
to carry the face and the idea
that were crushed
 
 
They will keep carrying the burden
of destroyed cathedrals
 
even as the ashes blow back
 
 
Humanity
keeping faith with itself
even as the ashes blow back
 

Read the poetry of Katherine Gallagher
Read a profile of Katherine Gallagher



Between Two Worlds In Tim Buck's "dazzle"

Picture
dazzle

A boy asleep and turned to dreams

in the backseat of a car on vacation
in 1958 to Lake Greeson in Arkansas...
 
and he wakes up to his father's, “There's the lake!”
 
But he looked out and he saw
from a height and through trees
an unusual thing of a certain blue --
not a color belonging to any water.
 
That plasma hue was beyond Bermuda
or the bright turquoise of South Sea atolls.
 
What he saw was dreamstuff residual
and blended into a moment of waking --
a confusion of worlds, a mystic marriage
of water that lay and layering of marvelous.
 
It never happened again that two dimensions merged.
The boy was caught forever between life and otherness.


Read the poetry of Jim Buck
Read a profile of Tim Buck



Ana Caballero's Latest Poem: "A Notion of Marriage"

PictureAna Caballero






A Notion of Marriage

Because I am a poet,
I read about things like the center of skin.
About warm bodies coming together in the dark,
and how it’s the meaning of life
when someone gets it right.
 
And I know I should write about things
like a moving chest and a naked back.
About the coming together of life in the dark,
about our common desire
and the verbs that it took.
 
And it should be universal,
but personal.
My moving chest, your naked back.
The notion of marriage,
of children, of daily love.
Shrinking rooms
beneath the surface of
different meaning words.
 
But I don’t see the dark jaw
in the night,
or the soft center of touch spring alive.
There is effort and a plan.
There is marriage,
a shrinking room,
daily love,
and a baby that eats time.
 
We do not say flesh when we mean sex.
We say it’s about right.
And, it would be nice.
We confirm how long it’s been
before we ask the other
to get up and make the bedroom
dark.

Read the poetry of Ana Caballero
Read a profile of Ana Caballero 

From New England? A Poem from Michael Lee Johnson

PictureMichael Lee Johnson

If You Find No Poem

If you find
no poem on
your doorstep
in the morning,
no paper, no knock on your door,
your life poorly edited
but no broken dashes
or injured meter
you do not wear white
satin dresses late in life
embroidered with violet
flowers on the collar;
nor do you have
burials daily
across main street,
no one whispers
in your ear, Emily Dickinson-
you feel alone--
but not reclusive--
the sand child
still sleeping in your eyes-
wiping your tears away--
if you find
no poem on
your doorstep-
you know
you are not from New England.

Read the poetry of Michael Lee Johnson
Read a profile of Michael Lee Johnson



VerseWrights Welcomes Poet Kristin Maffei

PictureKristin Maffei






Prehistory

Now, I can’t fathom a New York before roads.
When I read the Wappinger tribes lived 

east of the Hudson to the Taconic Mountains
I see the highway, train tracks

the mall where I bought my first earrings.
I see satellite rivers on computer maps. 

Panting against the cold air,
red-eared, I hiked those hills.

I saw a bear once, and a moose, 
countless turkeys, deer.

On a class trip, we wandered a longhouse in a museum.
Inside a plaster Iroquois woman crouched bare-chested

beside imitation flame, imitation papoose hanging on the ....wall.
I made a model out of spaghetti, coffee grinds, leather ....scraps.

So easy to cook the new world foods: corn, beans, ....squash
but not to imagine the river Mahicanituk

without nuclear power plant on its shores.
Less easy to find arrowheads in your yard

but not impossible – who didn’t hang a dreamcatcher
in their rearview, wear moccasin driving shoes?

Who wasn’t in some way touched
by a feathered headdress set in a gold class ring

or else the man in loincloth dropped from a helicopter
hand to mouth running around the football field?


Read the poetry of Kristin Maffei
Read a profile of Kristin Maffei


Go to Archive Index

​Thank you for visiting Tweetspeak VerseWrights.
© 2012-2018. VerseWrights. All rights reserved.:
Acrostic Poems
Ballad Poems
Catalog Poems
Charlotte Perkins Gilman Poems
Epic Poetry
Fairy Tale Poems
Fishing Poems
Funny Poems
Ghazal Poems
Haiku Poems
John Keats Poems
Love Poems
Math, Science & Technology Poems
Ode Poems
Pantoum Poems
Question Poems
Rondeau Poems
Rose Poems
Sestina Poems
Shakespeare Poems
Ship, Sail & Boat Poems
Sonnet Poems
Tea Poems
Villanelle Poems
William Blake Poems
Work Poems

To translate this page:
  • Welcome
  • All Poets
  • PoetryAloud
  • Inbox Peace
  • The Press
  • Journal Archives