Archive #18
December, 2014
A Metaphor For Us All: Jacqueline Czel's "The Honeybee" Jacqueline 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" Shan 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 Stefanie 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 
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 Richard 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 Jessica 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) Jerry 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" Witty 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 Edjo 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 John 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  Natalie 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
 John 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 Kathleen 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 Charlie 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... jacob 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 E. 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
Johannes Bjerg
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 Robert 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 Reka 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" David 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 E. 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 Neil 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 Amauri 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 Bethany 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 Milenko 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 Lauren 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... Kelli 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 Ali 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" 
Cathedrals: Two Poems From Katherine Gallagher Katherine 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"
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" Ana 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 Michael 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 Kristin 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 |