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Archive #19
January, 2015


Poet Cristina Umpfenbach Now On The Pages Of VerseWrights

PictureCristina Umpfenbach

Acoustic Memories

He wakes, aware
of  sound, rhythmic
against the window pane.
 
…. Rain.
 
He cannot see her in the dark.
sprawled beside him.
 
......remembers
 
long legged high breasted beauty.
 
Startled she feels his touch.
Fingers make their way
fumble, explore.
 
 “Touch me” he whispers.
 
She reaches out,
cups him in her hand, gently,
holds his flaccid flesh,
dares not to hope for more.
 
Dementia pierced by sound,
remembrances of touch.
Kind darkness fills the room.
 
The rain stops. He startles,
withdraws deep into the pillows.
Silence sweats with fear.
 
.......he remembers nothing more


Read the poetry of Cristina Umpfenbach
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A New Poem From The Pen Of        J Matthew Waters

PictureJ Matthew Waters
all alleys lead to sand and salt water

walking away from the sunset

shopping for the next place to sleep
eyes remain optimistic of a tomorrow
promising pay

all alleys in this pacific coast city
lead to sand and saltwater
along the way housing is made from
cardboard and wire and unfinished dreams

familiar hopeful faces
unite and welcome the wonders of the day
their hands busily preparing
to feed five thousand


Read the poetry of J. Matthew Waters
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An Offering Of Short Poems From Juliet Wilson

PictureJuliet Wilson





    Admired


Strange how deep under her skin he is.
She only knows him through his distant admiration
across darkened dance-floors and concert halls.

His desire waterfalls down her spine,
unnerves her, his heart’s poetry
troubles her through his hungry eyes.

She finds herself looking out for him,
wonders how much she likes to be admired,
how much she’s learning to admire?


Three Haiku

sharing 
another secret -
unfolding buds. 

                   insomnia -
                   the herring gulls laugh 
                   at the early dawn. 

                                    a snake slithers
                                    across the balcony -
                                    sudden thunder.

Read the poetry of Juliet Wilson
Read a profile of Juliet Wilson


We Extend A Warm Welcome To Poet Victor Perrotti

PictureVictor Perrotti

    




existential crossroads  ☊

we arrive at the crossroads
with baggage in tow
sometimes too heavy, for one person

like frost
when he fled for the dismal swamp
in despair, of a rejected marriage proposal
or van gogh
when he cut off, a piece of his ear
in remorse, of having threatened his friend
— gauguin, with a razor
or you
when you contemplated suicide
in anguish, of believing
the world is a better place without you

comes profound sorrow to consider
i may never have taken
“The Road Not Taken”
i may never have stared into
Starry Night
and i may never have been touched
— by you


Read the poetry of Victor Perrotti
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Charles Bane, Jr.'s "Come, Beloved" (with video)

PictureCharles Bane, Jr.







Come, Beloved  ☊

I am hungry; come soon. I looked
tonight at flames like you upon
the west and jewels winging
home. I hold you in my eyes
when I see what cannot
be stamped again. All the earth
is of a kind but for the rarities
that clamber unknowing of their
gifts on vales of purest light,
and look at the common life
of us in shade. Come beloved,
soon.


Read the poetry of Charles Bane, Jr.
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We Welcome Poet Björn Rudberg To The Pages Of VerseWrights

PictureBjörn Rudberg





  Her Hands are Kites


Her hands are kites that battle over Kabul,
the year before arrival of the talibans
the windows in her hair are dressed in gauze
and in her voice she hides, the seed-pods
that never will be put in fertile soil.
 
She tells a story of her golden child
to silent organs played on empty bottles.
A symphony of Makers Mark and Cutty Sark
of the child with moonlit marbles in his eyes,
her child that left before he stayed.
 
But soon the withered branch will snap
and from the anthill in her flesh she'll rise
to dance with clouds released in habit of defeat,
and from her brow the marigold will bloom
to celebrate the absence of herself.


Read the poetry of Björn Rudberg
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In Robert Nied's New Poem, He Is Out Of Sync, Out of Luck...

PictureRobert Nied




 


Your Face, Disappointed

I sit naked and watch the winter snow
And sharpen the ice scraper in the summer sun.
I drink iced tea in December sip hot soup in July
I read old love letters and forget you said goodbye.
 
I listen to a waltz when my legs are tired and sore
and sing when I can’t hear myself think.
I work the night shift, and sleep through the day
to avoid seeing you turn and walk the other way.
 
I study days upon days for imaginary tests
and arrive precisely for appointments I don’t have.
I never answer the phone and have no machine.
Your face, disappointed, is in all of my dreams.

Read the poetry of Robert Nied
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Debby Strange Shares A "Tanshi:" A Short Poem With Photo-art 

Picture



by the lamp

Picture
PhotoArt by Debbie Strange
                    by the lamp
                    of a full Thunder Moon
                    I wrote this storm
                    with lightning bolts
                    dipped in wells of rain


Read the poetry of Debbie Strange
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Poet Gary Metras Turns To Greek Mythology In His New Poem

PictureGary Metras

The Anonymous Closet

The dark is just the dark
where moons lack phase,
shadow upon faceless shadow.
 
The still air of being minus
the being itself where smile
is indulgence, lips of nothing.
 
Without Helen, no Hektor.
No death, no story. Only
Iphigenia growing old, bitter
in her anonymous closet.
 
An empty mountain throne.
Heroes everywhere silenced.
Slugs slugging along cold stone.
 
Let Briseis shout to all the warriors,
I am no man’s prize as she withers
among dented armor. See:
 
Vultures rising on thermals.


Read the poetry of Gary Metras
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Mark MacDonald Brings Us His Newest Poem, "Phenomena"

PictureMark MacDonald




    

Phenomena

This bird or that—the pigeon just dropped

to the curbside to feed, 
or the Florida Spruce Jay gone nearly extinct?

An event from your childhood you had
hoped to forget—the long vacant house
and the body of the girl
the police took a year to identify.

Fullness, decline, and decomposition--
anything tethered to process or choked in its time.
Salami, foreclosure, or genocide.

This bird or that—the sparrow just flown
from the clothesline to breed,

or the solitude thrush too startled to sing?

Read the poetry of Mark MacDonald
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VerseWrights Warmly Welcomes Poet David Adès

PictureDavid Adès






The House I Built

And if the house I built
gave shelter to you briefly, however briefly,
when you came and cried
about your spurned heart,
 
buried your words in my ears unseeing,
and if sometimes I warmed you
with my fire when all you knew was ash,
and you did not notice the warmth
 
and spoke on with a furrow
between your eyes,
and if my hands never landed
upon your skin, never spoke
 
their speech, their shy longing,
and if our eyes gazed out the open windows
and the roof was nothing but sky,
and if we never grazed each other’s lips
 
except with laughter and with smiles,
and if we harvested hours on a bench
at the Botanical Gardens,
bathed in birdsong and sunlight,
 
and spoke not just to one another
but to the secret chambers
in our hearts, was this not briefly,
however briefly, a house of love?


Read the poetry of David Adès
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Picture

Simon Kindt's Poem Is A Lyrical Lifting

PictureSimon Kindt




 Up, Up, Up


You find yourself complaining that your back
-bent by nothing but the dead weight of your head-
is too old and sore to bend when she lifts her
tiny hands to you and asks you to lift her high.

And there you are- struck dumb and wondering
if your father remembers the last time he
lifted you, whether he knew that this time
(this begged for one more time) would be the last.

And you think of how one day when he is old
and frail and thin with ghosts, you might yet
bend to carry him, from a hospital bed perhaps,
into the fading light, or down into the earth.

And you think of all the lasts that
punctuate this thing that is your life
as she lifts her hands again and your aching
back bends and you raise her to the light.


Read the poetry of Simon Kindt
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Rowan Taw's Latest Poem Depicts A Beautiful Sadness

PictureRowan Taw

She Descends in Sunshine

She sits in sunshine
– not in her private room.

Communal lounge an open space,
fresh air filtering aging staleness,
curtains straining light, a translucent
membrane partitioning her internal
present from her external past.

She’s self-aware. She knows
she won’t remember my name.
She knows that facts are missing,
memories are slipping. She knows
she misses her sons, but how many
she can’t recall.

Her fingers fidget, nails immaculate,
shaped in soft rose enamel,
her daughter’s act of tenderness.
But she would never ask
her children to come.

We talk as others bleat:
baa-baa-baa single syllable
repeats – an adult child returned
to the babbling phase.
The sound fades as staff stall
his daily escape attempt.

We look on, as she looks on
this descent of man,
knowing her own trajectory,
mind falling in slow motion.

We talk of weather, the darkness and
continual rain. She doesn’t believe
in letting it get her down – we must
make our own sunbeams.

So here she sits in sunshine
– not in her private room.


Read the poetry of Rowan Taw
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We Welcome Poet Allison Grayhurst To Versewrights

PictureAllison Grayhurst


 Walks

  Birds are always speaking
  like fleeting lines of poetry--
  these wisps of miracles, dive
  into the schizophrenic’s mind,
his pathway—slow, slow and unthreatening,
they dive, but only people of the bird tribe can hear,
only other animals whose senses are heightened,
whose souls are twofold—raw and divine.
Otherwise, it is dusk and dust and love is held in,
made weak by complications and chaos in the aura.
Otherwise, the child rises from bed with dread linked
to her pyjama lace, already crushed by the world
without an inkling as to why.
Cats crouch and freeze—a culture tied to their nature.
Like them, I am tied to my nature in the way I walk--
feet down, eyes up and waiting
for that one angel to look me in the eyes
and tell me all.

Read the poetry of Allison Grayhurst
Read a profile of Allison Grayhurst


Marianne Paul's New Poem, "leaving tracks"

PictureMarianne Paul


 leaving tracks

 before i die i want to know the tracks
 of the other passersby - wolf, fox
 cougar, bear, deer, jackrabbit
those who have come and gone
before me, the secretive
the memory of their presence
pressed into the softness
of the riverbank
into the dampness of the trail
into the sinking acceptance
of the snow
ghosts to my human eye
although maybe they watch me
even now from the undergrowth
the inner spaces of the trees
and cave openings
camouflaged in plain sight
wearing nature like i wear a coat
the tiny ones too, light on their feet
the scrawls of the chickadees and the chipmunks
the voles and the mice, those that scurry
for safe covering into the thatch and scratch
of the briars, the brave ones that dash
across the open expanse heart beating life and death
risking the shadow overhead
marking the ground
of their passing


Read the poetry of Marianne Paul
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Polly Robinson's Poem Celebrates The "Second Harvest"

PicturePolly Robinson
   





Autumn Equinox

The Welsh God, Mabon, celebrates
when day is equal to night.
Days grow darker,
nights grow longer
the sun’s power dies away.
Vermillion leaves yellow and fade
to amber.
Soak the leaves with paraffin,
inscribe with runes
-set them alight-
Dusk burns
with meadowsweet and myrrh.
Heavy vines, hefted by marching men
soft through town.
The harvest moon illumines
the harvesters’ way
to plentiful bread
and wine, carmine red.
‘Here’s to us and times a’plenty’.
Apple cider cinnamon days,
icy grey pale whey days
to All Hallows’ plight
eating soul cake through the night.
November comes,
gives way to spring,
when young
replenishes old,
the moon will rise twice and more

before…


Read the poetry of Polly Robinson
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"Voice. Word. Verb.," Jillian Parker's Latest Poem

PictureJillian Parker





Voice. Word. Verb.

In my grandmother’s bedroom, a lamp
Blinks, beaming above a rack of shoes.
A voice is a vague chant about a page,
Conjuring shapes from silence.
Hands appear on limbs, grasp the book;
A portcullis of yearning lifts, yawning.

Dust and sun become motes of delight
Thirsting to merge with the gravity
Of music, wondering whether
Someone with searching eyes might gaze
At the meeting-place of water and sky,
Listening for the pitch of melancholy.

In the village, the voice of a poet invokes
aspen leaves, is a melody forgotten by fountains. 
Frozen universes lose their density,
Words unravel for want of a poem,
Feathers of fire-birds plummet from the blue,
Bequeathing their quills into his hands.


Read the poetry of Jillian Parker
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VerseWrights Warmly Welcomes Poet Gail Thomas

PictureGail Thomas

   




Donor

You wear black
now, move to apartments with
people I’ve never met. We drive
through Brooklyn to keep
the date you made
to give marrow to
a stranger.

I can still
feel the child, heavy with sleep, clinging
to my neck, one fist wrapped
around a hank of my hair.

At the hospital your sturdy
legs rise out of blue paper
slippers. After tiny needles,
you take too long to open
your eyes in this room of
worry and wailing.

When you were born I reached
to pull you out, easy as
a slick fish.

At three you hid,
afraid to show the jagged
line of hair hacked off
with will and your own
small scissors.
A doctor watches now.
I hover and stroke
your cheek until
a strong pulse returns.

For months you wonder
what this giving and
taking may have wrought,
the limits of blood.

Read the poetry of Gail Thomas
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A Poem For This Winter From Poet Rosa Saba

PictureRosa Saba





frostbite

april cut into the frozen city
with long fingernail scratches
of running water and suddenly brown gardens
the air fell heavy onto the eaves
of houses eager to open their doors

i stepped out and spoke
into a space filled with spring
guess i was just trying to hurry things along
trying to warm the air
trying to clear the path
trying to make some sense of this transition

the dragging pace at which winter melted away

i stepped out, leaned forward
and spoke
too soon
because the mercury sank back into the glass
rain became needles, trees frosted thread
threatening to sew winter back into the sky
and the air retreated 
into a dull but biting winter chill
as if afraid of my open chest
displaying december's frostbite
and january's cold words

and i apologized silently
to the city and myself
for thinking winter could be defeated so easily


Read the poetry of Rosa Saba
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Dana Rushin: Myth, Anger, and Verse

PictureDana Rushin

Oto

I grew up believing that Pygmies
were little short Americans who,
fed up with cultural materialism,
hid away in jungle overgrowth
 
dressed in what remained of
the animals they beheaded. That they promised
each other, around a still flickering
fire,
 
to kill themselves before returning to
Chicago's south side or Detroit's east
side. Not now. Not with the taste of
the simplier life so fresh.
Not when clean death suggests
a drifting from human to conglomerate
flower cluster,
 
where the dead are not passed away
but departed to the unskeptical land
of deities and truth-tellers. That land where
only serpents die off. Not the daily
processionals of young boys
 
clawing at their neighborhoods
in the brightest blues and reds,
defending the motionlessness of
the impure air, waving 45's
at some mythical foul future; promising
 
revenge in the tiniest of candlelight vigils.
Yet for so long
I understood, reluctantly,
this concept of borrowed space; I mean,
the precepts of being mad. That
 
poetry, when done with aggression,
takes up such little space.

Read the poetry of Dana Rushin
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A New Work From Poet And Artist Diana Matisz

PictureDiana Matisz


"I scour your anatomy..."

Picture
Artwork by Diana Matisz (Click art to enlarge)

I scour your anatomy
for signs of my impact, there
I think I see
the curve of my breast
in the dark combe
of your belly
and is that my cheekbone
wedged between your ribs?
the lines into which my lipstick fades
are a surrealistic abstract across your neck
and the lash that floated free
when you kissed my eyes
has found a home in your collarbone
look, how the whorls of my thighs
finger-paint your hips
I scour your anatomy
with eyes that have never seen
my impact,
on your mind


Read the poetry of Diana Matisz
Read a profile of Diana Matisz

Kim Talon And The Lives Of The Would Have-Could Have

PictureKim Talon




    The Might


He might have done a couple of things differently
maybe turned left instead of right at the crossroads
but there were never soul signs 
quite as direct as yield, dead end, stop, danger
and, yes, the hands of time
had taken him on in a few crucial rounds
and knocked him temporarily senseless
but he did his best
to be true to himself
and what more could you ask?

She might have done a few things differently
maybe looked up instead of down at critical moments
checking for silver linings and rainbows
instead of stones in the road
preparing for the tempests
instead of letting them envelop her
leaving her spent and exhausted
but she did her best
to be true to herself
and what more could you ask?

They might have done some things differently…
but they did their best


Read the poetry of Kim Talon
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A New Selection Of Haiku From Poet Archana Kapoor Nagpal

PictureArchana Kapoor Nagpal


     



Selected Haiku

     ancestral home …
       from every spider’s hammock
       the autumn moon

              ❧

             first snowfall …
             in my pot of water
             the rising moon

              ❧

             farewell …
             away from her epitaph
             another fallen leaf

              ❧

             walking downhill …
             another time my footsteps
             follow my shadow

Read the poetry of Archana Kapoor Nagpal
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Paul Sands And The City At Night: "shelter '81"

PicturePaul Sands

     shelter '81

     every evening
 
     without fail
 
I would watch
from my third floor 
neon, Freon, digital eyrie
 
as he scraped his arse along the street
shuffling, scuffing the rags that passed for raiment
ripping the empty legs further each night
as the chorus of inebriate fighters,
noses swollen veined plums,
caroused and cajoled his every
gravelled slide
while throwing punches, and each other, can in hand
at passing cars
 
his limbs, of wood and plastic,
would arrive later
under police escort
 
old world problems under the new world’s 
hardened, refrigerated glaze
 
every evening
 
without fail
 
until the day he didn’t


Read the poetry of Paul Sands
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Are Love Letters Afoot? Laura Madeline Wiseman's Latest Poem

PictureLaura Madeline Wiseman





Tiffs and Coos

Brainiac,
you say like maybe I shouldn’t be, like maybe it’s better to be a bottle-blonde in cutoffs slung low below the soft navel mouth, a lean slab of youth, arms like pillars and a throat as warm as July. Or if not cliché, than normal, the bottled-Jones in silver SUVS, the family values of meatloaf, apple pie, and iceberg salad with talk of news, track practice, that summer vacation fishing. Eclectic, I say, kicking over empty bottles that roll towards the refrigerator because our foundation slants. Why didn’t we notice it before? Love letters, I say, I want you to write me one hundred love letters and toss them into the drink. If any come back, I’ll be yours forever. Though I’m not sure why, you pull out the kitchen chair, a note pad, and begin to write. 

Read the poetry of Laura Madeline Wiseman
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Samantha Reynolds And The True Nature Of An Epiphany

PictureSamantha Reynolds




    

The Myth of Epiphanies

The myth is that epiphanies roar
when in fact they are more
like bubbles in mud

a whisper
a gurgle
a hunch

everything is small
when it is born
and so it is
that so often
they are buried
as so many small
things are

so you ask
the wise ones
how do you feed them
and they tell you

to jump

so you do
not knowing
if you are falling
or flying
because at first
they are
the same.

Read the poetry of Samantha Reynolds
Read a profile of Samantha Reynolds



A Poem For The New Year From Poet Bethany Rohde

PictureBethany Rohde

  




Why so eager for a new year?

  I've been collecting
  these water pockets
  of new histories

            Distilling
            cold fronts
            into a leather-bound canteen

            A predominant wind
            has exposed my skin
            here
            in the trampled grass

                          A single downward stroke.

Read the poetry of Bethany Rohde
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Pinion And Opinion In Sherry Chandler's Newest Poem

PictureSherry Chandler
   Common Grackles

   Spying a black feather
   beside the back step,
   I speculate whether
   one of the wandering cats
   had feasted on grackle.
 
A wren nests in a weathered
condensed soup can in the shop.
She’s small and solitary.
Until the nestlings flit
we’ll prop the door a crack.
 
Grackles flock
in plagues or cackles.
Kibble gobblers,
bird seed sackers,
they splatter the deck.
 
A mockingbird
ad libs in the oak
a choir of warblers.
Grackles can mock
but mostly they squawk.
 
Their feathers refract
the sun blue-black,
an oil slick rainbow.
Bird-brainy, bully brash
they swagger and snatch
 
a worm from a robin’s beak,
nosh its eggs for a snack.
They see all with those yellow
eyes, you won’t keep a cache
of birdseed with a simple latch.
 
Raucous rapscallions,
egghead scallywags,
amaze as they rankle.
They bring it on up to the brag.
Is my opinion ungrounded?
 
Folks make heroes of hellions,
kids, killers, wild bunch gangs.
Grackles raise my hackles
but I won’t be too chagrinned
if the pinion’s merely shed.

 
Read the poetry of Sherry Chandler
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Ellen Conserva and the "weight of desperation"

PictureEllen Conserva
Tangled Up

The weight of an arm around my leg
Or a cheek upon my shoulder
Sends such pressure 
Straight to my soul, and I feel older.
My limbs are bruised.

So much depends on how I wait
And how I huddle the hardness
And the determined push
Or the pull of my soul’s harness
My heart bemused.

I am a tree that sits or stands
And whose branches bend
With the weight of desperation
And of wrongs to amend.
My roots are fused.

I am the shelter for the birds that come
To my nest to dwell 
For a little while
As their hearts swell.
My love is used.


Read the poetry of Ellen Conserva
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Poet Layley Lu Has A Message— And An Answer

PictureLayley Lu






Your Message

when your message came late last night 
floating on small boats which bobbed with
perfectly brown accents of shit
i was a kite tied high on the masts and 
flailed in fits of twisted laughter whipping the hour
past my bed. the place i seen you swimming for.

i heard the tip toe of scented flowers showing no face,
and followed them around in wayward plays of 
lightless themes. have you danced the glimmer 
of a swage on the sickle?       i am there when i laugh. 

if you wish to come to me and walk with me 
or just sit with me, then come out into the dark.
there are no promises of cool mists
over green moss or growing things.
no albatross dreaming over silk seas.

your silk seas came from worms.
they will return to worms.
they have always been
worms...

come out into the dark and grope with your facelessness
swathed in sweat and density, your breath surging 
into blood tumult and godless ether. 
there are no leaves left on the limbs. it’s moonless here.

your message came and went with an unsigned ....mortgage
to the workers of broken darknesses. deep inside
another dying inspiration rolled over but pressed no ....grapes.


Read the poetry of Layley Lu
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A Moment Recaptured In Wayne F. Burke's New Poem

PictureWayne F. Burke

    Pink Elephants

     I spent years in a crib
     in an upstairs room
     of my grandparent's home
with dust motes in the shaft of
afternoon sun
and heraldic pattern of the gray floor rug
and sheen of varnished woodwork
and my grandparents
who slept in the bed
between
my brother's crib and
mine--
I had a plastic mattress,
a smiling giraffe,
a purple hippo;
one night I heard my brother
scream
"PINK ELEPHANTS!"
and the overhead light
came on like a sun
and my grandmother's face
hung over the bars of
my crib
and the gold crucifix
she wore around her neck
swung like a pendulum.

Read the poetry of Wayne F. Burke
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