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Archive #22
April, 2015

Eleanor Swanson Challenges With Unsettling Metaphors

PictureEleanor Swanson




  Disturbance of Surfaces


Strange metaphors succeed: solstice fish,
carnal soup, swallowtail taxidermist,
and other phrases that ripple
the once-glassy lake where chakra eyes
now appear, floating provocatively.
 
A coyote appears in the park,
(this poem will not bring peace
to the grief-stricken or explain
blood or how to staunch it.)
 
Comments will be included
on how the wind has ended
--with a few terrifying gusts--
the life of a tree.
 
That through all of this cold,
pure daylight, a coyote walks
across a sere field, its long
thick tail moving at a metronome’s
slow beat, reminding you this
isn’t the dog next door.
The day has fierce teeth
that break the skin without
drawing blood.  The body
alive, the skin alive, lips
that can suck, the tongue,
that plump wonder,
the brown grasses telling
you to love this brown,
its delicacy, its mutedness.
 
What should we memorize.
as we live, speak, sing?
I try to memorize the cold of this day;
cold that burns, breathing through
fleece, breath slime.
 
Omne ignotum pro magnifico
Whatever is unknown
is held to be magnificent.

Read the poetry of Eleanor Swanson
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Two Poems In Contrast From Poet Leslie Philibert

PictureLeslie Philibert

  Paperboy

   The cold changes
   the weight of my steps.
   Each door opens with glass.

Dogs bark in circles.
Milkfloats whine in electric.

My parka tired with old dirt.
The early moon carelessly ignored.
My hands are dark with print.

Nearly in another life
I discover the inner life of gates
and how to dance

around plants and bikes
and how to grow
into a morning.


        Day Sleeper

          Lost out of the picture,
          fallen out of life,
          cut-eyed shut down

          from all the cars and trains
          and all this carrying and breaking
          and lines of words without spaces.

          You breathe softly, regular,
          as if in a deep wood,
          as paced as a slow piston

          in exile to yourself,
          a half life turned inside

          as if the strings that
          could lift you
          hang loose in the sunlight.


Read the poetry of Leslie Philibert
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Joshua Gray: Three Moons, Three Poems

PictureJoshua Gray
  Wort Moon

  When a wort finds the time to kill
  or turn your mind to madness
  as is its potent will,
  then no use in fighting your blindness.
 
Double, double toil and trouble;
(eat these bugs, they'll beat your rash)
Fire, burn; and cauldron, bubble
(the alewives work to stock your stash).
 
Drink your garden, brew your plan;
the wortwives burned to save their clan.



            Egg Moon

                   X-ray
                    an egg to see
                the eye of our vast
              universe: dense & full
           of the silent yet immense
            makings of   perfection;
             this imperfect orb has
              provided Springtime
               relief from hunger,
                thanks to a lovely
                   thing we call
                      sunlight.



Salmon Moon

Do not lift
Those bones from the river's bank --
For the trees will topple.
 
Even the bear knows
When the pink fish swim again


Read the poetry of Joshua Gray
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It's All About Pink, Then And Now, In Dana Rushin's Latest Poem

Picture

pink job:

I had a girl who,
from a newborn child, loved pink.
So now I love pink. I have a pair
of pink pants. Some pink shoes.
A  pair of pink Scooby Doo headphones (willed to me).
The neighbor girl wears her hair in
a pink bob.

Sometimes the outline of night is pink.
There was pink in my brother-in-laws casket.
The pathologist showed us
the model of the healthy pink lung.
His was not that color.

The insides of 93 percent of the
vertebrates on the planet earth are pink.
I don't think I like frogs much. But
don't they burrow in the mud and sand
in their neo-Darwinian mornings
with pink vertebrate on their sticky tongues. 

I went to Washington DC with my folks
where the declaration of independence
was under a glass casing. The years had
turned the corners of the document pink.
Oh shit! The dove bar swimming in this

tub of soil and excretory skin is slavishly
devoted
to washing me pink. Pink hospital gowns
are worn by the women who
bring my towel.

Read the poetry of Dana Rushin
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Mary Anne Rojas And A Harsh Judgement Of Self

PictureMary Anne Rojas




after "Miss Celie's Blues"

your’re right, I know nothin’
about this thing I call me--how
I want to crawl out of my coffee skin
full of yelling and show the world
that love is a body full of knots,
like tumbleweed, like a bag of barbwire.
your’re right, I know nothin’
of home, where the dance of my
body breaks like the tease of a syllable
after the harsh wind lulled me to speak.
I taught myself my name once. I found
it under my tongue talking back to nothing,
as if I owed myself something more,
as if my accordion breath wanted to
escape the music of my throat, pry
open the wind with broken sound
and left over accent. But--
your’re right, I know nothin’
about this thing I call me, a home
where an empty belly bellows the
itch of a fleeing name like a run away
mouth, afraid of quiet when the
windpipe is nothin’ but a whistle
from a faraway echo. but--
your’re right, I know nothin’
of my name.


Read the poetry of Mary Anne Rojas
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We Welcome Poet Rivka Zorea To VerseWrights

PictureRivka Zorea


Symphony in Red

Do not be alarmed 
the world is dying 
a gentle death 
or at least a slow one 
It isn't young you know 
and has lived a full-of-everything 
life. 
It is not a painful death. 
The world has terminal reality 
A boa constrictor has wrapped 
its diamond and gold labeled 
body about the neck of Mother Earth 
A fatal squeeze can be mistaken 
for a hug you know 
Don't fear the ending 
the decaying breath
the blood curdling 
screams 
Clashing in tiny wrinkled wars 
They are merely the gags and throes 
of the dying 
There has to be blood soaked 
spittle and atomic foaming 
at the mouth 
But after all
nothing lasts forever 
except silent 
funerals 
attended 
by 
nobody

Read the poetry of Rivka Zorea
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Laura Madeline Wiseman: Death and Sarcasm

PictureLaura Madeline Wiseman






Museo de la Muerta

There are many ladies of death here. That one there rides in a cart, but she doesn’t hold the reigns. That one stands in a cloak, bow held at ready. Those two there are behind glass in a case of carved men. Some of them sit in thrones like small gods. Some are merely pictures. I want to sit and stare at them, but you want to read all the plaques, aloud, and for me to make listening noises. I make listening noises in the yellow light, on the bench, eyeing each lady of death—toothy smile, scraggly hair, all those death arrows. I’m not as skinny as her, but I could be. I murmur oh, hmm. I add to your long pause, Muerta—death gendered female.

Read the poetry of Laura Madeline Wiseman
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Charlie Brice Turns To The Odyssey For His Latest Poem

PictureCharlie Brice
The Great Tactician

There you were naked
             at the river’s edge,
                   exhausted
                          after your two day swim.
Nausicaa stood over you
 
when you awoke
             a smile of yearning
                    and compassion
                           on her soft lips.
You thought she was
 
beautiful and terrifying.
             You didn’t know whether
                   to grab her knees
                          and hope for mercy,
or use your honeyed speech,
 
beg some clothes,
             the direction into town.
                    You chose words and
                           she showed you a mercy
                           that, had you paid attention,
could have changed Western Civilization.

                                                       Instead
 
you ate her father’s food,
             tossed the discus around,
                     impressed her brother
                            and all the boys,
                                   but once back in Ithaca,
you destroyed your enemies
 
with a wrath that would have shamed Achilles.
             Your boy even hung their lovers,
                   watched, with glee,
their tiny feet dance to death.
 
What of their pleas for mercy,
              Great Gamelegs?
                      What of Nausicaa’s compassion,
                         man of all occasions?
You chose words and so did they,
 
but your heart was cold with greatness.
             We could have had
                    three thousand years of mercy.
    
                                        Instead
 
your savagery endures:
         the glory of dead heroes
 
        piled one
        atop
        another
        and
        another.
 

Read the poetry of Charlie Brice
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Edjo Frank Unnerving With "Book, slipper, cat"

PictureEdjo Frank


 


Book, slipper, cat

humbly for wind and god
time crumples the book
chagrin chases forgotten words
of no name or yesterday
you put off your reading glasses
there is nothing to be understood
of a hooked story
of dark after dusk
of howling from the airshaft
of draft that makes your legs freeze
shudder taunts himself up
fills the cavities of your skull
nests in the deep holes
of an uprooted memory
saliva dripping little strings
on the veins of your hand
your trembling hand
opens by a spasm
the book falls
your slipper kicks
the cat looks disapprovingly
or is this just imagination


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Jill Lapin-Zell Returns With A "Lasting Impression"

PictureJill Lapin-Zell






Lasting Impressions


You made an impression
With your shining smile
And incandescent eyes

Your simple equanimity

And strong, broad shoulders
 
You made an impression
With rampant curiosity
In the funkiest of places
Full tilt boogie attitude
And your arm around my waist
 
You made an impression
With a sweet warm kiss
And hugs from way down deep
Studded jean jacket
And beat up old cowboy boots
 
You made an impression
On a windy Philadelphia street corner
In a Dunkin Donuts at 4 a.m.
With cups of warm steamy love
And lingering gazes
 
You made an impression
Sweet memories in place
Left a wisp of future dreams
Yet to be realized

Read the poetry of Jill Lapin-Zell
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Juliet Wilson: Pulling Through By Rising Above

PictureJuliet Wilson
 
 Alchemy

  In a war zone existence, delimited
  by snipers, landmines and hostile troops,
  a couple fall in love.

Alchemists, they make a home with
scavenged chairs, a broken table, a second-hand bed
and a sense of humour.

They transcend the ordinary, buoy themselves
against the terrible gravity of war
with the feather lightness of joy.

The pull of vestigial wings between their shoulders
lifts them above their troubled town.

Read the poetry of Juliet Wilson
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Ram Krishna Singh's Newest Group Of Tanka

PictureRam Krishna Singh
  
    Selected Tanka

      A cloud-eagle 
      curves to the haze
      in the west
                              skimming the sail
                              on soundless sea


           ❧

               Standing at the edge
               I long to float with waves and
               wave with instant wind: 
               on the dream water’s breast
               I read tomorrow’s wonder


     ❧

I fear the demons 
rising from my body
at midnight crowding
the mind and leading the soul
to deeper darkness


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Samantha Reynolds Makes A Convincing Case

PictureSamantha Reynolds


  How I Know I Am an Optimist

  I know I am an optimist
  because I am always pleased
when the house is tidy
surveying it
like the conqueror
of somebody else’s land

and I believe it will stay that way
that I am not Sisyphus
that the boulder
will not fall again

and when your dad sings from downstairs

there’s somethin’ dead or dyin’
in our fridge

in his best Neil Young voice
I know that I will simply hunt down the soft lump
throw it away
and we will never waste food again

and when your sister
takes all the clothes off the hangers
while I am folding laundry
and you yell

it’s a emergency

because you meant to print
one copy of the Snow White picture
but for some reason it printed 60 copies
and we can’t get it to stop

I just lay down on the floor
and let the rhythm of the printer
soothe me
like a heartbeat

I know
it will be different
tomorrow.

Read the poetry of Samantha Reynolds
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Tracey Gunne Uses The Seasons As Metaphor In "Efflorescence"

PictureTracey Gunne


   Efflorescence

    Autumn~

    you send white roses

is that how you want me
pure and void
of any color or scent
lackluster but with
a hint of danger

my hands tied
indebted only to you

Winter~

you bring orchids

a plant hungering for crushed bone
decaying flesh.       all the pieces of me 
i hoped were dead and gone
now potted and pruned
wilting in your adoration

if you choose to stay
find comfort in my madness
it could take years 
to hollow me out
separate me from
this mildewed heart

Spring~

you nourish the soil 

manipulate sunshine and raindrops
to do your bidding
scatter seeds in casual disarray
forth and back
the wind hazardous for the love protruding
not so firmly rooted  

even though you tend with faithful hands
weeds advance and blossom 
more dense between my thighs
softened by touch 
and moist 
where your scent lingers heavy

Summer~

you plant violets

there is nothing here
to ground me
only you
the holes you dig are small 
but necessary
a garden cultivated by 
my purple moods
releasing soft lobes
of petals falling


on what you perceive

as beautiful

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Wayne F. Burke: Hoppy and Choppy

PictureWayne F. Burke

    Do the Herky-Jerky

    Lines chopped like veggies. Ready
    to go into the pot. Or like a bad
    driver's failure to anticipate. Quick
stops: brake's red hot. Like Bennington,
Vermont: a stop sign on every corner.
Like an unfinished thought. Like a
construction site. Be prepared for
delays. Proust would never go this
way. Nobody but a poet chopped. Or
reader dragged behind like a tow line.
From place to place. Like a corpse.
Driven about. A drunk at the wheel of
the hearse. The corpse says "let me out."
The car is stopped. Or not. The periods
accumulate. Like buckshot. An ellipsis
sneaks in...why not? Louise Gluck: the
less great early stuff. First book: Firstborn. 
Chopped on a block. Celery and carrots. 
Into the pot. A boiled plot. This poem has 
come to it's start. I chop it off with a dot.


Read the poetry of Wayne F. Burke
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Two New Poems From The Pen Of Stefanie Bennett

PictureStefanie Bennett

Leap-Frog, 21st Century

You get the Kafka look-alikes -.

You get the word eating strays -.
You get
Desire's streetcar
Immobilised
In funeral grey.
Well, then?
There's
The Godhead
And an 'a' plus 'x'
Nuclear quest
Confronting
The Luddite theorem
That won't
Give or get
The mythic handshake

Of The Ferryman.



Discourse, Pascal Style

Just because the postman

Careers by
Empty handed -,
And the Linden Tree
Bears no fruit -,
And friends travel
On a mistaken
Devil-may-care tide
Doesn't mean
That the inconspicuous one
'In waiting'
Won't attend
The Chekov soiree's
Defining principle

- Of
The first singer -.
- Of
The last song...


Read the poetry of Stefanie Bennett
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The Latest Poem From Poet Polly Robinson

PicturePolly Robinson
 
Volunteers

 Today’s the day,
 today’s the day they die.
 In every line,
 carved anguish
on fine-boned faces,
in bowed heads,
starved slump of shoulders,
nooses around necks,
the way city keys
—clutched--
in hot hands
held against hurting head,
today’s the day.
Today’s the day they die.
Calais besieged,
the envoys’ walk,
sandals tied with string
shuffling through dust,
as grit cuts;
rope pares skin.
Death imminent,
they stumble to the square
as yet unaware,
today, they’ll be saved
by a claim,
an omen,
an infant yet to be born.


Read the poetry of Polly Robinson
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We Warmly Welcome Poet Michele Seminara to VerseWrights

PictureMichele Seminara
An Epistle to my Paedophile

 Doubtless you won’t comprehend
 me writing you this way;
 for you are harmless 
 now, breathing
 
in laboured rasps, your body
neutralised 
by the karmic stroke 
of luck which all the girls 
you might have met
don’t even know 
they should be glad of.
 
I was not so fortunate.
I knew you when your limbs 
still had the power to insinuate 
themselves into Christmas lunch 
and re-calibrate the trajectory 
of uneventful lives.
 
(Strange, I never thought to tell,
the chest of smut beneath your bed,

the dancing doll’s skirt, lifted to reveal --
Or your pudgy hands which turned like moles 
in the incestuous burrows of their pockets,

jingling coins that lured, and repelled…)
 
What a relief it was today to find them stilled.
Pale members, no longer in the service 
of the perverse familial compulsion
which thwarted me, as it did you.
 
Instead, you have become the baby

you once must have been:
helpless (hapless?) in your cot,
as I was, legs akimbo; 
and this is perfect, a perfect way of seeing
because the unsullied space of your mute
presence allows me to impute
whatever version of this I want to --

 
from your side, recognition, remorse;
from mine, forgiveness, love.
 
But I don’t need that now.
We are at peace, you and I,
our transaction complete.
There is no more fear.
 
Only wonder, at how one clot of blood
lodged within a flawed man’s brain
can assuage so much suffering:

what a wise solution, so elegant,
the vessels swollen to bursting 
with compassion for us all --

surely that drop was placed, just so,
by the delicate hand of God.


Read the poetry of Michele Seminara
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Neil Fulwood: "Bulstrode. Bull. John Bull"

PictureNeil Fulwood
The Prince of Torremolinos

“I suppose the Bulstrodes will go and live abroad somewhere…That is what is generally done when there is anything disgraceful in a family.”
               —George Eliot, Middlemarch

Money has put him where he is now,
a man of business in a tourist trap.
Money took him through Fuengirola
and Benalmádena, an expatriate
carving a niche. Greased palms,
slick talk, bodies oiled and bronzing
lined up along the beaches like hot dogs
waiting to be turned on the grill,
pockets waiting to be turned out
in the bars. A loan here, a favour there,
a signature on the dotted line.
His name assumes a currency.
            Bulstrode. Bull. John Bull.
 
Deals done cash in hand, off the books
and auditless. Some local muscle
to back him up, a reputation
ambivalent enough to make a tough guy
hesitate, but not scare investors off.
Money accrued. Money rubbing up
against itself, non-consecutively.
Money dancing its rude tango.
A couple of bars, a casino, interests
in a hotel complex. Money brought him
here, made him what he is now –
the prince of Torremolinos.
            Bulstrode. Bull. British bulldog.
 
Twisted as a pound sign, in thrall
to the value of the Euro, he curses
the nubile acres of the beach
if his day-old copy of the Daily Mail
costs him more than it did last week.
He turns his back on the tanned ranks
of girls languorously arranged
as if auditioning for reality TV,
turns his back on the lads strutting
their pimply delusions. They’re nothing
till evening fetches them in, nothing
till their lusts and wallets are his.
            Bulstrode. Bull. Businessman.
 

Read the poetry of Neil Fulwood
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E. H. Ford And The Art Of Composition

PictureE, H. Ford

  Mariner's Words

   I’ll watch the words

   work this page.
Although, I might want you 
to add the meaning.

Writing is personal for me. 
as a carpenter inspects the edge of a board for 
straightness--I examine each stanza
for level meanings.

Words are not handled
like a boat leaving the 
harbor against a rough
sea.

Fame has no rank.
There is only the last
word on the last page

as safe harbor for today.

Read the poetry of E. H. Ford
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Joanna Suzanne Lee's Latest Poem: Cause and Effect...

PictureJoanna Suzanne Lee



    



other consequences of a high water table

raindrops cling
to low-slung graves, each
soul dead
without a fear of drowning.
 
lichen covers tree limbs
and lichyard; time is slowed
to the speed of waves.
This is a no-wake zone,
 
i joke as we drive
through standing water, 
the big houses on stilts
but the funeral home
 
flush with the marshes.
i wonder if when they turn
on their flatscreens
with remote flicks
 
from sofas sagged
down by the stains
of so many salt-damp
years, they listen
 
to the news of ISIS and middle-
eastern wars and missing
college students
and feel like they're
 
from a different world, or
if they think of dark waters, 
and that there are 
worse ways to die.

Read the poetry of Joanna Suzanne Lee
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We Extend A Warm Welcome To Poet Ian C Smith

PictureIan C Smith



   

   Anti-clock, wise

I clumsied my second-hand clock from wall to floor,
batteries skating over crumbed tiles.
When the second hand moved forward,
those batteries snugly re-nooked,
the clock re-hooked, back to despot status,
I day-dreamed about time’s durability.

Listening to a train tracking to the port
I remember a lake flickering through pine trees,
long languid nights on slow-moving trains,
shadows swaying, never to be repeated,
present becoming instantly irretrievable.
Yet I squander it dreaming of the adroit past.

I notice my clock’s hours are reversing,
travelling absurdly through time past.
Nine o’clock has become eight o’clock,
arousing a vague idea of the perfect trip
from age to youth, reliving train whistles,
back to laughter, music crying out, love.

I am stuck with old and clumsy,
neither I nor magic clock setting speed records.
I ponder other less than ideal time-travel aspects,
such as the clarity of grief growing ever wilder
or nothing happening again and again.
Mocked by a clock, my enthusiasm wanes.

Read the poetry of Ian C Smith
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Michael Lee Johnson: Different As Night And Day

PictureMichael Lee Johnson


Poem of Sinners and Saints

Sinners hurt.

Moonlight cracks open 
like a walnut, spreads soft light across open sky.
Sinners hurt.
They dart to alleyways, bury themselves behind
their own trails shaking fists at the sky;
hiding their nasty nonsense in shame,
city buildings rattle their bricks, mortar loose at their rib .....cage.
Where do sinners break out from when their deeds .....exposed?
All men think they are sword men daggers in darkness.
All women think they are entry points leaning against .....brick walls,
slender on sidewalks past midnight,
nothing but shadows, twitching of lips.
Women look for drawing cards in their makeup kits.
No one cares jackals, scavengers, men tempted by .....night.
Thunder dreams hammer at their ears, 
rain urinate sins on street corners,
mice crawl away to small places shamed.
Footsteps scatter directions as sunlight sprouts.
Misdeeds carry no names with them
they trip blind, racing to morning jobs.

Early morning crows fly.
Sin hurts staples in women's lungs, staples dagger in .....men's ribs.

Read the poetry of Michael Lee Johnson
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Two New Poems From Poet Björn Rudberg

PictureBjörn Rudberg


  Broken Bones
 
   Binary — her broken bones,
   encoded, loaded into sequences
of purplish vacancies.
In magnetic vortex arithmetic
building boolean combinations,
the manifolds of truth.
 
Ever they are multiplying
in my sterile petri-dishes,
that non-organic snot,
the virtual clouds of mental flu.
 
And then when obsolete — discard
the floppy betamax disaster,
or convert to fiberoptic bliss.
 
But who shall mend

— her broken bones?



Far from Vietnam

Our mind is set on chrome and motor oil
on gasoline and blazing sun.
The tarmac serpent licks the soil,
and counting miles our engines run,
towards a target far out west
to places where we still can breathe,
to villages not yet blessed
with homes for soldiers tombstone wreaths.

 In countries far from Vietnam.

Read the poetry of Björn Rudberg
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Wally Swist And The Gentle Promptings Of Nature

PictureWally Swist

   




November Light

The morning sun shining through
the adolescent maple graces itself
 
beyond the two front windows
of my studio.  The light this time
 
of the year is often more
of an inflected silver than struck
 
gold; and the maple’s leaves are
such a shade of scarlet,
 
that is infused with yellow, it is
as if the foliage is nuanced with
 
Monet's vibrant pastels
and cast in Rodin's hammered
 
bronze.  How fortunate we are
to live in the world that offers us
 
its constant reminders of who
we are and what our true being is.

Read the poetry of Wally Swist
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A Warm Welcome To Poet Vaishnavi Nathan

PictureVaishnavi Nathan



   My Name is Vaishnavi


    Fishnavi. Vashinari. Vishvani. 
    Vashnav. Va..umm. 
 
My name, as if it were a wet bar soap, 
fumbles on first encounters. 
I stopped correcting them. 
 
The coterie made me believe 
that accommodating everyone is 
the easiest way to assimilation. 
 
"Oh, do you have another name?"
"Anything short?"
                           ”Yes, it’s a mouthful. V, will do.”
"Huh?"
           ”V for Vietnam?”
 
I, casually, negate myself from 
the primitive part of me - 
my name, my Indian ancestry. 
 
"Could I have a name to go with the coffee order?"                                                 
"Whom shall I say is calling?"                           
"Hi! Please introduce yourself to the team!"                                                      
 
Just V. Barely V. Almost there V. 
Chronic censorship to accommodate you. 
 
"My name is Vaishnavi."
Vai - ish - ner - vee
Don’t be afraid to roll your tongue. 
 
Take your time with it. 
I am patient.

Now, say my name. 


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From Janet Aalfs, A Short And Poignant Ode

PictureJanet Aalfs






Ode to a Lost Sweater
  
       I see it now
like a simple word
spoken into the wind.
Bright button
in our mother's palm
from a hand-me-down
we had each outgrown.
Wool deep red as embers
that smolder in a circle of stone,
and the scent of Grandma's roses,
her gracefully wrought cable stitch
moths in an attic barrel
had chewed until split.
       I see it
like a phantom wound
knits itself a scar,
and a heart-spun word
chanted into the wind
calls down a star.


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A Poem From Alexis Ivy: "Boston Marathon"

PictureAlexis Ivy


Boston Marathon

Now it’s pressure cookers taking lights 
out, blowing limbs loose, tearing bricks 
down like in the blizzard of ’78. 
My city’s always in revision.  Even I 
edit myself, try not to exaggerate,
no all, no always just once I had 
thought explosions near 
the finish line meant Victory.

I didn’t grow up mannered 
in the Commonwealth, no linen 
napkins on my lap, but on paper 
plates in Jamaica Plain.  I know 
how dirty half-melted snow
can get in certain corners 
of Mattapan, fights start out,  
windows stay broken, hate 
crimes stay caked on the storefronts  
Crack Territory. How much to buy 
an endangered turtle in Chinatown? 
And now it’s murder on Boylston 
Street, one of Childhood’s 
main drags. Even I was 
dangerous once, late summer 
overheating the cars too long.

(Posted in Boston City Hall, 2014)

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Poet Witty Fay's Latest: A Pair Of Companion Poems

PictureWitty Fay
Inside view
 
All the women I have been
Through the great tower of years,
Claiming their place 
Under my skin,
Biting at the hem of time
In the seven day worth
Of my still.
Stepping on puddles of joy
As the soles smell of
Burnt fingertips
Crushing the day's crop.
Fate flows unimpeded
Through their obsidian veins,
Its open vessels in line.
And the women whisper 
Loud chants as they encircle
The steps that foretell the vine.
And their song inhabit the lips
Tainted by the red of the wine

Unmade.


Outer view

Dream a dream that is not a dream
Under the orange light of the hissing moon
Ghost love throbbing within the flesh
Like a heartbeat fallen between the legs
Then coiled at the feet of a sea dawn,
Glaring at the day with hellish eyes
Of a pain that would walk unhindered
The days of the woman 
And the nights of the man.
There is but one more circle to sketch
Until pain is denuded of all leaves
And the locomotive of flesh resumes 
Its pace.


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L.L. Barkat: On the Button

PictureL.L. Barkat


The News, March 2011

I found a button,
mother-of-pearl.
It was sitting like the last star
in a mangled universe,
where dreams
and all our brilliance
were melting a hole
into the earth
and invisible dust
kept falling, falling
out and over
day, night, history.
I picked it up--
the button--
and thought of your
smooth neck,
curved as a shell
and just as delicate;
I thought of thin white cotton,
a blouse to touch
and a line of empty buttonholes.
Then I knew
that the sea must have taken it
from you,
this mother-of-pearl, this last star,
and I wished for a silver needle
and a virgin spool
of silken
white
thread.

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