Archive #22
April, 2015
Eleanor Swanson Challenges With Unsettling Metaphors Eleanor 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 Read a profile of Eleanor Swanson Two Poems In Contrast From Poet Leslie Philibert Leslie 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 Read a profile of Leslie Philibert Joshua Gray: Three Moons, Three Poems Joshua 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 Read a profile of Joshua Gray It's All About Pink, Then And Now, In Dana Rushin's Latest Poem
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 Read a profile of Dana Rushin Mary Anne Rojas And A Harsh Judgement Of Self Mary 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 Read a profile of Mary Anne Rojas We Welcome Poet Rivka Zorea To VerseWrights Rivka 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 Read a profile of Rivka Zorea Laura Madeline Wiseman: Death and Sarcasm Laura 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 Read a profile of Laura Madeline Wiseman Charlie Brice Turns To The Odyssey For His Latest Poem Charlie 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 Read a profile of Charlie Brice Edjo Frank Unnerving With "Book, slipper, cat" Edjo 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 Read the poetry of Edjo Frank Read a profile of Edjo Frank Jill Lapin-Zell Returns With A "Lasting Impression" Jill 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 Read a profile of Jill Lapin-Zell |
Juliet Wilson: Pulling Through By Rising Above Juliet 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 Read a profile of Juliet Wilson Ram Krishna Singh's Newest Group Of Tanka Ram 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 Read the poetry of Ram Krishna Singh Read a profile of Ram Krishna Singh Samantha Reynolds Makes A Convincing Case Samantha 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 Read a profile of Samantha Reynolds Tracey Gunne Uses The Seasons As Metaphor In "Efflorescence" Tracey 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 Read the poetry of Tracey Gunne Read a profile of Tracey Gunne Wayne F. Burke: Hoppy and Choppy Wayne 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 Read a profile of Wayne F. Burke Two New Poems From The Pen Of Stefanie Bennett Stefanie 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 Read a profile of Stefanie Bennett The Latest Poem From Poet Polly Robinson Polly 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 Read a profile of Polly Robinson We Warmly Welcome Poet Michele Seminara to VerseWrights Michele 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 Read a profile of Michele Seminara Neil Fulwood: "Bulstrode. Bull. John Bull" Neil 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 Read a profile of Neil Fulwood E. H. Ford And The Art Of Composition E, 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 Read a profile of E. H. Ford |
Joanna Suzanne Lee's Latest Poem: Cause and Effect... Joanna 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 Read a profile of Joanna Suzanne Lee We Extend A Warm Welcome To Poet Ian C Smith Ian 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 Read a profile of Ian C Smith Michael Lee Johnson: Different As Night And Day Michael 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 Read a profile of Michael Lee Johnson Two New Poems From Poet Björn Rudberg Björn 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 Read a profile of Björn Rudberg Wally Swist And The Gentle Promptings Of Nature Wally 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 Read a profile of Wally Swist A Warm Welcome To Poet Vaishnavi Nathan Vaishnavi 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. Read the poetry of Vaishnavi Nathan Read a profile of Vaishnavi Nathan From Janet Aalfs, A Short And Poignant Ode Janet 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. Read the poetry of Janet Aalfs Read a profile of Janet Aalfs A Poem From Alexis Ivy: "Boston Marathon" Alexis 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) Read the poetry of Alexis Ivy Read a profile of Alexis Ivy Poet Witty Fay's Latest: A Pair Of Companion Poems Witty 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. Read the poetry of Witty Fay Read a profile of Witty Fay L.L. Barkat: On the Button L.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. Read the poetry of L.L. Barkat Read a profile of L.L. Barkat |