Archive #25
July, 2015
Bruce McRae: A Weak Self-Image, A Fine Poem Bruce McRae
The Bee's Knees It’s only suddenly dawned on me, how I’m nothing more than sand in a shoe. That I’m a puppet in a seaside skit. A minor character in a beach novel. How I resemble most a reflection in a carnival’s trick mirror. And here I thought I was the pig’s wings, the caterpillar’s kimono, the gnat’s elbows. Instead of this tongue-tied parrot I’ve become, the one spouting self-righteous epithets in order that he might confirm his paltry existence. And not this monkey on a string. Not this breeze over the city dump I am. This creaking wheel. This lousy haircut. Read the poetry of Bruce McRae Read a profile of Bruce McRae Emily Hone's New Poem, Uses "Downed Vessel" As Metaphor Emily Hone
Downed Vessel Bells within cause clangor, drown sounds that currents make as they boil past- we go in opposite. White lie servants, steering the wheel so far south, how could we not go down? No Captain to guide. And though this vessel’s shared, we’ve proven only mock shipmates. Churning swifts keep all aboard- Ship clutch tenants close- All at once trapped and left behind. Read the poetry of Emily Hone Read a profile of Emily Hone Marie Anzalone's Poem Is A Stirring Homage Marie Anzalone
Written for a Living Poet 5: A Field Guide to Dragons for all that we have been told of roses and hearts and glittery rainbows the act of writing poetry is still a man's domain by and large; women write of "female interests" and men define the laws, morals- ask the toughest questions are known as the new epithet: "wow so Smart!!" [add a couple of hearts and smiley faces in there for effect] for being clever. but there is a defining edge cleverness and art sometimes, not always cross paths and purpose. There are shores we all wallk alone, riptides we do not put our toes in, knowing how quickly one will get simply sucked under. there are dragons none of us, men, women or otherwise, ever slayed. The reason is deceptively uncomplicated. We have trained our eyes not to see them- neither the scales they leave scattered on breakfast tables in-between marital silences; nor the snot they leave in endlessly filthy drains in bathtubs and kitchen sinks; nor the scorched places in the conjugal bedclothes. these are the reptiles of our dysfunction, the worms of discontent. Like Blake's unnamed pestilence, they gnaw at the heart of all we once believed, was true and good. Very few men venture into their lairs, even by accident. and here you come, respresenting "the fairer sex" walking in beauty, acquainted with the night armed with a ruler, weighing device, watercolors inks and pens, spectrophotometer. Walking among us, walking shorelines, mapping the feeding places of animals; dipping whole legs, not just toes, into undertows, studying the riptides of the North Atlantic. the unarmed Poetess, the knight in humble rags. Examining the way the sun glints just so after a household tempest, reflecting off the spines of dinosaurs, roses, and books. Sketching from the places where "real life" intersects with "might-have-beens," dissecting the internal anatomy of the disillusioned heart. Creating nothing less than our own "Illustrated Field Guide to the Dragons of New England." (for Linda. because it was far past time that someone wrote something, for you. Happy Birthday, 2014.) Read the poetry of Marie Anzalone Read a profile of Marie Anzalone A New Poem From The Pen Of Poet Edjo Frank Edjo Frank
She Mali bare feet in the sand toes point to the sky blood stains on the cotton dress folded as a flag over the body silence between the sand dunes except for the high screams of desert vultures exercising patience men with arms heads covered with cloth their lethal visit betrayed by the silent witness of tire tracks layers of clotted salt cover valleys where once slots intersected her face tears dried long ago when spirits flew on a high wind promised never to come back she folds her hands muttering words only the mullah understands wind pulling at her hair as a tug trying to free the wreck battered against the rocks in vain what has been taken will not be given what was most precious deprived of soul leaving behind the senseless legacy of elusive religion in a confused world of thoughts called mankind Read the poetry of Edjo Frank Read a profile of Edjo Frank Therese Sellers' Newest Verses Are For Poets Therese Sellers
From "Twelve Short ....Poems for Poets" Instructions How to write haiku: stay very still and concentrate let one teardrop fall Advice to a Poet write tiny poems and slip them through keyholes remember Metis, the fly-sized first wife of Zeus? she conceived fierce Athena Poetry Workshop They broke me of rhyme and meter, They stripped me of punctuation They took away my classical allusions and left me in a room with no walls On the Fragility of Inspiration mysterious source of my poems, how I fear your mortality Read the poetry of Therese Sellers Read a profile of Therese Sellers R. H. Mustard And The Piano As Metaphor R. H. Mustard
Lesson I touched the keys you left on the piano in plain sight, they sang your melody in broken chords I could not resolve, though the notes were clear enough, to hear just what you had in mind. Unlike you, I've never had a lesson in sharps and flats, never learned if my hand could contain an octave by itself, what pedal my foot might push to sustain the music longer than what I heard in the first lesson or two, nor would I know who to call should the keys fall out of tune, too soon. Read the poetry of R. H. Mustard Read a profile of R. H. Mustard We Extend A Warm Welcome To Poet Bethany W Pope Bethany W Pope
The Dancing World At night when the shadows roil across tarmac like speaking tongues and the foxes whirl in inhuman spires of noisy courtship, when the streetlights spread their jaundice across the chrome teeth of parked cars slumped slumbering in their wasted oil, the ragged trees resume their dancing. Cherry, oak, birch, elm, the tattered fronds of willow all draw up their roots from the soil we left them, taking hold of white fibers, both feet and skirts, they make their ancient procession. They share their sap with brothers who overwhelmed the shrunken Scot in stolen mantle, shaded suddenly the window that lit the bloodspots on his lady's tremulous hands. There are not so many dancers, now, nor men with eyes to see them. It is safer, for us, to restrict our wonders, sacrificing Joy to barren rationality that fruits death. But all times pass, and each word contains its opposite. We bear our shadows in our flesh, waiting to blossom. I flower in moonlight, I wheel with the fox. Their eerie throats are singing to me. I know the terrible Joy of the forests, bound in for now by our illusion of safety, waiting to rise. We are so close to dancing. Read the poetry of Bethany W Pope Read a profile of Bethany W Pope We Warmly Welcome Poet Emily Strauss To VerseWrights Emily Strauss
Moon Light ☊
Through the skylight the full moon splashes gray-white opalescence not a new task— every month it rises roundly yellow against the liquid amber and white oak landscaping or steel towers of power lines across the mud flats at low tide with the distant lights on the bare hills shining across the bay every month is not a new thing, we may count on its regular appearance like a dream of a lover returning recurring a loss that never leaves this its white reminder, the round face of what we must remember or are forbidden to forget so we need to notice every time, even as we forget his face exactly now, and his arms-- the moon feels colder these days through the electric wires the plane trees the skylight on my single bed. Enjoy this poem in the PoetryAloud area
Read the poetry of Emily Strauss Read a profile of Emily Strauss Juliet Wilson Shares A Child's Moment In Her New Poem Juliet Wilson
A Fist Full of Bees ~for Bob The bumble bees were furry like your favourite cat You caught them one by one stroked them gently and held them in your tiny fist. Their whirring wings tickled your skin as they buzzed. When your mother opened your fist the bees escaped and you cried though you had not been stung. Read the poetry of Juliet Wilson Read a profile of Juliet Wilson |
Robert Nied: When A Demonstration Demonstrates Robert Nied
The Demonstration I drove passed a demonstration people in front of bulldozers, police behind their shields. There was chanting and confusion but I knew who would win and who would yield. I saw two get arrested an old woman and a young man. He was animated and resistant she smiled and made her stand. I wondered about her life the children, the art, the pain. What was so clear and known to her that made her crazy act seem so sane? I watched the plastic cuffs tighten and turned to hide my face. Because I’ve already lost his passion and never had her peace and grace. Read the poetry of Robert Nied Read a profile of Robert Nied Joanna Suzanne Lee And The Relationship Joanna Suzanne Lee
Evanescence some things are too easily forgot- (ten), like the wire to the champagne cork, twisted to separate the front door key from the back. i miss your two oclock river- heart, the train- slowing beat of us in deep afternoon light, how i used to run back to that spot by the bridge and find you waiting. there are places where air has more space to breathe, the skies heavy wrung out washrags damp with dirty sunshine. in air like that train warnings hang lonely, remembering things like champagne, its bubbles the very metaphor for hope. i wish we could have kept each other from falling. i want that song caught between whistles, about running till your sides stitch up, about two riverbank lovers still on the edge of something. Read the poetry of Joanna Suzanne Lee Read a profile of Joanna Suzanne Lee Shan Ellis' Poem: Total Release Shan Ellis
Catharsis It wasn’t an accomplishment, laying in half cocked heather, dying grey as dawn shrouded final breaths, beads of dew glistening silvery webs rolling tracks down sodden cheeks. It was no effort holding that heart to rest in a myriath of broken promises and lies an Avalon too far to reach a hairs breath, exhaled, lost in watery mist. I thought I heard my name whispered just as the pale ray reached this mire, and I lost tomorrow hopelessly amidst the thrall of today. Read the poetry of Shan Ellis Read a profile of Shan Ellis David Adès' Poignant Lament On The Death Of A Friend David Adès
Sad ~In memory of Lincoln Siliakus Anne put it simply, beautifully, a world contained in six words: Lincoln left us yesterday in Avignon. Another candle’s warm glow snuffed out, another patch of darkness in place of light, another disturbed sediment of memories. Some say we pass into a bright light, we pass into a wondrous embrace, we pass into a loving realm. I know nothing of this, yet I entertain the notion that the light is the light of millions of guttered candles, that the embrace is the embrace of those who went before us, that the loving realm is the welcome we receive when it is our turn to pass, that Lincoln’s spirit is waiting now to pour its light into the darkness, to hold my spirit with warmth, with generosity, with the wholeness of its nature. Read the poetry of David Adès Read a profile of David Adès We Extend A Warm Welcome To Poet Roslyn Ross Roslyn Ross
Storm Grey clouds gather, rippled, fringed across the hem of sky, ruched in certain order, stitched in darkening threads, so they burst ephemeral, crouched against light’s death; billowed, skirting, ruffled, searching for a place to die. Bowl From turn of trunk to tabled form, the tree has taken shape, and now resides in shining arms to hold with ready grace. This bowl has been in rooted earth, and born through steady hands, as time and patience bring to birth, a new form—life returned. Read the poetry of Roslyn Ross Read a profile of Roslyn Ross Katherine Gallagher's Poem Is A Heartrending Portrait Katherine Gallagher
Woman in a Tableau ~after an incident in the Sahel region reported by a UNICEF official dust shadows her face nightmare drought water polluted the choice between giving her child watery mud and letting him die seeing the choice over and over telling her hands becoming the choice giving the baby poisoned water his tongue burning now forever against hers Read the poetry of Katherine Gallagher Read a profile of Katherine Gallagher Mark Gordon's Latest Poem: A Probe Of The Universe And Self Mark Gordon
Headband You have to stop and watch the portly man throw the Frisbee to the dog, see that in the flick of the wrist, in the excited eyes of the dog, is the glowing path of the milky way that the Lord wears as a cloth, a headband or a toga. Sometimes I forget to look, take a minute to stand by the river, to watch the low- flying swallows aim themselves at mud. I am all personal desire, what I have to do, as if I am master of the stars, the river, myself, flowing without reference point. Then I stop, stand before the stream of stars, flight of dog and man, know that someone speaks to me, voice of the headlong river’s bend. Read the poetry of Mark Gordon Read a profile of Mark Gordon Poet Marsailidh Groat Finds, Then Defines "Home" Marsailidh Groat
Home I sit in a small pub, sipping my cheap pint, and smelling the smells of the people around me; we do not resent each other for our bodies, our skin. We are not pressed against each other in swarms, sweating angrily, indignant that we are not where we should be, and not fast enough. Instead, we sit, the heat of bodies warming us from the Edinburgh chill, the kind of cold that shortens your neck and tightens your .jaw. We are not in transit; the place we are is the place we intend to be. Two of us are playing music, their fingers and mouths casting the stories of people that did for years what we are doing now. I feel that there have always been cheap pints, and warm pubs, and bodies, and stories, and beauty in the everyday of a farmer and his ox. Voices are soft and relaxed, and none of us are special; home is not a privilege, and does not need to be earned. Read the poetry of Marsailidh Groat Read a profile of Marsailidh Groat Cristina Umpfenbach Finds the Focus Cristina Umpfenbach
Through a Lens Sharply
Colors bright under the midday sun, green, red, orange, yellow a perfect picture, a perfect angle. Earthen tone tribal cloth draped around her against a bright blue sky, billows in the breeze which carries sand over the parched expanse that is her life. She sings softly, swaying, waving away flies on the face of her starving child Read the poetry of Cristina Umpfenbach Read a profile of Cristina Umpfenbach We Extend A Warm Welcome To Poet Carl Scharwath Carl
Scharwath
An American City ~Dedicated to Baltimore The city slowly withers and dies. While the living flow angry in open streets. To a new renaissance. floating down the river like a colorful leaf on splattered sunshine. Fallacious Weather Schizophrenic rain danced violently across the metal roof Two lovers awakened in the tempest fury, souls revived A relationship ignited by a silver cloud twisted upside down Their last night phosphorescent sorrows howling whisperers of denial crowning kisses bodies encased in a pharmaceutical straightjacket Read the poetry of Carl Scharwath Read a profile of Carl Scharwath Poet David Thornbrugh In Paris David Thornbrugh
French Kiss In Paris, the waiters laugh when I mention Rimbaud. “Rambo is a killer, not a poet.” A croissant kidnaps me makes me read Foucault. “You are not writing this poem!” scream the snails. I can’t even thank heavens for little girls without looking like a moustache pervert. When the Eiffel Tower went up, everybody hated it. Now Rimbaud and Verlaine could get married, sell guns on the Internet. Poetry? Any idiot can write poetry. Read the poetry of David Thornbrugh Read a profile of David Thornbrugh A Close Encounter: Bethany Rohde's Newest Poem Bethany Rohde
Is That Your Body Blocking the Light? Across this lawn, blacktop of shadow cast between us. Darkness you did not intend. How can you, Oak Tree of seventy, be obscurity and beacon, both? Through leaves, I hear whispers growing fainter, Sh- sh- sh, until we share each other’s air again. Read the poetry of Bethany Rohde Read a profile of Bethany Rohde |
Rosa Saba Returns With A Pair Of Companion Poems Rosa Saba
nine lines lyrics sharp and mind warm, like wax waiting for words to press themselves deep into skin ready for something other than silence music fading into the shuffle of thoughts and the creases between shaking fingers barely held steady by each other, by tired palms ragged nails biting skin, trying to soften the blow of the realization that even pieces of poetry nine lines long are unable to support this feeling nine more lines something about the words i've spilt forwards onto the concrete, covered by snow that no longer reminds me of time past, but now just reminds me of the time i have left of warm things, quiet music and cold air softer words than i have used in a very long time and suddenly, nine lines is enough to support this feeling, .....because this feeling flies on its own, and i am tagging along Read the poetry of Rosa Saba Read a profile of Rosa Saba Mark MacDonald's Poem: Women and Gentlemen Mark MacDonald
The Daughter of Two .Mothers Born in Des Moines in the late 1930’s, she never quite understood her father but felt close to her Aunt—the aunt who never married and lived with her friend near a bookstore downtown. Her mother grew chrysanthemums—renowned as one of the Four Gentlemen in Chinese and East Asian art—The Chrysanthemum, The Bamboo, The Orchid and the Plum Blossom. A flower for each season, they belong to the category of bird-and-flower painting in China during the Song Dynasty, according to her Aunt—the aunt who liked wine and sometimes ate with chopsticks—the aunt who never married and lived with her friend near a bookstore downtown. Read the poetry of Mark MacDonald Read a profile of Mark MacDonald For jacob erin-cilberto, An End To Youth And Idealism jacob erin-cilberto
a puff of pensive reflection we shared cigarettes and the smoky illusions of the 60's ideals real in the heart we loved unconditionally with conditions emotions became wistful, wishful thinking as you retreated into your yuppy-ism and my hair got a little longer a bit more disheveled like the veins in my ideology you spoke the goodbyes first and i felt the movement waning with little protest, i lit up a few more drags of the past and finally put the pack of desultory dreams away where it and you belonged. Read the poetry of jacob erin-cilberto Read a profile of jacob erin-cilberto Poet Janet Aalfs Shares Two Of Her Recent Poems Janet Aalfs
The Work of Love Blank as the space between a shout and an echo I begin. Ebony the smoothest wood harder than all. To sing these black notes wandering, sculpted scales and rain fall shadows through my heart. Impossible as a snowflake in a furnace I begin. Nothing I have known before can lead me, disarmed as I am. The way a heart is made to know what it knows astounds. No guide but rhythms breathe music as I chisel, softer, more inward, more deeply still. Farzana's Light I am not this blood, not these bricks and rocks father, brothers, cousins broke me with on the courthouse walk. Hell is theirs. And I am not. Chant by chant a lotus rises above the mud, and the moon in a river pool sinks into the heart of the song in this starlit, stonelit temple I am. In memory: Farzana Parveen Lahore, Pakistan, 2014 Read the poetry of Janet Aalfs Read a profile of Janet Aalfs Poet Charlie Brice Delves Into The Waves Charlie Brice
Things That Come in Waves* I. X Rays, Gamma Rays, Microwaves, MRIs How deep must we go-- past skin, past bone, past muscle? Descartes thought the soul resided in the Pineal gland. A pea-shaped bleb of light cleaves to something anterior, or caudle, or posterior. Eventually we are all read-out by someone in a white jacket we don’t know; a stranger who, between a sip of diet soda and a bite of peanut butter bread, counts the peaks and troughs-- calculates the dead. II. The Gravitational Harmonies of Deep Space We were never a beginning, only the other side of a collapsed star, black hole excreta; random whim of an indifferent singularity. The Big Bang: the next feature after a celestial intermission between a gazillion cosmic films, an astrocinematic ructus with no beginning, no final act. Only we end, eventually not even a mote bowered in some defunct god’s eye. Our son, his world, my wife’s hand, my myopic Everland. III. Sound That finds itself then gets lost finds itself becomes confused drops into splendid solitude. Goldberg Variation number twenty five deliquescent embryo come alive but barely so-- the question, will it survive, lingers throughout. Glenn Gould’s hum carries Bach’s song to its refulgent end. We strive to grasp its meaning. It eludes us now, then, and again. IV. Weather Fronts It can get so cold that your soul turns to frost like rime around a cocktail glass; so hot that your heart bakes your writhing lover’s back; so rainy that retted streets flow like the River Lethe, your essence a flood of melancholy; and the wind, the wind turns your wheat field pages like ancient sacred screeds caressed by cowl sleeves. Are you listening Heraclitus? Change was all you left us. *Titles taken from The Windward Shore: A Winter On The Great Lakes, by Jerry Dennis Read the poetry of Charlie Brice Read a profile of Charlie Brice From Danielle Favorite, A Room With A View Danielle Favorite
From my bedroom window I wait for you between the shoulder-blades of winter and summer solstice. Please, thaw my frosted heartbeat. I'm ready for the supernova that is your lips-- breathe fire and ignite my breath. Hold my frost-bit hand, melt the ice from my voice so I can sing. The moon is ripe-- unfreeze me, free me! so I can pluck it, like a berry from the charcoal sky. I've seen your name etched with frost on my bedroom window, winter cursive on glass. I call for you, the breath of my silence soaks into the night, and I watch snowflakes drop into my eyes; I shiver, a star flickers out. Read the poetry of Danielle Favorite Read a profile of Danielle Favorite LA Lorena's Relationship With Her Readers Is, Well...Sensual LA Lorena
Blush
my fingers itch to impart inky lines upon pale pages for your pleasure a wanton need fulfilled when wrapped metaphors shroud me in mystery and veiled intentions wear clever disguises cloaked in lace imagery I prettily beg to be peeled back layer by layer to expose that hidden and secret inner core I blush I need you only you can undress me gently pry apart my lines tenderly palpate stanzas and oh so lovingly coax my intentions to the surface Read the poetry of LA Lorena Read a profile of LA Lorena Vaishnavi Nathan, Tangled Hair, And Magic Vaishnavi Nathan
Tangled Hair
If she should love him, he promised to find secrets in her tangled hair. She thought-- java chip frappuccino, uninvited sunflowers on her door step, clasped hands on a bench along Rundle Mall. She thought-- $9.99 salvos sweater on the coldest winter day, an hour conversation under a streetlamp after Spanish class, dirty playgrounds at midnight. She thought-- believe in magic, try again. So she said yes, wore his watch and soon he left. She unravelled her hair and went to see the barber. Read the poetry of Vaishnavi Nathan Read a profile of Vaishnavi Nathan Laura Madeline Wiseman Shares Her Latest Poem Laure Madeline Wiseman
Courage Charm
My name catches like a city bus caught by the end of a hand, the middle a dash for a backpack and a wave along the trail. Evergreen and small, crowded among nine sisters of kin height I cultivate my own fruits, learn what I can, grow my strength. My palms open long and narrow point to pelican, sky, bay of blues he could no longer step into, where endlessly edges split and separate. Once, I let him make me into whatever-- basket, broom, whisk, constant wife. I was his wooden dock and pilings, his pole and wharf from which he wouldn’t sail, the sandy shore of war he rooted toes into hot and white with lonely. I ornament a different path now, sound the breeze above a new walk, refuse to spine boardwalk, beach front, tide but I will always be calm in tidal groves, inland in hammocks. He once found me the hardiest of the new world even if he wouldn’t stomach palm heart, cabbage salad, palmetto center of olive martini, but his hunger will be our making. After all, interweaving these blades is the call. Read the poetry of Laura Madeline Wiseman Read a profile of Laura Madeline Wiseman In Eleanor Swanson's New Poem, To Hunt Is To Kill Eleanor Swanson
Summer of the Hawks In the spring we started to see a pair of Cooper’s hawks, tiercel and hen, high in our neighbor’s catalpa tree, long before its white blossoms appeared. The hawks were mostly silent then, brooding in the uppermost branches of that tall tree or sometimes flying together, diving and gliding over the trees. But then the chicks came, and soon they were fledglings, and catalpa petals were floating down and carpeting the street our aerie of hawks flew over, high and low, their calls half a cry, half a whistle, cries for food, feeding cries, call and response, all day long. Sometimes they flew from the catalpa to the enormous dead elm, skeletonous, in our front yard, or they perched on the utility pole in our backyard above the bird feeder I hoped was well-concealed by overhanging branches of the plum tree. More than once I’ve stood, watching a perched hawk gazing down unflinchingly at me—a mere mortal. The neighbor across the street calls out as we both stand in our front yards. “They’re teaching the young to kill,” he says, and then, he amends, “to hunt.” He laughs uncomfortably. When we walk the dogs, we pass clusters of feathers, doves, flickers, and more, fanned out on the grass, no other traces of life. In the back, there’s a tall branch in the apple tree, pointing upwards in a Y shape, a perfect perch where the finches often sit. I want to tell them, danger, fly away. This afternoon, some chickadees are at the feeder and some are deep in the trees, calling dee, dee, dee, wanting more seeds. I watch that high branch where a rosy finch now sits. I watch for the flash of wings-- beautiful and terrible too-- and the tiny bird, vanished. Read the poetry of Eleanor Swanson Read a profile of Eleanor Swanson |