Archive #26
August, 2015
Evie Ivy: A Parting Of The Ways, But Not The Waves Evie Ivy
The Swim I’ll not dispel your mind. You’ll not perish in a deluge of words here. A typhoon will not pick you up to discard you in far-off waters, lost trying to decipher, still clutching this paper, reading this as an archaeologist would, searching to find truth or reason, because if there’s any sense you’ll be the one to find it. I’ll be simple, not use metaphor or simile that will leave you in a turning torrent. There are times I go back turn the hourglass over and over, tell myself—life is strange, stranger our acceptances. We were human, and had become stranded in our own cloud-built castles. In the end, there is so much you can hold on to each other before you fall, and kick your way to land. Read the poetry of Evie Ivy Read a profile of Evie Ivy Please Welcome Poet Doc Burkard To VerseWrights Doc Burkard
Gray, Wisconsin Time is matter here The freight train ~Jean Valentine Places are colors, two-hundred-thousand primary shades and hues. I grew up in Gray, a place only the freight train knows for a moment then rumbles on to the cities: Midnight, Scarlet, Mahogany, Royal Blue. Closed I had a dream last night, it was so cold and I was just standing. Not moving. I couldn't move, my hand was on the worn brick, at least ten stories high. Empty. The feeling of walking over a grave. I may have been crying, maybe I was sober. It smelled like grandpa or an empty house; dreams smell like rain sometimes sometimes they smell like Milwaukee. It was the factory, some of the windows broken but even in dreams, nothing is being made. Read the poetry of Doc Burkard Read a profile of Doc Burkard Two New Poems From Poet Yuan Changming Yuan Changming
Beyond the Blue: A Parallel Poem there is no borderline between sea and sky waves are pushing their colors up towards the air, bloating their calls and songs to bold changing shapes it is a world within nature presenting itself, or what cannot be represented elsewhere separated from the mind the frame always trying to capture a few fish swimming in the waters- Cityscape Golden teeth glistening In the mouth of the city Silver clouds colliding At the tongue tip of day Bite off all darkness They whisper And chew the season well. Read the poetry of Yuan Changming Read a profile of Yuan Changming Wayne F Burke And One Morning On O'Connell Wayne F Burke
Sunday Sunday morning walking down O'Connell Street in Dublin a man beside me his face red pork pie hat on he vomits into the gutter as church-goers in their Sunday best, ties and suits and gingham dresses, all the shops closed the Liffey River flows, but barely, like a mud puddle, one that Joyce made such a song and dance about-- dirty kids on the bridge say mister mister give us pence! Upheld hands like pigeons, ragged clothes I throw some crumbs and they scramble, run as a swan spreads its wings over the river and I fly too though feeling disreputable in my jeans, lumberjack shirt and with my hangover: I walk back streets and am followed by two mean-looking sons of Erin I lose in an alley sweating into my shirt until I come back out onto O'Connell and the wee freckle-faced red-haired folk parade in their suits on the Irish day of partial sanity. Read the poetry of Wayne F Burke Read a profile of Wayne F Burke Jill Lapin-Zell: A Season And The Reason Jill Lapin-Zell
You and Spring the sun will rise once more tomorrow slowly nibbling at the cold night sky until red and orange flames consume it for .....breakfast like an egg over easy the vernal equinox will herald the arrival of a brand new spring it is a time of renewal and the moment to plant the seeds of a fertile and abundant future you stand in the middle of those glorious tomorrows radiant and alive your smile fueling my days as never before and gypsy passion painting my nights with broad strokes of conscious loving that ignite my soul and call forth the magic that is our coming together Read the poetry of Jill Lapin-Zell Reads a profile of Jill Lapin-Zell Wally Swist And...What's In A Name? Wally Swist
The Swist The Swist is a brook. As child, the name was often intentionally mispronounced by classmates who would also insert the word cheese after rending the air with hyperbole. As a grown man, particularly women, on a date, would rhyme Swist with Twist, and then say, Just like Chubby Checker, right? Often enough, I have needed to have to speak each letter of it over the phone to a Customer Service Representative, enunciating the letters twice; only to hear, Yes, Swift, repeated back to me, the consternation rising in my pulse and shooting right through the top of my head; my ire surfacing through my repetition, once again, of the four consonants protecting that one vowel in the middle, with the sinuousness of the soft consonants providing a rush until the final hard sound, as in following a straightaway before a sudden meander. The Swist rises in Rhineland-Palatinate at 330 meters above sea level on the Eifel. The brook is nearly 44 kilometers long, and in North Rhine-Westphalia it joins the mouth the Erft. The Swist flows through my veins, as readily as it tumbles into Swisttal, a municipality; and its rush may be heard in Meckenheim and Flerzheim, which is considered to be a berg of the town Rheinbach. It is here that there are cycle paths along the edge of the brook, where lovers lie in the grass and children play among wildflowers. The Swist also gives its name to the town of Weilerswist. The source of my namesake is found at the northern edge of the Eifel. Considered to be the longest brook run in Europe, the Swist may explain why I find healing in moving water. Read the poetry of Wally Swist Read a profile of Wally Swist Two New Poems From Poet Ken W. Simpson Ken W. Simpson
Groping for a Ghost Puffs of thistledown floating in the air. Lovely lady dark blue plums and the tracery of lace. 'Toot' says a trumpet to the cry of a clarinet. Tinkling piano notes flowing lilting. rippling fleeting fleeing. Bows, strings and violins. Echoes of yesterday fading into grey Holidays at Home Plastic rainbows men in fancy dress faces damaged by derision and snide jibes. Pretty girls in curlicues dressed in white counting the spaces in between paces while playing games beneath a chiaroscuro sky. Read the poetry of Ken W. Simpson Read a profile of Ken W. Simpson Mikels Skele And Love As An Agent Of Change Mikels Skele
What Love Does Straightens teeth, flattens bellies, Makes faces grow smooth And symmetrical Clears clouds, cools heat And warms the chill wind, Turns laughter into music Puts a lilt to the stammer, Shortens noses Or lengthens them As required Hips grow wide or slender, and feet more elegant than air, pale skin turns to marble and dark flesh to ebony And perfection itself Becomes imperfect By comparison Read the poetry of Mikels Skele Read a profile of Mikels Skele Some Calculations From Daniel Klawitter Daniel Klawitter
C Minus I was always below average at math. Yet I know how fullness retracts And shrinks back to empty. How the calculus of loss Is equal to achievement, Or simply: how all those numbers In unencumbered, joyful sequence- Are neither greater nor less than The algebra of bereavement. Read the poetry of Daniel Klawitter Read a profile of Daniel Klawitter We Warmly Welcome Poet Laura Traverse To VerseWrights Laura Traverse
Reflections on Adulthood The sky casts down its black grip, beady white orbs staring down, and we are entranced by their gaze, humbled by their size, saddened by their distance. You are almost, too far, too close, out of reach, and the things that used to move us only nudge us over now, and the words that used to freeze us only pause us mid-step, and our bones have grown thick, our mid-sections thicker; our eyes are getting focused on the words that affirm us. The time hastens onward, and we squeeze the reigns a little tighter, pulling, then heaving backward because the time won’t stop galloping, full force ahead. So we pat our hair against the wind, checking that the chins are still smart and the chests are still full, and we glance to the side, not seeing those faces that cause the fumble, not hearing those words that would make us stop. until we stop, that is, until we stop. Read the poetry of Laura Traverse Read a profile of Laura Traverse Jacqueline Czel's Newest (And Most Provocative) Poem Jacqueline Czel
Ode to an Immigrant Grocer Oh, I can tell by the skittish look in your eyes, and the trembling of your camel-colored hands; you are going to hate me too. Your clumsiness clearly indicates that you have never actually met; a Black, a Latino, an Asian, a Catholic, or even an American Jew. But you are going to ease on into a movie marketed American-ness by doing what only the worst kinds of WASPS do. You are going to listen to old wives tales, vote for vitriol, and adopt the more un-American points of view. Because like the millions of immigrants who have landed on these blood-stained shores .....before you; You are going to try, real hard, to hide the fact that you are brand spanking, novice new. You are going to assimilate through abhorrence, so no one suspects you. Read the poetry of Jacqueline Czel Read a profile of Jacqueline Czel |
New Haiku From Poet Archana Kapoor Nagpal Archana Kapoor Nagpal
from "Selected Haiku" first snow … bends further and further these red cherries * faded portrait … outside my window passing rainclouds * still born ... falls from a leaf to another these dewdrops * rain ends … in mother’s bedtime story this petrichor* *Petrichor is the earthy scent produced when rain falls on dry soil. Read the poetry of Archana Kapoor Nagpal Read a profile of Archana Kapoor Nagpal We Warmly Welcome Poet Lee Kisling To VerseWrights' Pages Lee Kisling
Ride Lonesome ☊ Lonesome is the name of the horse – hence Ride Lonesome. I’m not sure how I feel about projecting human emotions onto animals. Or onto inanimate objects – most people riding a streetcar named Desire are only going to the bank or post office. The farm people going to Mount Zion in Iowa are neither Zionists nor anywhere close to a mountain. Not sure how I feel about riding this horse Lonesome. He does seem to know the way, at least. Probably, he’s going someplace lonely. But maybe, wherever he’s taking me, there will be another horse and they will nicker and rub their long noses, go for a meal together in the new green grass of springtime, and I’ll just wait by a fencepost, and think him up a new name. We Extend A Warm Welcome To Poet Matthew Henningsen Matthew Henningsen
Instagram of a Lady If you happened to hike up This way, trekking from town, That crouches over a crevasse That tumbles to a stream That swirls to a river That churns to a sea where Ships power off to ports Where people come, Pushing down from cloud-hung, Distant hills. And, If you happened to push Through brambles and brakes And if you gazed up at A half-shuttered window you might see, Reflected in watery glass: A mute, stuffed nightingale perched Next to open scissors that point At a mound of beads, waxed - While, with a face to a wall, A lone figure, turns. Read the poetry of Matthew Henningsen Read a profile of Matthew Henningsen E. Michael Desilets Is Sidetracked...Fortunately E. Michael Desilets
Sidetrack's Last Haircut Maybe he’d been a brakeman like he said, rattling around the Old Colony and the Boston and Albany until he swam through booze all the way to the end of the Crazy Track after his betrothed drowned in Farm Pond. The sticky fistful of quarters was enough to cover his simple request: Cut it all off. Casella used the clippers and carpeted the hardwood with the longest hair he’d ever seen on a man. After Sidetrack loped away smelling of talc the barber doused every inch of leather and metal with Vitalis and wiped it all down with a crisp linen towel. Not much else happened that Tuesday. He switched on the Grundig Majestic. The Red Sox lost. Read the poetry of E. Michael Desilets Read a profile of E. Michael Desilets Ana Caballero: The Wordsmith's Labyrinth Ana Caballero
Said and Done I fear my capacity to guide Mistake toward fulfillment At times, I blame: The flurry of misprint, of crisis to unscramble; The renewed promise of classic self-improvement; The flat-water buoyancy of fresh peace. Other times, I blame: This devotion to words and their construction – How they unsay as they say – How they commit to purpose as thought – How they slay aim through speech – How they make me prove and reprove this power – This lack. Read the poetry of Ana Caballero Read a profile of Ana Caballero We Extend A Warm Welcome To Poet Clarence Wolfshohl Clarence Wolfshohl
We've Dreamed Ourselves Crows We’ve dreamed ourselves crows these later years to overcome the pain of our desire. We’ve cartwheeled on splayed ragged feathers stretching for eager pleasure. Fractured and fused into focus, our black silhouettes pulse on the air. We could dream eagles, our regal dalliance a tight grappling and still balance aloft, or birds of paradise in stately plumes preening toward our courtly convergence. But we are crows that bounce in jocular foreplay and climax with wild caws of delight. Read the poetry of Clarence Wolfshohl Read a profile of Clarence Wolfshohl Johnny Halton's Poem Is A Delicate Mix Of Passion and Angst Johnny Halton
hephaestus, aflame that night on the sand the snow roared its way through the city; we were alone. as light danced across the waves; your lips, stained with red met mine, in the haze of wine & wind. a soft flash of luck & grace never seen by this scarred, twisted face. in another city, another world, another lifetime, we might have made it. but the vines have grown heavy and all my sparrows were born in broken nests. eyes closed, hardly awake i felt your tipsy lips smile against mine and thought, this is it. this is what will finish me. the anti-depressants, the bourbon, the razor, the valium, these are truly nothing compared to the girl you can't stop loving. Read the poetry of Johnny Halton Read a profile of Johnny Halton Gary Metras: Two Children, Two Poems Gary Metras
New Shoes
Holding Piper's shoe box, I marvel at how small it is, how perfectly compact, like the shoes, themselves, inside, T-strap dressy, with leather smooth as her skin. Toddler size 7 1/2, her third pair since birth. She will journey a couple months in Marianna Navy Blue, each step a new word, muffin, chipmunk, hel-ee-cop-r. Though shoes wear out, words pave new roads to discovery. The Yellow Shovel The child squats to fill the plastic shovel with beach sand, then stands straight as she can, lifts the shovel arm even higher, and lets the sand slowly slide off to drift in the ocean breeze. She smiles as sand blows down her hand, on her bathing suit, then back to the beach where each grain disappears into the largeness. She can barely spell her name, but here she is testing the world a shovel-full at a time. Read the poetry of Gary Metras Read a profile of Gary Metras Dana Rushin: From Details To The Firmament Dana Rushin
for some Americans passing Before I get too comfortable on your couch, pull my Bostonian's off, slide my feet, still twisting in those brown dress socks, over the Saxony rug your mother washed with Tide, the spot your dad would sit eating his dinner and rooting for the Pirates, and if you could unearth the origin of everything; shadows, the refusal to accept as true that all our dad's have gone on now, yours being the last to go but needed two live-in nurses, to get his story out perhaps. To document the stuff younger minds quickly forget. Then we got the call, and it's always a call, not a flyover drone or a Mitsubishi A6m Zero (where you could see the pilots goggles) in that battle of the eastern Solomons in '42. Or a glistening sign on the side of a goat announcing your passing. Or any Greek goat, naked but unharmed, walking through that order of peonies, then turning to suckle the baby Zeus as Amaltheia did, nursing him with milk in a cave on Mount Ida. And like all the nurses I've known, forever placed among the stars. Read the poetry of Dana Rushin Read a profile of Dana Rushin 
Victor Perrotti frisco pier
our arms on the rail we stand at end of the black night rhythmically swaying with wooden pier solid, beneath bare feet into strong bodies the wood channels a deep ocean swell we look toward the canopy of stars and our destinies more burning stars for fleeting lives than grains of sand drifting in the ocean it’s our footprints the beach holds dear The poetry of Victor Perrotti Read a profile of Victor Perrotti We Warmly Welcome Poet Vanessa Leanage To Our Pages Vanessa Leanage
from Selected Haiku and Tanka... white waterfalls the last to leave winter behind hawks begin circling; premonitions shaping themselves into shadows heartache; the porch light on in the daytime after hours, working steadily-- split wood- sighing in sawdust Read the poetry of Vanessa Leanage Read a profile of Vanessa Leanage J. Matthew Waters And The Unwelcome Visitor j. Matthew Waters
artificial visitations
sadness used to show up unannounced and we’d sit up until sunrise drinking whatever was left in the house I kept telling myself the next time he appeared out of nowhere I wouldn’t let him in but of course that didn’t happen and he continued to pretend to be my friend I told him I was thinking about buying a brand new puppy a black one I said so I could learn how to keep him at bay and teach him to protect me from monsters like him Read the poetry of J. Matthew Waters Read a profile of J. Matthew Waters |
Tracey Gunne's Latest Poem Is As Sweet As It Is Bitter Tracey Gunne
You. Or maybe it was me... I believe in everything and in nothing that everything happens for a reason i believe in a god who dances with archaic movement bathing in the light of the sun or the moon it doesn't matter anyhow because forever ended yesterday and now resides in charming photographs your hand resting awkwardly in the black and white You or maybe it was me built bridges with evasive intent it doesn't matter anyhow if innocence or obsession caused the heavy load to crash into every tomorrow and bear witness to the sweet nectar of juices dripping inside the honeycomb an octagonal room you entered unscathed through the sharp edges Hearing babies wanting to be held and grass whispering to be mowed it was bitter circumstance that kept you here not the unstable corners or lack of windows and it was never me i have loved only once or maybe it was twice with sporadic breath and an affirmation of silence pending I asked you to resuscitate your words so they could lay a path for the stars to map create an effervescent cluster above the untended baby lost in the tall grass but do not blame the stars or assume they care which direction Read the poetry of Tracey Gunne Read a profile of Tracey Gunne Two New Poems From Poet Leslie Philibert Leslie Philibert
Donegal A line of stones; the threat of so much space, a fallen horizon. Salt grass coarse with rain, nights heavy with tides and the battered steel of the sea, the broken gong of the moon, strange friends. Then, I know not what to call the rough curves of peat, slight of the sea, a bodhran wind over the rocks. When I am no more let me melt in the rain of this cold coast, its own name shaped, the seagull`s call. Kafka Turned Around Dead as a fallen log but turned into a human. A gutbag of small pumps, red rivers and spilled salt. Drains, curves and arches as in a Roman town. Forced back into life, stranger than an insect. Less noble. Lock the door. Read the poetry of Leslie Philibert Read a profile of Leslie Philibert Witty Fay And The Power Of Intimate Inspiration Witty Fay
Of quill and quire All my little words Stuffed into your large pockets Next to the coins and the veins, Into a symphony of silver, red and vowels, As the truth burns a hole into the day, The size of a soaring kite, Running the ashy hills into the zenith. Inventoring every room of its mind, Yet your hands climb their cotton rim Of kindness, To grab heaven by the beard And pull stars into my lap, Where more little words are daintly Uttering life into syllables, Ready to ignite stories Into your large pockets. Read the poetry of Witty Fay Read a profile of Witty Fay We Warmly Welcome Poet Miriam Sagan To VerseWrights Miriam Sagan
The Blue Moon Diner has a closed sign in the window but if it were open-- and life sized-- I might be inside half spinning on the cracked red vinyl of a counter stool or alone in a booth head bent over an incongruous book of French aesthetic philosophy picking at a BLT nursing a cup of coffee--regular-- and an often broken heart I was at the MacDowell colony when I was young thanks not to my fame but a good letter of recommendation and every day lunch was delivered in a basket but I was restless unused to writing for more than fifteen minutes and so started driving to every diner I could locate or walking to the one in town I loved someone who didn't love me, or several someones set my heart to strife, how could I know that from then on a diner would make me happy? where I'd drink slightly bitter tap water leave a tip in hard currency and go on to what I'd later call the rest of my life. Read the poetry of Miriam Sagan Read a profile of Miriam Sagan Kelli Russell Agodon Tests Her Faith Kelli Russell Agodon
The Quiet Collapse of the Dharma Shop I celebrate small things —apples, beetles, faith-- while inside my mind there’s rattling, a broken stove of worry, a garden of hissing snakes. I can’t recognize the flowers. The plants are without names (though their poisons still sedate). I left the garden during meditation—mosquitoes, craneflies. But enlightenment? Nowhere near my space. Buddha. God. Universe. I charged spirituality on my VISA —a statue of Kuan Yin, prayer flags to hang across the gate. But what might improve my mood is a new bra and some bravery. Instead, I try on superstition, wear a D-cup of doomed fate. I mix religions—say chaos and calm, corset, cheesecake--a smorgasbord on my plate. I am the chainsaw carving the toothpick. A lowercase sos. Yesterday, I bought a silver cross. Magic. Amulet. Saints. I pray to anything these days-- the plants without names, the beetles, my garden of hissing snakes. Read the poetry of Kelli Russell Agodon Read a profile of Kelli Russell Agodon Rivka Zorea And The Nascent Alaskan Fall Rivka Zorea
Autumn Comes Again Autumn comes to the North Land with a fervent rythm the long starless day of summer is past, August has brought the stars and the moon and the deep night sky back. The absence of which brought the frenzied activity of the 24/7 midnight sun. There is a loss of clock time during the Alaska Summer the wish to play forever. Lack of sleep, trying to use up that gift of eternal sunshine. But, now, the night returns. The owl is but a shadow. A distant echo in the woods. Yellows appear here and there Reds and Russets dot the hillside. The Raven, harbinger of winter, returns. Fall leaves will gently descend and we will pull our cloaks around us closer walk faster glance around us in fear. for in the North land Fall is but the siren call of winter. Read the poetry of Rivka Zorea Read a profile of Rivka Zorea Amauri Solon Gives Us Two Poems For Rumination Amauri Solon
Collections
Collecting shells On the beach There goes the boy Hand in hand with his dreams Collecting birds Under the sky There goes the wind Hand in hand with clouds Collecting fish In the sea There goes the wave Hand in hand with the storm Collecting memories In my life There I go Hand in hand with my fate Rhetoric Should it be or should it not be there where it belongs the sun at dawn the moon at sunset male and female seek and hide Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde white or dark a whale or a shark wolves howl or bark? a lot or just a little bit is it clear that you love me my dear or is it not Isn't it? Read the poetry of Amauri Solon Read a profile of Amauri Solon Two Poets, Two Short Poems
Eusebeia Philos Through Her I could see through her, not lightly, into a dimension of beckoning trees and slanted moons, where blues and stars were full to taste. The poetry of Eusebeia Philos Read a profile of Eusebeia Philos David Chorlton's Latest Is A Poem Embracing The Elements David Chorlton
Monsoon Flashes The smell of distant rain blew in from the desert beneath an evening’s darkening clouds when a lizard on the path turned quickly from the concrete’s warmth. Jupiter was drifting away from Venus in the west while stormlight was concealed inside the southern sky. * At dawn the thunder rolled between the wheels of early traffic; shook itself free from the curtains being drawn back behind waking windows; flashed and faded into the clouds as they paled and parted for light to pass through. * The heat wasn’t dry anymore. Moisture left behind from a previous storm had a chokehold on the air. Tuning was hopeless: the strings tightened around every melody played. * Between the diminishing calls the lovebirds made as their shadows stretched out on the grass and the liquid sounds that came with the cowbirds early, the city lay at rest in silver-lined darkness. * The mountains shaded into cumulous edged with white. It was a day very much like the one preceding it, that ended as quietly as it had begun with only a faraway rumbling as a tease, and the men asleep beneath the awning on the abandoned shopfront were oblivious to passing time. * Foot traffic was light along 16th Street before the first cloud appeared above the dulceria, where piñatas were hanging in rows waiting for the right occasion to be struck and spill open. * Early in the day the air carried the smell of burning as it rustled the evergreens and buoyed the mockingbirds in flight. It lasted a while then drifted away. It was the time of year fire comes and goes at will. * Something the sky had to tell us about the confluence of water and light was held back above land accustomed to drought. And the hummingbird perched, as he does every dusk, on the bare branch extending from the orange tree whose outermost leaves had started to curl. Read the poetry of David Chorlton Read a profile of David Chorlton |