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Archive #26
August, 2015


Evie Ivy: A Parting Of The Ways, But Not The Waves

PictureEvie 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
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Please Welcome Poet Doc Burkard To VerseWrights

PictureDoc 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
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Two New Poems From Poet Yuan Changming

PictureYuan 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
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Wayne F Burke And One Morning On O'Connell

PictureWayne 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
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Jill Lapin-Zell: A Season And The Reason

PictureJill 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
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Wally Swist And...What's In A Name?

PictureWally 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
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Two New Poems From Poet Ken W. Simpson

PictureKen 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

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Mikels Skele And Love As An Agent Of Change

PictureMikels 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
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Some Calculations From Daniel Klawitter

PictureDaniel 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
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We Warmly Welcome Poet Laura Traverse To VerseWrights

PictureLaura 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
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Jacqueline Czel's Newest (And Most Provocative) Poem

PictureJacqueline 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
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New Haiku From Poet Archana Kapoor Nagpal

PictureArchana 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
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We Warmly Welcome Poet Lee Kisling To VerseWrights' Pages

PictureLee 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.

Enjoy this poem in the PoetryAloud area
Read the poetry of Lee Kisling
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We Extend A Warm Welcome To Poet Matthew Henningsen

PictureMatthew 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
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E. Michael Desilets Is Sidetracked...Fortunately

PictureE. 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
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Ana Caballero: The Wordsmith's Labyrinth 

PictureAna 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
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We Extend A Warm Welcome To Poet Clarence Wolfshohl 

PictureClarence 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
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Johnny Halton's Poem Is A Delicate Mix Of Passion and Angst

PictureJohnny 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
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Gary Metras: Two Children, Two Poems

PictureGary 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
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Dana Rushin: From Details To The Firmament

PictureDana 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
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Picture


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
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We Warmly Welcome Poet Vanessa Leanage To Our Pages

PictureVanessa 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
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J. Matthew Waters And The Unwelcome Visitor

Picturej. 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
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Tracey Gunne's Latest Poem Is As Sweet As It Is Bitter

PictureTracey 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
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Two New Poems From Poet Leslie Philibert

PictureLeslie 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
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Witty Fay And The Power Of Intimate Inspiration

PictureWitty 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
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We Warmly Welcome Poet Miriam Sagan To VerseWrights

PictureMiriam 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
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Kelli Russell Agodon Tests Her Faith

PictureKelli 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
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Rivka Zorea And The Nascent Alaskan Fall

PictureRivka 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
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Amauri Solon Gives Us Two Poems For Rumination

PictureAmauri 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
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Two Poets, Two Short Poems

Picture


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
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David Chorlton's Latest Is A Poem Embracing The Elements

PictureDavid 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
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