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Archive #28
October, 2015


Wally Swist Finds The Way And
​An Elusive Joy

PictureWally Swist

 The Secret Cabin

  Footprints lead to the secret cabin,
  which indicates that once it did exist--
 
 the secret cabin existed just like the footprints,
 on the path of practicing the art of alchemy.
 
Poets may think they only need a trail map
to locate the cabin.  Any alchemist
 
worth his metal wouldn’t give a map
to a poet, since following a path
 
makes it impossible to find the secret cabin,
even if there are footprints leading up the trail. 
 
An alchemist skilled in practicing his art
may be able to turn the lead of our lives into
 
the gold of our transformation.  That is
no secret.   A map is of no use for a poet.

Picture
Japanese Art Open Data Base
"A Distant View of Kinryuzan Temple
and Azuma Bridge"


The cherry blossoms floating in the wind
Remind me of Hiroshige’s woodblock
 
Of the pleasure quarter in old Kyoto.
The air thick with what is unseen beyond their activity,
 
Such vibrant gladness--
Their petals all dreams disappearing into the light of day,
 
What delight it is to be human,
To have newsprint on our fingers!
 
How well we are aware of the spirit’s poverty
That sometimes fills us to surfeit, especially
 
In our holding true to the muse of what we see,
In what we hear—in falling, windblown cherry blossoms.


Read the poetry of Wally Swist
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 of Wally Swist

Danielle Favorite's New Poem: A Delightful, Uneasy Read

PictureDanielle Favorite

​  Insomnia Observation

   It wasn’t until I looked through
            the moon

that I realized oily,
black leeches were feasting
on my wild heart.

“Too many daydreams,” explained my father.
“Not enough light,” explained my mother.

I drank saltwater to dry them out;
I floated in the ocean to draw them out.

They would not leave.

My heart was draining.
I became white watercolor with
a hint of pink on my cheekbones,

            arctic blue on my lips.

I only have so many heartbeats;
they smack against my rib cage
like birds hitting a window.

Read the poetry of Danielle Favorite
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Tracey Gunne's "Letter" Is Pure Poetry

PictureTracey Gunne

  Goodbye Letter To My Daughter

  protected in my silence you leave
  and I can no longer reach
  kiss your eyelids goodnight

remember
all the days spent lost and searching
memories of water falling
gathered at the lowest point
where everything ends uncertain
the sunny corner you hollowed out
the unveiling of
wet sand, shells
broken and the smallest
piece of glass

now,
in a room you paint white
sunlight reflects summer
poured into bottles
memories
on your skin, soft blue and gold

this could be an apology
all I can offer is all that I am
and was
a story you learned but were never told

inheritance of past mistakes

knowledge that a heart
incandescent in the moonlight

can be strong enough

                                            (for DunkaSun)

Read the poetry pf Tracey Gunne
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​

We Warmly Welcome Poet Arvinder Kaur To The Pages Of VerseWrights

PictureArvinder Kaur
          from Selected Haiku...

               hydrangea clouds -
               how deep the layers
               of this longing

                   ❊

                autumn arrives
                with swaying hips
                ochre kimono

                                  ❊

                                   rain tipped leaf -
                                   the moist edges
                                   of her lashes

                    ❊

               soldier's homecoming -
               the evening star so close
               in the window

Read the poetry of Arvinder Kaur
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​

Poet Bruce McRae's Imagination Takes Flight In His Latest Poem

PictureBruce McRae

   Imagine That

   I’ve imagined all this,
   one reality as real as any other.

I’ve been strolling in the mind’s bestiary,
thoughtfulness sawing its green lumber.
I’m on a newly discovered planet.
I’m a simile or silly allegory.
A gargoyle in a cathedral.
A fist through a pane of tinted glass.
Already I’ve died a thousand nights
and have crowned myself king of the gnats.
In my mind is a creamer of magical water.
I’ve put myself before all others.

Why write of the real world,
its stems and stoves and fishes?
When I can live on the sun instead
and carry cities in my bloodstream.
I can paint the invisible.
Invent new numbers.
Marry the cutest little Neanderthal.

Or better yet, I could start life over,
taking a step back from myself
as one would when returning to Earth
after light-years of interstellar wandering.

I could make the same mistakes again
and not come to regret them.

​
Read the poetry of Bruce McRae
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Mikels Skele: Two Poems, Two Takes

PictureMikels Skele
   The Poetry in Poetry

  Oh, this must be a poem,
   from the lick-backed wobble
   of word-induced glimmer,

from the near-likely brood
of dimple-starred crows,
these broad gallops of

weedy wings.

Like the grand chausee
or the midge-grained wire alike.

Oh, this must be a poem,
sits like a wimple
across my greedy brow;

yet the still carcass
– a mantis dream –
occurs relentless into the
sun-darkened corner.

Oh, this must be a poem.

​

Halibun: Poetry

What use is poetry? You can’t drive a nail with it. You can’t heat your house, shoe a horse, build a dam, or pave a street. It’s no good for sewing, sawing, swinging, or finding your keys in the dark. If you’re a baker, soldier, mechanic, farmer, gravedigger, or physician, poetry doesn’t get the job done. Does poetry clean, cut, weld, braise, fry, or distill? Design a plane, accumulate capital, build a stadium? Fat chance. About the only thing I can think of that poetry is good for is changing everything.

“Words,” said Sensei,
“Cannot burn your tongue,”
Spitting ashes.


Read the poetry of Mikels Skele
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Robert Nied's Manifesto On Aging

PictureRobert Nied


   

   I Won't Take My Time

​I learned to drive in a '64 Ford, as big as Noah’s ark
I swear you needed a harbor pilot to make the damn   thing park
It was violet candy blue and smelled of tobacco
The motor roared, whether you went fast or went slow
 
I was alive to see the Kennedys die, and the president be born
By any measure of a man I’m old, a long trip around the horn
But there is no traffic jam behind my red sedan
I’ve got 6 points on my license and fines of almost a grand.
 
I won’t take my pills from a plastic box, with letters for the days of the week
I won’t take my time or my place with the tired and the meek
I won’t live behind a gate, with the dark green grass
I won’t spend my nights in the club house, in case they are my last
 
I want to hear babies cry and teenagers rant
I want to play the saxophone, even if I can’t
I want to memorize an epic poem, maybe Gilgamesh or Howl
I’m just not ready yet to throw in the towel.
 
I want to hear my thoughts, in a different voice
So many ideas it’s hard to make a choice
I want to eat an enormous plate of cheese
Je aimerais que le fromage, and pass the wine please.


Read the poetry of Robert Nied
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​

Marsailidh Groat And A Lament
For Language

PictureMarsailidh Groat

  



     Native Tongue

   Where I come from, extremity is encouraged;
   my eyes seek the brash, the bright, the vulgar,
   while my face contorts with the sourness of a taste.
   We have the privilege of arguing over who has gone    ...too far.

Far away from here the line is clearer, crueler,
where books are burned and speech must be careful.
Letters build words the way actions make personalities,
and stars form constellations.

Here, we fought for our language.
Voices that were overlooked for so long
pushed their way to the forefront
demanding to be recognised.

Now, we are inundated with trivia,
artless narcissism, self obsession,
and, when we look to express,

There are no words.

Read the poetry of Marsailidh Groat
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Please Welcome Our Newest Poet To VerseWrights, JD DeHart

PictureJD DeHart

​ Oppression's Face

 Let me not wear
 the brass mask of oppression
 or raise the rod of correction
to the weak and sincere.
Let me not dress
in cotton to cover a
course inner fabric.
Let me use words as
a freedom and not as
an expression of distance,
creating chasms
out of sentences and chaos
out of semantics.


​Shadow of Myself

There is a shadow of myself
where I used to be.  An outline,
really, and that is all.  My finger
traces the experience but cannot
contain it in my palm.  I create
my own expectations then find
them jarringly unmet.  No situation
turns out exactly the way I expect,
no space feels and smells the way
I wish it to.  I am obscured by my own
expectations and several sets of eyes
evaluate me, or simply think about
dinner or politics, or do not see me
            at all.

​Read the poetry of JD DeHart
Reas a profile of JD DeHart

Amauri Solon Offers Two New Poems

PictureAmauri Solon



​First Dawn Ever

Last night's
                  Nightmares

Last year's
Last night

Still present
In my semi
Waking up
Waking down
(Should it be)

Through dark
Clouds
Emerge
The first dawn
Ever



Ebb Tide

Tethered to poles
boats lay on the wet sand
no fishing today

Early morning inhabitants
of the empty village
doing their daily chores -
dogs
smal crabs and
a humming-bird

no fishermen aboard their boats
only the sun casts shadows
on the empy streets

No breeze to sail
no clouds to cover the sun
lazy
the river stops still

 Ebb tide

Read the poetry of Amauri Solon
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Poet Eusebeia Philos Gives Us A Definition...Of Sorts

PictureEusebeia Philos

​  
The Desire of the Sane
                     after Michelle Boisseau

   
The desire that molds a stranger into a lover,
a lover into the departed
and the departed into pale flesh,
the desire of the sane
is one part silence and two parts scream.

The desire that nurtures a seed into a plant,
a plant into a vine
and a vine into a trellis,
the desire of the sane
hangs itself from the weakest branch.

The desire that transfigures a lie into a belief,
belief into creed
and creed into the unreachable,
the desire of the sane
climbs for the sake of the leap.

The desire that paints canvas into art,
art into flesh
and flesh into defacement,
the desire of the sane 
slashes the canvas of painted souls.


Read the poetry of Eusebeia Philos
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​

Poet Gary Metras Takes Flight
In A Spring Moment

PictureGary Metras

​  In a June Hour

  Before dusk frantic starlings
  spy one more beetle
  in slanted light piercing grass
 
a king bird snaps
from dampening air
mayfly     mayfly     mayfly
 
those little eager tongues
the eager little songs
bounding, leaping
 
from lilac branch
from fence post
descending from roof top
 
from cloud root
chirping in the changing light
air growing dense
 
an easy glide above the field
a too easy deceit in a world
they have no choice but to love


Read the poetry of Gary Metras
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​

Poet Mark McDonald Returns With A Poem For Frank O'Hara 

PictureMark MacDonald

  




            Communique
                  ~for Frank O'Hara

    You could have more easily written a letter
    of course; dialed the next available 
    operator; or stood shouting from the street

and thrown a rock through the window.
But instead you chose this—not exactly
a phone call, a report from the manager,

or a telegram even; but merely a summons
for parley perhaps—a flag at the end of a pole
before the engagement begins. Please raise

your hand, if you have any questions; please
take a number or a photograph—if you must.

Say what you would and I’ll do what I can.


Read the poetry of Mark MacDonald
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With Rosa Saba, The Ordinary
​Becomes Memorable

PictureRosa Saba

​  bus ride

the unbalanced couple
perched, one animated and the other just        a sketch
barely listening
he who turns the wheel, winds the headlights 
through twisted streets, tries to greet them all
but fails with some, only turning his eyes forward
with a sigh and driving on
the man there, at the front
half-chuckling, half-crying
maybe at the music in his ears
or maybe at the knives in his stomach
hands clutching each other, twisting
forearms pressed into that place
scuffed shoes tapping out the rhythm of addiction
into the floor of the bus, always dirty with the secrets
people drop on their way to the back
where a girl sits, eyes half-shut but ears open
feeling the tension, examining the moments
that pass, slow and fast
before she pulls the cord, steps down
and exits 

at last


Read the poetry of Rosa Saba
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​New Poem and Photo Art By Diana Matisz

Picture
Photo art by Diana Matisz (Click for larger view)
PictureDiana Matisz

​ "tonight I will convene..."

 tonight
 I will convene
 with departing passerines
I will tuck in between
blackened silk remiges,
every time I’ve called your name
every thrust of vowels
against my hungry tongue
every wanton sigh
their own siren, is the south
but for me, they’ll chart
an easterly
and later, when you are quiet
and replete,
the air will writhe
with something unexplained
your face will lift
your eyes turn west
turn west
to me, and the departing
passerines


Enjoy the poetry and art of Diana Matisz
Read a profile of Diana Matisz
​

Katherine Gallagher's Poem Contrasts
Past and Present

PictureKatherine Gallagher

 Maldon, Old Mining Town

  A breakdown at six a.m.
  and no garage till seven; reminisce
  pick at stillness, among the ranks
  of bullock-drays and the old diggers
pegged to their shadows --
my great-grandfather who
just missed a mine here,
couldn't go deep enough
to crack the golden rib,
and the others like him
who started and stopped
in the overnight of a few years
until the reef went quiet.
 
Everything's stage-set for history
and tourists
as the miners pass again
in the early morning chill,
spendthrift with ragged success
and celebrated: the town clinging to a oneness
that was theirs -- hood-nosed verandahs
over stone-slab footpaths
with relics of the Then
when six million stirred the Banks.
 
And you listen, touch their golden-
wheel: it spins in your dream as they
come driving up the street
from an age when they chipped the year
on everything - the '54 Bakery, Dabb's Store,
the Hospital and a line of churches. . .
    Then their voices trail off -
gone like the gold they chased.
And you wait, hold your breath. . .
       Carry their clip-clops

 under glass.
​


Joshua Gray On Food...And Family

PictureJoshua Gray


How I Learned to Cook

​
​After every soccer practice, I always followed my feet through the front door and into the kitchen to pour myself a glass of orange juice. Maybe two. My own stench and filth knew how to move me into the shower, so I’d stand under steam
 
and watch dirty water teem from my toes down the drain.  Afterwards, my feet feeling more revived than beaten, I’d waddle into the kitchen where herbs and spices drowned my Ivory Soap skin.
 
Sounds of food and smells of music made Mom move.  The kitchen wasn’t big enough for the both of us, but we’d make do. She would  pucker her lips, snap her fingers and bake her bootie between stirs and chops, between breaths of song.
 
Pop heard lectures in culinary linguistics by his own Doctor Dad. Ham 101.  It was hot with no AC or fans when I sat in his flat, open windows barred above a French café, while he made sludge.  Sludge is what you get when you over-flour and over-cook the gravy.
 
My sister never did care for the kitchen, until she was smitten with a bit of bug tea and eczema. Then the tasteless cardboard gained ground and found its way to our doorstep riding in paper bags. It was about time
 
I took a culinary class. During the final show-off my mother didn’t realize the sushi was mine. Back home, I found the man she married finishing up a bowl of Granola -- his specialty, because to him, nothing else -- not even seconds -- made any sense.


Read the poetry of Joshua Gray
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​

Laura Traverse Encounters Birds Of Sway

PictureLaura Traverse

  Woods

   The turkeys are in the trees!
   Tails turned up, red rims showing,
   heads cocked, feet gripped up
                      ten, fifteen feet.
 
There’s seven of them,
large things, their red heads
counteracting the swing and heave of
balance on those spindly branches,
two, maybe three, inches thick.
 
It looks like they are swaying,
catching gusts with a tail flume,
leaning into balance with a forward fall, and
they hold on tight, wings pressed firm
as their tail continues to guide, to counter,
the prevailing winds that threaten their stay in the
trees.
 
The whole thing, the whole pack,
it seems like a trick of the eye,
a defiance of normalcy, of
“physics”--a round and rather large
troupe of turkeys sits heavily in the
thin upper branches, waging war with the wind and
winning.


Read the poetry of Laura Traverse
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​

We Warmly Welcome Poet Mary Jo Balistreri to VerseWrights

PictureMary Jo Balistreri


​  Reading Rilke

   The sky presses down on the land,
    a darkening. Rain begins a steady drone
    on worn limestone paths,
swishes like a brushed kettle drum
on the log cabin roof. Inside I read,
and then surrender to weather
encrypted with its own stillness.
The lamp’s image ghosts through the window,
hangs like a lantern from the limb
of a birch.
 
Light wavers in the wind’s sigh.
I reach for distances not yet touched,
no difference between near and far. Wisps
of fog steam across the glass, clouds vision.
The perfect paper shell of the abandoned wasp’s
nest disappears.
How slippery the word reality.

Read the poetry of Mary Jo Balistreri
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   Poet Gareth Spark At The Musee
​   De Beaux Arts

PictureGareth Spark

​

​​Art Lover.........

Art lover, you said, meaning to insult,
But not quite hitting, failing, as often you did
To grind contempt to an edge that would cut.
For years I’d wanted to see
The vision after the sermon
1888. I could barely wait
My way through galleries hung with dull
Religious dross and plastic wrapped pensioners
with cameras and you,
Incomprehensibly regarding
A Raphael, a Rembrandt self-portrait,
But feeling like a child outside a dark house
Building courage to knock.
Then the Gauguin tipped you over.
“It’s a mess,” You started,
“anyone could do it.” as I stared
across Bretons at prayer on a scarlet field towards
The gold-winged angel
And felt, like Jacob,
Love‘s cold fingers, tightening.

        Read the poetry of Gareth Spark
        Read a profile of Gareth Spark
​

Vaishnavi Nathan's Prose Poem Of Hope

PictureVaishnavi Nathan


   
       the first step to recovery

Admit that certain people take up room in your heart, little doors set ajar. Admit the curiosity of their inhabitance, nestling in corners of your mind. Admit desire. And an absence of which you are far too aware. Admit the need to rise, to witness the rays bursting through the curtains and the sound of a boiling blue kettle. Admit nostalgia, which is the only legacy that endures. Admit denomination, unspoken differences silenced. 
 
Admit hindsight, but not for  its lessons learnt or displaced recollection.  Admit doubt. Admit despair. Admit beauty, how it casually and often passes you by.  Try, because you won’t regret failing.  Embrace, to open your wounds to another.  Reject fragility because you have crumbled for reasons. Admit surrender, how easy it is to be happy. Then leap, believing you first need to nourish your soul. 

Read the poetry of Vaishnavi Nathan
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​

Miriam Sagan's Barrage Of Imagery
Ends In A Moment

PictureMiriam Sagan


Orange Umbrellas Open In All Directions


 
jellyfish blown into the glass paperweight

fake ivy made the mirrored gate more beautiful
a legless man in a motorized chair
a tiny crab in a plate of oysters—its home, our dinner
I bought a pair of jeweled sandals
the wind had anorexia and ate only the swoop of seagulls
purdah’s chiffon veil rustled by the sea
untitled, the tracks of the sandpiper might have been in      Urdu
I tried to unwrap the moment of my feeling as leaves fell without season
the tideline deconstructed the Hebrew alphabet
what you meant to say, a white lie, a promise
kissed on the lips, mouth open, by dawn
although I was afraid I was not unhappy
blue anodyne, trembling frond, FOR RENT


Read the poetry of Miriam Sagan
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LA Lorena: Here's To You, Mrs. Robinson

PictureLA Lorena
The Home Coming Queen

she checks her face in the mirror
adjusts herself, just so
her son comes home today
been away at college, he has
 
won't be long now
before he'll have his own
a wife and family
and she'll not have
his comforting presence
home for the holidays
 
bringing some friends too, he is
John, such a nice young lad
He'll do well, that one
but that other one?
She frowns....
His name escapes her
the mind does that when we age
cheeky monkey, that one
An odd look about him
and the way he's always whistling
the theme song to that movie
"The Graduate"
Insolent, he is
As if she doesn't know!
 
One last look in the mirror
to be certain
she pauses
looks round to be sure
she'll not be seen
purses her lips and blows
 
smiling now
she looks younger somehow
and it's comforting to know
that she still remembers
how to whistle
 
coo coo ca choo


Read the poetry of LA Lorena
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Joanna Suzanne Lee Challenges Us With
A Question...

PictureJoanna Suzanne Lee


​  the desert cucumber

   in the span of eighty years, the saguaro cactus, 
   sensing imbalance, can begin to grow a single 
   arm. while seas sink, their floors creeping up, 
the air grows dry as if from a bathroom door 
left open after a century-long shower. what will 
last? i have grown arms in much less space.
i insist too much on grand declarations. 
the blue blue of sky cleanses even the mold
of canyons. spiny and full of thorns, love 
is a thing of myth, like a desert cucumber.
who are you when you stand straight and arm-
less?


Read the poetry of Joanna Suzanne Lee
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​

Vanessa Leanage Shares Her Latest Poem

PictureVanessa Leanage

  Barns

  What holds up
  the toothless barns;
  their sun-bleached beams
  textured and warmed 
to the touch;
alive with memories
and long forgotten hay?

Oh, those winds, do blow
howling through
each opening
trying to force open,
the resistance of owls-
eyes and feathers
softly occupying
rafters without pigeons

You’ve sloped, 
here and there,
into the body 
of the landscape,
surrounding you

You’ve sheltered 
young lovers, vagrants,
and beer-drinking youth
in your senior years
Loyal and steadfastly 
upholding your purpose-
refusing to retire

Your beautiful bleached bones
familiar etchings 
across lines
where land meets
blue skies-

The sun
sets and rises
around you-
You, that
holds time

Read the poetry of Vanessa Leanage
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​

Two New Poems From Poet Dana Rushin

PictureDana Rushin
 
​  



​Apollyon

​I'd like to trade my Taurus for a pickup truck
so I could have less room in my garage for your
mothers furniture. That way the final

strings to the horizon will be broken and I can
reach past that bottomless heart you share with irony
and Colorado-ness.

And I will hear you when you ask me again,
what poems have done for me; how have they
changed the workings in the night? And I 

will tell you again about energy. Of how effortlessly
one can become a swallow,
a crocus blossom or a beatup ballerina.

And with my radical fist raised, you will kiss me 
beyond all entropy, drag me by my apron through the house and free me

from this magic spell I've woven.
​


this time, lets give a name to fate

Easily

a runaway train
could jump the tracks and kill you.

Two old lovers in a garden hugging?


Not so much.

Read the poetry of Dana Rushin
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​

Make Time To Read Neil Fulwood's Latest

PictureNeil Fulwood


​  A Quiet Place to Stay

  Peacocks stake a claim to the lawn.
  The guy tending the bar
 has named them. Time is something
he seems to have on his hands,
in his pockets, generally about his person.

Invisible units of time
clipped to his belt, a time fetish
on his key-ring like a rabbit's foot.
Time as a book mark, keeping his place
in 'À la recherché du temps perdu',

his third reading of the entire sequence.
Time as the pages in his diary,
discursive entries on the habits of peacocks,
the interchangeability of guests,
the slow passing of the hours.


Read the poetry of Neil Fulwood
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​

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