Archive #29
November, 2015

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Two Of Poet Evie Ivy's Latest Poems

Evie Ivy

 Rhythms

 Why judge
 Whom you don’t know
 When you hear
 Half a story?
 
I don’t know anyone.
Who knows anyone? 
That’s why they’ll
Say he was such a nice boy,
After the fact.
She was such a good mother,
After the act.
 
My heart pounds
Yet strums the guitar.
 
I don’t know anyone.
I could only say I know
A song,
Music,
A dance.


Dreams

There are dreams engraved in the mind
morning did not have a chance to dispel
from the real. You could bring them on,
vivid pictures on the screen of memory.
 
But some dreams fragment, move on out
leaving behind sad or somehow felicitous
feelings, but you can’t remember the dream.
Its pieces flow with your sad or happy
 
dream into a huge mental void that can
match that of the universe, with your dream
embossed on them. They float in so slightly
uneven colored shreds - a lost work of art?
 
Fragments of something have left you wondering
whether it was an important piece or not...

Read the poetry of Evie Ivy
Read a profile of Evie Ivy
​

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We Warmly Welcome Poet Ken Slaughter to VerseWrights

Ken Slaughter

  from Selected Tanka and Senyru...

    blank squares
                     in the crossword puzzle
                     my brother left
                     at the cancer clinic…
                     answers we never find


     first date
     I ask if the dragonflies
     are mating


                                  on a cloudless night
                                  my friend points a finger
                                  at the Big Dipper…
                                  for most of my life
                                  I’ve followed the wrong star


​                    poems
                    that are never written
                    deep
                    in the woods
                    the song of a thrush

Read the poetry of Ken Slaughter
Read a profile of Ken Slaughter
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From Poet Matthew Henningsen:
​A Minimalist Mystery

Matthew Henningsen

 
  The Late Director's Notes

   Early Morning

   Rudolph breaks eggs on
                     The radiator, grinning
                     At Jill.

                             “She’ll never come.”

                      A severed hand sits on
                      The table, stirring
                      Jill’s instant juice.

                             “Now. It’s time.”

                      A grasshopper raps
                      On a window.

                      Summer, 2 Years Earlier

                     “Why don’t we? Yes, it’s
                     A fine idea.”

                               Three sweaty, stout men
                               Push the red baby grand.

                      “Yes.”

                               A shoeless foot taps
                               On the cold tile floor.

                      “Yes. Let’s go.”

                      Rudolph picks
                      Up the phone.

                      13 Minutes Before

                      The slim black cat
                      Laps at egg, hissing

                      At the noise coming
                      From the window.

                      Dusk, Late Winter

                      The guests arrive.

                      Rudolph, in another room,
                      Pours juice for Jill.

                      The guests arrive.

           Read the poetry of Matthew Henningsen
           Read a profile of Matthew Henningsen
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E. Michael Desilets And The Then And Now

E. Michael Desilets

 On My Sixth Birthday

 What I wanted was a carrot
 but I could not find orange
 in my grandfather’s garden
that snickering spring day.
I could not escape the greenness.
 
Even the tomatoes were colored
by the stark spring green.
My uncle, inhaling disdain
deep into his doomed lungs,
knew the carrots were hidden
underground. He lingered
on the back porch steps
savoring his knowledge
and his mocking smoke rings.
 
He wasn’t much
for sharing secrets
or anything else.
I did in time inherit
his old comic books
that he left piled
beside his bed.
I’ve always been slow
to figure things
but nowadays I know
where carrots hide
and where my uncle is buried.

Read the poetry of E. Michael Desilets
Read a profile of E. Michael Desilets
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David Chorlton's Poem For A Rarefied Avian

David Chorlton

        
​  The Elegant Trogon

   I
   If a group of four stands on the bridge
   each one looking in a different direction
and listening for a call they’ve never heard
before, they have come a long way
to see the belly flash between
dark trees above which
the canyon walls are pulling free
of the ground.

II
At the dry end of spring
when scarcely a breeze
disturbs the leaves on the sycamores
the calls are answered
from across a slow creek:
two hoarse notes from this side
and two from over there,
always nearer than they sound
when flying makes no sound at all.

III
If there’s poison ivy by the trail
and a woodpecker drumming
from off in the pines; if the water
runs shallow and junipers filter
sunlight at noon; if the sky
is dizzy with hawks
circling and the only road
is gravel and thirst, chances are good
that the trogon is so close
that nobody thought to look
where he is resting.

IV
The name changed by mysterious decree
from Coppery-tailed to Elegant,
while the red feathers remained
as bright as those
the Aztecs saw.

Read the poetry of David Chorlton
Read a profile of David Chorlton
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Doc Burkard: Ask Him And He'll Tell You
Where He's From...

Doc Burkard

​ 

   This Land is My Land

I will show you
where I'm from
            or where they buried
the beasts that made me;
            that row of pines,
skinny, on the blacktop's edge.
Old highway thirty-five
            running up north,
to Saint Paul, a clot
            the size of
God's fist
            as it throbs.
 
The Midwest, 
my iron heart
            beating.
     Granddad's old
 Buick
            idles on the gravel
drive, leaking black;
exhaust blowing
            over
the knee high grass
   color of
            my skin.

Read the poetry of Doc Burkard
Read a profile of Doc Burkard

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David Adès: With Each Forgetting, A Memorable Remembering

David Adès

 I Remember the Times I Forgot

 I remember the time I forgot to breathe.
 I lay blue-tongued, blue-faced,                         
 blue-lunged after a hard landing,
 air sucked out in a sudden decompression,
 
the contrail of my last breath ascending
like an uncorked genie after the final wish,
clouds spilling from a decanted sky.
 
I unlearned rhythm, the innate,
the inherited knowledge of gills,
residual contact with the umbilicus;
 
and occupied a space outside time,
claw-fisted against the grinding
squeeze of ribs – until the pained spasm,
 
the first shallow intake upon memory’s return,
a diminishing roar in my ears,
and sweet the air.
 
I remember the time I forgot to speak.
First, the air was black with words,
all buzz and drone departing,
a mindless swarm without choreographer
 
that unlinked arms, ended its intricate dance,
its many layered waltz with meaning
and fell into the event horizon of silence.
 
I could find no words then, no whispers,
no susurrations – only the blind fear
and a spreading stain of incomprehension.
 
It passed, and in the silence new things grew:
I learned to read the sky, the secrets
of birds’ wings, the songs of clouds.
 
My eyes recited poems, my hands told stories,
my body spoke other languages
and rich the speech.
 
I remember the time I forgot to love.
My dreams had set, and black grief arisen
behind my eyes, blanketing stars, sun,
luminous swirl of my inner cosmos.
 
Joy – panic-stricken – vanished in the arms
of laughter. The ground swooned,
punch drunk at the tide’s retreat,
 
glistening matted skeins of hope
and flapping wish stranded in its wake.
I sank into inertia,
 
a monotony of nights and days
and listless conversation,
gravity’s shoes hard on my shoulders.
 
It was years before the wave came in,
tsunami like, flooding my sullen heart,
and huge the love.
 
I remember the time I forgot to wake.
I was dreaming noiseless eternities,
floating in the squid ink depths
of unmapped oceans peopled by phantasms,
 
mermaids, unicorns: all the blurred
images of the subconscious.
Not quite bodiless, I sensed
 
an insistent tug drawing me further
from the surface. What lullaby
was this? What siren’s song?
 
Who knows how long I slept
and what it was, at last, that roused me?
I could have been lost forever
 
like someone sleeping in the snow,
but woke in my own familiar skin
and bright the light.
 
After each forgetting,
after each lapse into neglect,
a sweet, rich, huge, bright awakening.

Read the poetry of David Adès
Read a profile of David Adès
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Rivka Zorea's Latest Poem: From The
​Ground Up

Rivka Zorea

 




If I Could Go Barefoot

 If I had a bicycle I would put playing cards on the
​ spokes
 to hear the click click click 
 as I sped down the street.

If I had some skates, I would find the ice cream man
and buy a rainbow missile popcicle

If I had dancing shoes I would dance in the sand at a beach 
until I fell down laughing

If I could go barefoot I would climb an English walnut tree
and pretend the lady bugs were fairies
and on a windy day

I would ride the wind like the circling hawk 
I would feel the mighty branches sway
under me as strong winds blast my 
hair back from my face

I would fly with the hawk

If I could go barefoot

Read the poetry of Rivka Zorea
Read a profile of Rivka Zorea

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Clarence Wolfshohl: The One Tree Among The Countless Others

Clarence Wolfshohl

  Wolf Tree

   It stands alone on the last bend
   of the road before I’m home.
   Its limbs spread fifty feet
   from the massive trunk, burled
   grotesque from broken limbs,
                      its crown broad and flat.
 
Yards away is the wall of the woods;
the wolf oak’s millions of siblings
stretch miles toward Missouri
bottomland.  They spire upward, limbs
turned skyward toward the sun.
They grow straight, no blemish
of burl nor gnarl of wind.
 
When I split their wood against winter cold,
the grain is long and my maul cleaves
the logs with ease, but the wolf
turns my ax and maul into toys
that bounce off or get trapped
in its sinews.  The wolf howls defiance.

Read the poetry of Clarence Wolfshohl
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Lee Kisling And The Silence Of History 

Lee Kisling

​ Behind the Fence

  Rusted dinosaur innards
   behind that seven foot high wooden fence
parked in immobilized rows, the junk cars sleep.
The big-finned Pontiac, the drop-top LeSabre,
smacked up, motors seized,
abandoned and forgotten, these
proud one-owner beauties, tires bald with worry.
They are ashamed
and therefore hidden from view.
 
The lapse in attention –
the fender, the fluids, the column of steam,
the roadless wheel turning in the air.
Skid marks, glass fragments, injuries.
The Rambler, the station wagon bones,
we mustn’t see them. They lie
behind the wooden fence.
 
Maybe a shade tree man in a ball cap,
no good, finally, at fixing the mechanically expired,
or it might have been a lemon –
this place is the end of the road.
Dragged behind the fence
to bleach in the sun and settle into the dirt
for years and years of quiet rest -
horns still, radios dumb,
collector coins deep in the upholstery.
 
In blistered mirrors, objects may appear more distant
in memory than they are,
more silent than the stories they tell each other.
Behind the fence
the private battered cars lay low –
the humpback Dodge, the flatbed Ford.
We mustn’t see them.

Read the poetry of Lee Kisling
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Two New Poems From Poet Witty Fay

Witty Fay

 Of life

 A length of hair traded
 For the health of a child,
Tongue-tied mornings
That breathe of sweaty worry
And the scent of hope
Rising against the flimsy dawn.
I hear color 
Fabricating foamy trolls
Under caramel bridges,
The way it modulates the eye
In bright shades of bitterness.
There lies the promise of a half-day
On the sycamore tree
Of flaking joys,
Uprooted and swallowed
Into the wombless fire
Of the one who sells the mane 
To cheat fate.​

​
Cross-fingered

Sweet chariots of glow
Roll their roughness
Sketching my limbs
Into rivers of joy.
As they grow on the root
Of their aloofness,
Sparkle and remote
Hold the corners of the cross
In cahoots with time.
We stand stranded
Behind the floating of the day,
And the muteness of the night.

Read the poetry of Witty Fay
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Poet Jill Lapin-Zell's Poem Asks A Most Human Question

Jill Lapin-Zell

   
   A Fundamental Question

the afternoon’s turned cool and gray
with cloud shadows and spring breezes
oozing over the mountains
like
 sweet honey from an over-filled jar

and 
I’m wondering
why we aren’t 
curled up with each other
on a sofa

legs entwined and heads together
like
 children whispering outlandish secrets

giggling the remaining day into night
I want to reach out and touch you
breathe in the scent of your hair
feel the rhythm of your heartbeat
as my lips rest against your temple
these aching moments of missing you
eat away at body, mind and spirit
give rise to the fundamental question:
can you come over to play tonight?

Read the poetry of Jill Lapin-Zell
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Poet Roslyn Ross Writes Of Leaving Malawi For Her Homeland

Roslyn Ross

  Leaving

  The jacarandas are in flower
   as the blossoms fall purple,
                      small deaths, sighing at
                      the side of open suitcases,
​
coming to rest in the dust of
gathering memories, waiting
to be packed along with the
myriad possessions; dregs

of life and tree, scattered in
that song of inevitable ending,
where what was, can be no
more and what is, calls, in

soulful whisper, reminding
all is impermanent, nothing
lasts, or can endure, beyond
its allotted time and for the

expatriate, there will always
be a moment to go home, just
as the tree sheds its beauty,
making way for something

new, and for that which is
destined to come after -
fated to the turn of the wheel
of life, the eternal cycle,

slowly spinning in silence,
unseen, revolutions of days
and minutes, dropping into
the past, as the now rises

in gentle roll, to the top of
consciousness, holding for
a brief reality, impressed
as template of our being;

so we begin and move to
our created end, which
has always been written 
even if we did not know it.

Read the poetry of Roslyn Ross
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Two New Poems From Poet Ana Caballero

Ana Caballero

​  Espiritu Santo

  Born of the first stone, I am witch:
  Spellbound by small elements,
  snails in the throat, birds on the lip.
 
There is a hiding behind the trunk
of a dead tree, a memory
of morning, a reckoning.
 
There are no men, no children.
No women with soft worries.
No confidences or shared will.
 
But when I blow the lonesome wind,
the wooded land breathes in.
Together we become the ancient word,
 
a god released.


​Who With

The greatest thing about not loving you
Is not giving time

Leaving the view alone
Lingering never

The thought almost well
Crafted
​
It was a moment of smallness
It can be described
​
Read the poetry of Ana Caballero
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Wayne F. Burke And An Aging Superhero 

Wayne F. Burke

  The Sub-Mariner

​   (Note: The Sub-Mariner was a Marvell Comics 
   superhero, dating from 1939)

The Sub-Mariner, 60-plus years old
is sinking;
he's still got the little wings
and the Max Baer body
but he's not as quick
as he was
and he's gulping for air
some days
though still powerful
but routinely late
now
to the scene,
like cops 
who stop for doughnuts,
he gets there
in his own sweet time,
moving in like a manta ray
with arms out-stretched
like in a crucifixion
only more symbol now
than the real thing...
The seas grew too big
too violent
like capitalism
and he began to know
fear--
the shark, the barracuda, the electric eel
he used to drive away
like children
no longer move at
his approach
and even the walrus,
whose whiskers
he's adopted
and the wrinkled skin around the arm pits--
doesn't move for him--
everything has changed,
and The Sub-Mariner
does not know
if for the better.

Read the poetry of Wayne F. Burke
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A Rumination For The Season, From Poet Mikels Skele

Mikels Skele

 
   Autumn Falling

   In abrupt autumn
   one sees much of expectation
wither and dissipate
as if never taken seriously,
as if intentions of good will
and promises of productive labor,
— all leaving of self in favor of virtue --
gone like a good but tardy
glacier, dim and dry,
parsed to the death.
What remains is that wispy thread,
barely traceable, but more real and reliable
than all the will gathered in all the
small rooms and resolutions of change,
the thread that runs umbilical,
winding though good or ill,
tying together all the disparate selves
pasted together in the course of a life.
In this suddenly strange autumn,
in this fall, it is the unreality
that glows, beacon-like,
though, in the end, what you remember
is that carnal you,
that piece of protoplasmic geometry.
And you ask yourself, is that me?
And yet, there is memory, inconstant,
but persistently convincing.
I understand the consciousness of others,
the subjectivity of their being,
but not my own,
not my own.

Read the poetry of Mikels Skele
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Angelee Deodhar

A New Haiku Sequence From Poet
​Angelee Deodhar

Please click on the image to view and read the sequence. (Photo courtesy of www.justaplanerideaway.com)

Read the poetry of Angelee Deodhar
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​

Two New Poems From Poet Ken W. Simpson

Ken W. Simpson

 
​  Twilight

   Palm fronds
   undulate gently
   somnolently
nodding
tiredly posing
as the sun sets
lights glimmer
inside
and dappled patterns
glow
against flimsy blinds.
 
Jagged blades
and the spires
of distant pines
appear
in silhouette
inside
as the wind rises
and palm fronds
writhe
flailing wildly
as if trying to break free.


A Degree of Propinquity

Memories of old friends
flare and flicker
then fade as glimpses
of familiar faces
names and places
the house next door
an approaching pram
a car rolling, slowly
down a driveway
towards the street
where moods of sadness
meander
beguiled by moments
of hypothetical happiness.

Read the poetry of Ken W. Simpson
​Read a profile of Ken W. Simpson

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Kim Talon: Mood Pieces For The Season
​And The Self

Kim Talon

The Fall

The day is prickly
like thistle-laden fields
color leaks from trees
staining the river ochre
 
the beginning of the end
of a calendar year
of the harvest
 
the season of remembrance
the season of haunting…
its autumn


Tatters

You tore pieces from the sky
the world shifting to black and white
 
so many ashes blowing in the wind
and you
with your ghost-white face
and fingertips soot-stained
blending the shadows of loss

Read the poetry of Kim Talon
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Reka Jellema Finds Glory Between Lift
​And Drag

Reka Jellema

  Airfoil

  Come along little one it won't be long
  the blue heron walks and walks hands
  behind her back we keep our distance
  solitary beings 
being solitary
I wanted to be a lappet-faced vulture
toe-sprawled on tiptoe
wings heavier-than-the-heaviness-of-all
glossy and black, weightier than an Oxford 
Encyclopedia the one with the drawer 
with a magnifying glass 
I would be hideous ghoulish beautifully deformed
Gothic-hero-ugly the gaping yawn
of a cathedral 

One day little one we will stand together 
you have hovered too long
we will rise up and slam the air down
with monstrous wings
beat at the emptiness 
stroke every soul we lost 
all of the dust of 
all of us
will be flour from the fists 
of our Mother 
we will be salt from a shaker
we will steal back the breath the angels stole
we will transgress: Celestial theft
Come along little one
it won't be long

Read the poetry of Reka Jellema
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​

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jacob erin-cilberto Expresses The Anguish: Paris, November 13, 2015

jacob erin-cilberto

  a shattered cafe

  wasn't on the menu as an appetizer,
  a serving of bullets,
  wasn't on the program as a song,
the sounds of screaming fans
but not for the band,
wasn't meant for the poor people of Paris
to linger on the streets
in forever sleep,
 
the soccer ball deflated
the stadium suddenly silent
with mute explosion,
 
a goal of sorts,
but the agenda improvised, realized, compromised
and the question of which coach?
 
who sent in the play
that set Paris reeling under a red Moon
 
there will be no June
in the hearts tonight
November will be the only month
 
they will remember.

Read the poetry of jacob erin-cilberto
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​

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We Extend A Warm Welcome To Poet
Donal Mahoney

Donal Mahoney

  Venus Calling Mars at Midnight

   Millie calls the hotel at midnight
   to tell Willie he didn’t do anything wrong.
   It’s the way he didn’t do anything wrong

that’s the problem because a man doesn't
send a girl yellow roses on Valentine’s Day.
Willie is half asleep but awake enough 

to know if he didn’t do anything wrong
why is Millie calling him at midnight.
He’s out of town on the company’s buck

and has a big meeting tomorrow with
a big presentation to give to the board.
He listens for 20 minutes and as soon

as Millie's voice cracks he knows 
a hurricane of tears has begun so he says
he didn’t order any yellow roses.

He ordered three-dozen long-stems
with a jungle of the usual greenery 
in a beautiful vase with baby’s breath.

He figured they'd send red roses because 
he paid enough to buy a botanical garden.
Millie says tomorrow she’s calling the florist 

and giving him Hades but Willie says please don’t. 
He and the guy who took the order are from Mars. 
Willie will pick up red roses on his way back to Venus.

Read the poetry of Donal Mahoney
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​

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Katherine Gallagher: Even Now, Spring

Katherine Gallagher

 November, Bois de Vincennes

​
 I listen to autumn’s
                    wild festivity
                    caught in any leaf
                    as trees gather colour
                    and leaves burn to their centres -
                    bonfires across the earth.
 
                    All summer has been winding down
                    to this: the blaze, a dance,
                    a requiem for the year's leaves;
                    a fire subsumed into stillness
                    guarding an inner music,
                    a flute-voice echoing
                    again and again towards newness -
                    spring's first twist of season,
                    its sheltering braids of green.

Read the poetry of Katherine Gallagher
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​

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A New Haiku Sequence From Poet
​Angelee Deodhar

Angelee Deodhar

​
​  Leisure Valley Haiku Sequence

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​​in the park
leaves swirl twirl around
to a shrike’s call
 
through the bamboos
in the cooling breeze
a hint of sun
 
a couple embraces
under the weeping willow
the colors of fall
 
one ant
comes to our picnic, then
ant  ant  ant  ant  ant
​

squirrels play
in the now dry stream
--the toddler’s laugh
 
still afternoon
the bamboo’s creak
so like my own
 
as we leave
tree shadows lengthen
into autumn

​
            ❊

Read the poetry of Angelee Deodhar
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​

We Extend A Warm Welcome To Poet
Rowena Carenen

Rowe Carenen

 
 Tea Time

  I want to stop
  remembering your teeth
                     on my earlobe,
how just a whisper
of breath hot
from want
creates chills.
My sternum contracts.
 
Tea sloshes, stains a
manuscript of someone
else's words and
I sigh.
 
Paper towels mop
my mistake,
preventing brown
from running green ink,
as I try to grow strong words.
 
Bounty is not strong
enough to clean crevices
in my cranium where
a stain darker, deeper
than tea tints memories
and I forget, for a moment,
that I was too long steeped.

Read the poetry of Rowe Carenen
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A New Tanka Sequence From Poet
Ramesh Anand

Ramesh Anand

   Pink Blossom: A Tanka Sequence ☊

    dawn
    on the horizon ...
    the flight 
    of the first pied hornbill
                       carrying its call

                                ❊

          a birdbath
            full of migrated birds …
            at the resort 
            the wind carrying 
            a child’s song

​                                ❊

                    february sky
                        an oriole 
                        on the pink blossom
                        I watch 
                        the birder in me

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Read the poetry of Ramesh Anand
Read a profile of Ramesh Anand

VerseWrights Extends A Warm Welcome To Poet Dane Cobain

Dane Cobain

 A Rare Moment of Solitude

  When you’re surrounded
  by sound,
  and there are people all around
and they’re howling for your blood
or at least a little piece of you,
and you’re dying for peace and quiet
but the lights are down low
and the show must go on,
and you’re so damn tired
that the stage is on fire.
 
Then when you’re alone,
you're really alone,
and so you stare at your phone
and groan,
because YOU HAVE NO NEW MESSAGES
AND SEVENTEEN SAVED MESSAGES,
AND TO LISTEN TO SAVED MESSAGES
PRESS ONE.
 
And then you’re surrounded
once more,
and you fall to the floor
with your poor thoughts calling,
and every moment of silence
has impeccable timing,
and you might just
think of me,
again.

Read the poetry of Dane Cobain
Read a profile of Dane Cobain

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New Short Poems From Poet Juliet Wilson

Juliet Wilson

  Beach Hut

  Warm wood smell
  of the sun-bleached floor
  scratched by damp sand
  under my purple flip-flops.

Milky coffee from a thermos flask.

The sea glimmered
beyond the beach.

My eyes shaded
by the brim
of an oversized sun-hat,

I paddled in the sea
but never learned to swim.


From Selected Haiku...

high winds -
the broken bridge over
the river

             January winds -
             abandoned Christmas trees
             litter the streets

Read the poetry of Juliet Wilson
Read a profile of Juliet Wilson
​

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Experience Caroline Skanne's Micropoetry And Photo Art

Caroline Skanne

   dew caught
   in a spider's web
   the dream
   that did not slip
​   through my fingers

---

breaking up
the greyscale
​robin song​

Enjoy the poetry/photo art of Caroline Skanne
Read a profile of Caroline Skanne
​

In J. Matthew Water's Poem, Spring Resolves  Winter Demons

J. Matthew Waters

 paper tigers

 once the children moved out
 demons moved in disguised
 as paper tigers roaming
 from room to room

their emerald eyes shined
from the darkest corners
of the night reminding me
of a love I once had

I fed them sad stories
in exchange for my life
but their promises of light
I could not fathom

I asked them kindly to leave
my world but they curled
where the winter sun
shined through glass

in the spring I found strength
to unfold and reshape
keeping the demons at bay 
as paper angels hanging

Read the poetry of J. Matthew Waters
Read a profile of J. Matthew Waters

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