Archive #31
January, 2016

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Sarah Hina

We Extend A Warm Welcome to Poet And Novelist Sarah Hina

                   Boy

They pulled you out between White’s Mill and Currier Street
about a mile from the bridge where you parked.
 
The river is warmer
than it was in March
when everyone was looking
and putting up signs
and later on, looking
less, checking on Facebook
to report what your mom
said, connecting the dots
to fashion a lede.
 
You were “Missing Athens Man.”
Knives in the wood
after a knife-throwing act.
A stain of old pain
in the rearview reflection.
How come we hadn’t
learned the lesson?
 
You left your keys in the ignition.
 
There was goodness there. In the swell.
Everyone shouldering hope and doubt
on competing scales.
It seemed the proof you were looking for:
if life has worth, people will fight for it;
if people fight, living is worth it.
It made sense, on its face.
 
You had a great smile.
I could see your mother’s hope in it.
You wore your hair long
and it made you look vulnerable.
You probably would have hated this,
but “sweet” is the word that springs to mind.
 
This world is hard on the gentle boys.
 
And I keep trying to recall if the
pizza delivery guy had long hair
or short, the week before Christmas
we got pizza at work.
 
Why should I want to put you there?
What could it possibly matter?
 
Your mother said she’d come for you.
Just hang tighter.

Once the weather turned,
I ran the section of the bike path
that bends to the river
forward and back and forward again,
pacing myself to its muted rhythm.
Its crooked spine, infrequent joggers.
The birds were sharp—soft—all together,
both at once. The wind in the grass
​was a woman’s dress, a mouthful of milk
on a taut clothesline

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Rivka Zorea's New Poem: A Sorrowful
Ending

Rivka Zorea

 
 
   Aware of the World
              ~ for Dorothy

When was it 
When did the world slip
Away from her?

Did she watch it go?

Was she terrified and
Trembling in fear
At the first signals?
Those warning sirens
Composed of lost 
Words
Then lost places. 
The places she once 
Took in her stride
Like the bathroom 
And the kitchen and
Finally her own bed
But by the time 
Of the lost faces 
It was too late. 
She finally resided 
In the place her Mom
Once told her about
As a child. 
In the world
But not of the 
World. 
Ironic.
Certainly not of 
Her choosing. 
But then, when her world
Slipped away along with
Those dead synapses
So did her choices.

Read the poetry of Rivka Zorea
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Dane Cobain: Little Things May Add Up
To Big Things

Dane Cobain

 
  Some of the Butterflies

  The pea and mint soup
  after my tooth was removed.
 
Eye contact at the writers’ group
when I spoke the unspoken truth.
 
When you touched my face
and kissed my hand.
 
When I said you had eyes like lighthouses
and your exact response was,
“That’s beautiful.”
 
Hand-made hats from Lady Capulet,
thus making me feel like part of the family.
 
Accidentally brushing against you
in the church with the lights out,
before I gathered the courage
to speak to you.
 
Even further back,
when we met for a drink
and began our quest for world domination,
and we hugged for the first time
and then I went home.
 
Every time you make me smell
the way you smell.
 
Seriously,
every time you make me smell
the way you smell.

Read the poetry of Dane Cobain
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Kim Talon: Two Short Poems Inspired
​By The Natural World

Kim Talon

 
  Cantankerous

  The west wind creeps
                       through the fields
                       hollow bones
                       rattling in its wake
 
                       a disgruntled crow
                       takes wing
                       his shadow stuttering
                       across the stubble field
 
                       crow shadow as bruised
                       as crow ego--
                       the sparrows chirp


Illumine

The night sky is full of wishing stars
and sleep is a gypsy moon
lighting up the world
wrapping you in the penumbra

you stay…
until moon sleeps
and sun warms bones

Read the poetry of Kim Talon
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​

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Poet Michael Lee Johnson's Sketch Of
​A Character...

Michael Lee Johnson

   

    The Drifter  ☊

The drifter in the room is a stranger,
he is crazy, is Bigfoot with deer moccasins on−
monster of condominium rooms and dreams.
The drifter in this room used to be my friend.
He spoke straight sentences, they did not sound like
     poetry-
reverberated like a narrative, special lines good a few
​     bad,
or stories being unwound by the tongue of a gentleman,
lip service, juggler of simple words to children.
The night is a dark believer in drifters,
they sound sober, affairs with the wind,
the 3 A.M. honking of the Metro trains.
Everything sleeps with a love, a nightmare at night.
The drifter.

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Enjoy this poem in the PoetryAloud area
Read the poetry of Michael Lee Johnson
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​

Mary Jo Balistreri: The Trappings And Miracle Of Dawn

Mary Jo Balistreri

Genesis

This is the hour I love--
 the day unfolding into itself
from darkness into light,
the sea and sky yet snug
under a gray duvet
while the slow rise of the sun
uncouples the lovers
from that silky crepe de chine.
the sea puts on a wrap of palest
green while the sky lounges
in soft blue charmeuse.
I sit in the wonder of beginning,
hear breath upon the water,
smell the slight salty tang.
This is how it must have been,
how it will always be, creation
happening over and over.
Whether the lush garden of paradise
or a sea coast in the tropics,
everything in flux except for the one  thing
that stays the same—when Phoebus
drives her fiery chariot across
the sky, or the God of Genesis
says," Let there be light"
the world starts anew,
the black of night rent apart
each day
by the blaze.

Read the poetry of Mary Jo Balistreri
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​

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l. to r. Michael McClure, Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg (courtesy michael-mcclure.com)

Wally Swist's Chance Meeting, And A Poem Forty Years Later

Wally Swist

​ 


    McClure

​He walked into the bookstore 
     as if he had just been giving stage directions to
          the actors who were performing in The Beard

and Jean Harlow and Billy the Kid across the street
     at the Rep where the titles were featured on
           the street marquee in front of the theater.  I may

have been twenty-one, and it was one of those 
     autumn mornings in New Haven in the early to 
            mid-70s when there was a kind of psychic niacin 

in the air, sunlight slanting over the high gothic 
     of the campus buildings and pouring over 
              the crenellated edges of the Art & Architecture 

building next door.  When he entered, he 
     paused, and momentarily observed conversations 
           between several academics positioned in front of 

the elevated counter where I had 
     cash register duty, and immediately I recognized 
            him from the cover photograph of The City Lights 

Anthology taken in front of Ferlinghetti’s 
     bookstore, and he instantly acknowledged 
            my recognition by placing an index finger to his 

lips, alerting me that he was there to purchase
     the copy of The New York Times, in his other hand,
            and not for the purposes of signing autographs.

There he was, just as in the photograph beneath
     the City Lights Bookstore awning, posing with 
            the other literati, elegant suit jacket over a dark

vest, white shirt buttoned at 
     the neck, and the dark hair slicked-back, 
          whom Kerouac fictionalized in Desolation Angels 

and Big Sur as the handsome Patrick McLear; who 
    read with Ginsberg at the Gallery Six reading 
       only some fifteen years earlier when the first version 

of Howl was publicly declaimed; who had already     
     written poems honoring the animal world and 
         their sounds in Dark Brown and Ghost Tantras; and 

who just had composed a version of Me 
     and Bobbie McGee on his autoharp for Janis Joplin  
        no more than five years before.  Here was the man, 

whom San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen 
    had called The Prince of San Francisco, standing before 
         me with two quarters in his hand to buy a copy of 

the daily Times.  Our eyes had kept focused 
    on each other’s as he wended politely through 
       the conversants discussing The Canterbury Tales and 

Troilus and Cressida, whereupon 
     he placed the coins in my hand, and then 
        winked, nodding his head slightly, with a coy smile, 

as if to say that we both had fooled them all, and 
     in such a nonchalant fashion, that no one was either 
          better or worse off for it.  However, that specific 

wink is the same sparkle of a pearl occasionally 
     found in a shucked oyster; the sequins lighting up 
        in the curl of a wave before it crashes on the shore; 

the glitter of snow blown off the roof of a barn; 
     that has remained with me now for more than 
        forty years, and that underlies this hymn with song. 
​
Read the poetry of Wally Swist
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​

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A Short Ballad From Poet JD DeHart

JD DeHart

​ The Ballad of John Ramm

 Munching twigs, scenting
 the air, hidden in a thicket
                     of leaves, brambles, thorns,
                     agile feet take him to flight
                     but not soon enough
 
                     Hailing a cab, trying to make
                     his way to work, he remembers
                     distantly what it was like to be
                     in the wild, but that was so long
                     ago, it seems like a different
                     animal lived then
 
                     While others preen, he pummels
                     While others rant, he rams.

Read the poetry of JD DeHart
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Samantha Reynolds' Poem Is An Understanding Of Now, And Later

Samantha Reynolds

​Parenting was made for  extroverts

 I was told about patience
 and coming alongside
                    their emotions

I was prepared for less sleep
and less sex

I surrendered my hygiene
and my core

but nobody warned me
that parenting was made
for extroverts

that I would pretend
to have to pee
just to close a door

that I would ask my children
if we could play
the jail game again
where they stuff me between
two chairs
and throw a blanket
over me

and that I would tell them
even after their third try
to free me
that I wasn’t rehabilitated yet

I sat today
on the kitchen floor
back against the fridge

mommy needs nobody to talk to her
for a few minutes, ok

and I closed my eyes
fantasizing about the solitude
of ashrams
entrance exams
tanning beds

then my son slides
a piece of paper
around the corner

it has hearts on it
in green
which is my favourite colour
and my name
and his name
inside the biggest one

which is when I remember
that there is no balance
in a day
or a decade
but that the aloneness
will come
and I will savour it
and then
I will not.

Read the poetry of Samantha Reynolds
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​

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Arvinder Kaur Shares A New Selection
Of Her Haiku

Arvinder Kaur

    from Selected Haiku

   soap bubbles...
    a rainbow glides off
    my palm

                                ❊

                                    overnight showers -
                                    the day moon trembles
                                    in a bomb crater

                                ❊

                       gran's funeral -
                       stringing a lullaby
                       in the wreath

                                ❊
​
                                   prayer meeting -
                                   an unsolved crossword
                                   on the mantlepiece

Read the poetry of Arvinder Kaur
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My son plays baseball on the fields nearby.
 
But you were a rustle
in the thirsty brush,
drawing my thoughts as my
feet held the line
because I saw the men huddled
across the bank--
sonar trawling, sirens off.
 
The water flashing
its teeth
in the sun.
 
There and back,
I took the bridge,
culling the edges with my eyes,
reading the gaps between the lines,
seeing the eddies bubble and
froth, disturbed by the dead limbs,
big rocks, uprooted trunks.
 
Trespassing on something
that wasn’t mine.
 
Even now, not sure
what I’m doing here.
 
But you see how absence becomes abyss
and you think, God, how do they carry this?
I absorbed you. Not impulsively, not all at once,
but incrementally, with the herd.
We swallowed you in desperate sips.
You sank in, like tea, leaving leaves at the end.
An archetype with a shape
pulled from the caves. 
The lost son. Come back.
Your brother has killed the fattened calf.
For you. Come back.
Won’t you hear?
 
And now
I want to take your picture
down, so that she won’t have to.
 
I want to hug my children tighter,
preserving their shape in a better forever.
 
We never learn.
It never makes sense.
You needed more time.
Pain is a bridge.
 
The paper said
you left a poem behind. 
 
It’s April now. Winter was hard.
 
The lilac is late this year.

Read the poetry of Sarah Hina
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A New Poem From Poet Angelee Deodhar

Photo courtesy of TheTeaTales.com (Click on photo to enlarge)

Angelee Deodhar

​   ~For Aryan
  Today                      
                     
   I will be gentle
    as I hold

                    your feverish
                    cough wracked form

                    croon some nonsense
                    sooth you to sleep

                    caress your limbs
                    press them gently

                    give you a drink of juice
                    sponge you gentle...

                    will you do the same
                    for me, son

                    tomorrow?
​
Read the poetry of Angelee Deodhar
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​

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Poet J. Matthew Waters' Latest Poem 

J. Matthew Waters

  flash powder  ☊

  what have I contributed
   to the cause
   keeping the music alive and
                        guarding elephants
                        from poachers

I’ve given up aerosol sprays
and gasoline
marlboro lights
store-bought soup
and religion

how much more do I have to give

that constant humming in my ear
is that just a warning from
my guardian angel
or simply a reminder
how those widely admired
can easily be swept away
like a night owl’s prey
silently screaming

absolution doesn’t exist
in the blink of an eye
and even if it did
no act of contrition could
prevent anyone from
seeing the light

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Enjoy this poem in the PoetryAloud area
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​

Two Poems From Mikels Skele: The Dark And The Light

Mikels Skele

 
  Paris, 15:42

​  Stuck.
  A small desire
                     (coffee, maybe pastry)
                      A Herculean labor.
                      Such histrionics,
                      A drama worthy of greatness,
                      And I, only ordinary,
                      Blindly stabbing.
 
                      Yet, it arrives:
                      Mousse au chocolat
                      Crème brûlée
                      Je n’sais quoi
 
                      And coffee,
                      A small, unassuming demi-tasse,
                      Ordnance as yet
                      Unexploded.


         What I Got

         I got my book of riffs,
           My bebop hat
           Stuffed on my head
           What I lack is bread
 
           I got the skinny pants
           I drive my Mini past
           The twilight boulevard
           What I lack is gas, man
 
           What I lack is class, man
           The mojo ain’t workin’
           The jerky aint jerkin’
 
           What I lack is a clue

                   Read the poetry of Mikels Skele
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​

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We Warmly Welcome Poet ayaz daryl nielsen To VerseWrights' Pages

ayaz daryl nielsen

 The Tao of Brokenness

   A broken hub, thirty spokes
   without a center
   The wheel couldn’t turn nor
                       remain upright if
                       it was to be used
                       The clay pot with a crack
                       across the bottom would just
                       drip and seep, even
                       if it was needed
                       An old homestead without
                       windows  doors  roof  flooring
                       or the people to
                       claim it as home

                       empty of emptiness
                       because of brokenness
                       non-existence from
                       lack of usefulness

                       each, in its isolation,
                       an exhilaration
                       a clarity
                       the adventure 
                       of broken existence

Read the poetry of ayaz daryl nielsen
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The Latest Poem From Poet Marie Anzalone

Marie Anzalone

 
​       



Last Sunday

I saw you clearly tomorrow,
and I will search for you yesterday-
this. This is trying to find
Neptune colored ethics
in a world that is just learning
of the full spectrum of gray.

When a man admires a woman,
he praises her beauty. What
recourse is for woman? There
is no measured “goodness”
equivalent, for defining a man.

Only to see the way light hits
the water at full midnight, when
boundaries between whatifs
dissolve in a soft closely draped fog
I wear like a garment I can hold tight

with one hand, or let fall as needed.
When I sit quietly, I remember
a future with you; and if I look
real carefully at the horizon, all
possibilities remain with the arrival
of each last Sunday of the past decade.

Read the poetry of Marie Anzalone
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​

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VerseWrights Warmly Welcomes Poet
​Brian Mosher To Our Pages

Brian Mosher

 
​ Catching Crows in a Jar

 While catching crows in a jar I find
  An angel’s broken wings lying in the snow
                      Broken angel
                      Fallen, shattered
                      The crows call, caw, I’ll release them 
                      When they’re no longer needed
                      My plan proceeds
                      The angel walks now, on tired feet
                      Tired soles
                      A lonely soul
                      Fallen, shattered on the snowy earth
                      The jar, a mason jar, fit for pickled beets
                      Or pig’s feet
                      Not suited for catching crows
                      Falls from my hand and shatters
                      The crows dissolve into the snow
                      Like a black teardrop in the ocean
                      A tear from the eye of a mystic saint
                      Or an addled con-man on the take
                      Rheumy eyed and drooling
                      My plan is shattered
                      Shards of glass cut me
                      Open me, leave me hollow and burning
                      The angel’s hand touches my wound
                      Cool relief
                      Disbelief shattered
                      And the crows soar into the setting sun
                      And the angel is taken up
                      Rising into a Michelangelo cloud
                      Only I remain, in the snow
                      Fallen and shattered

Read the poetry of Brian Mosher
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​

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All New Haiku And Tanka From Poet
Vanessa Leanage

Vanessa Leanage

from More Selected Haiku and Tanka

          remembering her     
            the gentle hum
                                of bumblebees

                    ❧

               insects         
                  coming to life
                  in the window
                  our neighbors attempts 
                  at small talk

                    ❧

                           polka dots of yellow     
                                among the evergreens
                                autumn announces its passing
                                by rolling up
                                its sleeves

                    ❧

               single tear        
                 a universe
                 landing softly

Read the poetry of Vanessa Leanage
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​

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VerseWrights Warmly Welcomes Poet
Danny Barbare

Danny Barbare

     
The Janitor Cleans the Windows

     Getting
                         things
                         squared
                         away
                         between
                         the
                         frame
                         it’s
                         a
                         sunny
                         day
                         like
                         a
                         white
                         cloth
                         and
                         a
                         bottle
                         of
                         blue
                         spray.

Apples in the Fridge

I  bought some apples
for you and me.
They are so cold
   and delicious
good and healthy
I wish many crisp
   and sweet
days, for me and you.

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​

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Mark MacDonald Asks For A Willing Suspension Of Disbelief...

Mark MacDonald

   Flower Child ~ for Birdie

   Suppose it were true: she was abducted by aliens--
    bored but gentle beings cruising through the universe,
    tired after light years of travel, looking for some proof
                        of intelligent life outside of the Sunflower Galaxy. 

Suppose, as she told us, that they communicated mostly
through an incredibly refined and acute sense of smell;
that they found the scent of pine needles more pleasing
and more interesting than the citizens of Minneapolis, 

Paris, London, New York or Rome? Suppose that instead
of talking to the President, they landed their spaceship
shaped like a sunflower deep in the Brazilian rain forest
and spent a couple of weeks laughing and singing with the

Crimson Topaz Hummingbirds and sharing their poems,
constructed entirely of sweet and extraordinary scents, 
with a Blue Morpho Butterfly resting on the petals 
of a Passion Flower growing along the banks of a stream? 

Suppose that this were true—suppose that she had been
abducted by aliens with noses as long and as narrow
as a straw—suppose that it were true. Would not this
explain why she moved to the state of Florida,

bought a small cottage and covered its yards
with Baby’s Breath, Jupiter’s Beard, Hollyhock
Mallow and blossoming orange trees? Suppose
that it were true; just consider that it could

have happened. Suppose that she splashes
her neck and her breasts with lavender each
morning and talks to her flowers, not because
she is crazy, not because she is strange, but

because she was abducted by aliens who taught
her the language of fragrances soft and exotic; 
that she stands in her yard with a handful of roses
because what she wants most is to be lifted away?

Read the poetry of mark MacDonald
Read a profile of Mark MacDonald
​

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Layley Lu's Poem Of Two Foreigners In
An Alien Land

Layley Lu

    Rice Paper

    There’s a wind
     where comes my Australian boy
                       through the barley in this place,
                       foreign upon foreign
                       face of mine
                       squinting through dust
                       that is not mine.

                       I am a fetish
                       and he is a blistering fever blowing
                       through my cluttered machiya,
                       carnage upon carnage
                       staining my sheets
                       and carpet,
                       but walls not mine.

                       I long to cry.
                       I long so much for my honesty
                       through testaments heaping
                       cloud upon useless cloud
                       in the emptiness
                       of this place
                       that is not mine.

                       There’s a thunder
                       where follows a freakish poise.
                       The soundlessness of this place
                       wrings vapour so tight
                       it wells
                       from my rice paper belly,
                       and the land slides.

Read the poetry of Layley Lu
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---

Poet Amy Billone And A Moment of
Rural Anxiety

Amy Billone

 

  Up the Mountain

                   a group of cows
                       bending down to eat
                       grass and flowers
                       shakes bells
                       the most enormous
                       lifts her head
                       and looks at me
                       the path leads
                       right beside her
                       a metal hook
                       on the wood door
                       she looks at me
                       I walk quickly
                       eyes low
                       shoulders heavy
                       a crooked screech
                       the opening gate
                       her shifting tail
                       and moving mouth
                       the sweet wind
                       my blowing hair
                       as in the city for no
                       reason I'm afraid
                       she looks at me
                       she looks at me

Read the poetry of Amy Billone
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Poet Lynne Rachell Returns With A
New Poem

Lynne Rachell

​ 


The Unknowing

​It was the unknowing
That ruined us
Ruined us like ancient villages
Bulldozed by forces that would not
Find our presence precious,
Did not find the echo 
Of our giggles amusing 
nor of interest, worth saving,
Pillaged our memories
Incinerating them one by one:
Sunday dresses, jump rope
Red light, green light
Barefoot on concrete
Races, the rubble
Caused our feet to bleed
Rusted shells and shrapnel
mixed with brown and white
Barbie heads, staring grotesquely
Killed our insides
The questions are many-
What happened to them?
Where are their clothes?
What became of their bodies?
Where is the harvest of the seeds
Once planted here?
What is this gaping hole?
And finally—what energy generated 
This grand canyon of loss?
One bystander asks
No one can answer in confidence
Except me and I dare not say,
Leery of giving it a name
It is juju, best left uncalled 
Much safer that way
I have learned silence
Silence is it’s lullaby
The others are held hostage 
In a cold, dark room
Images flashing brightly
Through brain wash
Trying to remember
They never do.

Read the poetry of Lynne Rachell
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We Warmly Welcome Poet Jacob Salzer
​To The Pages Of VerseWrights

Jacob Salzer

 What Happens

What happens

​                  when the busy noise of stressful lives
                  slows to a steady pulse
                  and becomes still
 
when the sounds of a city
fade away as children sleep
 
and the hollow walls
of those ancient buildings
begin to speak
 
their hidden voices
carried in the hearts and minds
of those who can listen –
 
when the people start to live
in this place
where no words can follow
 
and all language subsides
even for a moment –
 
to watch our words fall into their roots,
into the ancient harbor – (this empty page)
 
that carries them

Read the poetry of Jacob Salzer
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New Haiku and Tanka From Archana
​Kapoor Nagpal

Archana Kapoor Nagpal

   falling
   in the puddle
   a dandelion flower …
   still I wonder
   where to go

      ❧
                       
                   downhill ...
                       far from me
                       the same moon

                   ❧

                  amidst
                      the ashes
                      these rose petals …
                      yet on my bed
                      I smell his perfume

Read the poetry of Archana Kapoor Nagpal
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---

VerseWrights Extends A Warm Welcome To Poet Rachel Schmieder-Gropen

Rachel Schmieder-Gropen

​  Australia

 You tell me about Australia,
  the inlets, the long nights,
  the eucalyptus leaves whose
  scent makes your mouth dry.
  You used to lick them clean
                       of dew when you were a child
                       crawling through the bush.
 
Mostly I learn that everything
in Australia exists to kill you:
spiders the size of your fist,
wildfires roaring through
the dry tangles of the bush.
You show me a photo of
your father beating back
a blaze, silhouetted, black
against a spray of sparks.
 
Once, you say, a gwardar
slithered close as you slept
in the garden, and your mum
called “Margie, Margie!”
and frightened it closer.
(Your brother chopped its
head off with a shovel.)
You tell me about your
insomnia, the blind walks
you take at night, the naps
you might as well take by
the inlet because snakes
are everywhere.
 
I joke about sharks in the
River Cam, and you say,
don’t. Your best friend’s
little brother was killed
by a shark last Christmas.
I ask, why not you?
 
You were born with your
cord wrapped tight around
your neck and ever since
nothing has been human
enough to kill you.
 
I try to swallow, feel the
dry rustle of your coils
about my throat, remind
myself that you’re human
enough to swallow me
whole.

Read the poetry of Rachel Schmieder-Gropen
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---

VerseWrights Extends A Warm Welcome
To Poet Dave Read

Dave Read

​           she winks
             and is gone
                             crescent moon

                                  ❧

                 along with
                    my best intentions
                    my clothes
                    hang on
                    the treadmill

                 ❧

                            twilight
                                  I stand in the shadow
                                  of my children
​
                 ❧

                never
                   inclined towards reckless
                   adventure
                   I follow my headlights
                   into the dark

Read the poetry of Dave Read
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---

VerseWrights Warmly Welcomes Poet
Grant Tarbard To Its Pages

Grant Tarbard

   Lost Poem Department
​                ~for Richard Copeland

   The poet is a
    forgetful sort, marvelling
                       at seaweed in the
                       fog. He has many
                       slipped fragments and loose regrets
                       made of lilac lines.
                       Violins engulf
                       his eardrums, the newspapers
                       drown his watered eyes,
                       modern contraptions
                       conspire to befuddle him.
                       He loses his spun
                       poetry in the
                       dim chambers of the madhouse,
                       bruise coloured, he gives
                       in. He should store his
                       unfinished poem in an
                       empty room with a
                       safe. He could swallow
                       it like a goose, the feathers
                       would be stitched into
                       a white pillow with
                       invisible ink pages
                       for a pillowcase.
                       No no he should keep
                       them in the butt end of a
                       Woodbine cigarette,
                       he could prize it with
                       a milk elephant's tusk that
                       he appended in
                       the wilds of long tongues.
                       To find his strange poem at
                       the bottom of a
                       lake of drawers filled
                       with silverfish paper clips
                       and drifts on the sea
                       of staples would be
                       inelegant. No, he’ll stow
                       that leaf in his bones.

Read the poetry of Grant Tarbard
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​

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In A Pastoral Poem, Laura Traverse Hints At The Universal 

Laura Traverse

​  Glen Brook Winter

   The frost hit us
    last night: it crept
    along our windowsills
                       it snaked through our windshields
                       it trapped
                       our meadow in
                       a fine array of crystal casings.
 
An afternoon previous, the field
critter crawled, blade shook
in a sun drenching, light engulfing
plunge.
As the sun slowed down beneath
the hill, the grass stilled:
above ground
worms slept in rigid lines
beetles paused in mid munch
dew formed solid sheets
tucking in all for the evening,
for the time being
And the soil became like glue.
The earth, once fraught with
clinks, bites, wind chimes
waited softly
and silently
for moonrise.
But what the meadow took for
the white gleam of the moon
arrived as the gust of a frost
leaving all stillness behind.
Once it descends, once it passes
like the Angel of Death:
no life remains fleshy, tender;
its touch renders
each blade, each leg, each
vein an icicle, waiting
for the ascent of light,
hoping for release
come morning.

Read the poetry of Laura Traverse
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​

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Miriam Sagan: Revelation In An
​Enchanting Garden

Miriam Sagan

   

 Fortuna's Garden

    I take your hand along the mossy way
     Camellia blossoms fall, the red Japonica
     That brings to mind a viewing with a parasol;
     Inside a winding glade a statue stands--
     A saint, a goddess, or a grave.

Once I was young, and dreamed
I held a globe of water in my hands--
It shattered, and a cardinal, red bird,
Flew out and lighted in the grove’s pale trees.

Red petals punctuate my thoughts
And make me want to kiss
Your lips again, worn soft
By time, and mine.

Within the boxwood maze
An unseen peacock’s cry
Whose Argos eyes fan out yet still can’t see.
White camellia, scentless,
Settles down like snow
And jonquils springing from cool ground
Evoke what might have been--
What I know now
That once I did not know.

Read the poetry of Miriam Sagan
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Neil Fulwood And The Options For Departures

Neil Fulwood

 

  
​  Resignation

It’s all been done before, from invitations
to insert the now-vacated job role
in a place of total eclipse
 
to the straightforward
"[insert expletive] you, I quit."
It’s been done as spittle-flecked close-ups
 
in movies and to steel guitar accompaniment
in country songs. It’s been done
by dockers and welders
 
and office monkeys.
It’s been done triumphantly
and bitterly and ended in fist fights. It’s
 
been done by the disaffected sheriff,
handing in his badge and gun;
by the typesetter
 
eager for words
of his own and convinced
they’ll hammer themselves out in a welter
 
of travel, alcohol and sexual misadventure
and all he has to do is chuck it,
turn his back on it,
 
walk away from it all.

Read the poetry of Neil Fulwood
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​

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Danielle Favorite And A Miniature
​Modern Gothic

Danielle Favorite

 

​
I've gone to the bathtub

            Go away reader--
               I'm naked
               and bathing in orange
               blossoms, trying to wash
               the stare of his pistachio
                eyes from my skin,

               you do understand, don't you?

               Thorns growing inside my glass-veined heart?

                If you promise not to taste
                the water, you can stay,
                    maybe we can listen to each others'
                    pulses:
                              yours dry like merlot,
                             mine underwater and buoy-belled.

               You know,
           he had too much hair on his back anyways.

                The moon is too round in my throat
                for back-hair or hard eyes.

                Reader, please hold my heart for me,
                    my lungs are dry;

                    I need to fill them with water.

Read the poetry of Danielle Favorite
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​

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