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Archive #35
May, 2016


Shannon P. Laws' Latest Poem Explores Metaphor and Self

Picture
Shannon P. Laws
The Riddle

I am a net
tossed into the sea.
Weights in the corner
drag me down.
 
One hard jerk
secures the catch.
Winch and pulley
draw me back.
 
Wet and heavy with
dinner and debris
 
If I could be used
for something different
          Tablecloth
          Rug
          Curtains
 
A net to hold fruit,
a wall hanging,
broken apart, unraveled,
re-knitted into a sweater
 
But I am a fish net
thrown out to the storm
my value-- 
          is caught between spaces.


Read the poetry of Shannon P. Laws
Read a profile of Shannon P. Laws


From Daniel Klawitter, A Profusion of (Unkind) Metaphors

Picture
Daniel Klawitter

​None Too Clever

As long as you can remember, 
People have always said-
You are not the sharpest tool 
In the history of tool sheds.
You are also not the keenest knife 
That’s in the kitchen drawer-
And in your case the elevator 
Does not go to the top floor. 
You’re a burger short 
Of a combo meal-

And one ski short 
Of a snowmobile.

You’re an open book 
But the pages are blank-

A deposit short 
Of a functioning bank.

The phone is on 
But there’s no reception-

Your eyes are open 
But without perception.

You’re a few atoms shy 
Of critical mass.

And a car on a road trip 
Without any gas. 

You’re missing some marbles- 
A few screws are loose.
The train has left the station-
And thou art the caboose.


Read the poetry of Daniel Klawitter
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​

Joanna Suzanne Lee: Richmond Was Not
​The Only Fire

PictureJoanna Suzanne Lee
 
On the Sesquicentennial of the Burning of Richmond

    One hundred fifty years ago today,
                        they set fire as they fled.
                        I sniff the wind for ashes, imagining
                        how smoke would have rolled
 
off the hill, how much of what was,
gone. It is another day in this house
with you without you, April second.
Most moments I am not sure what
 
to feel except sick to my stomach,
remembering occasionally the Vergil quote
I chose for my high school yearbook caption:
Amor vincit omnia, love
 
conquers all. There is a chill,
and I think of turning back
on the heat, notice the cat
has puked on my best notebook,
 
wonder what there is of today
that I can toss or burn.
Yesterday, it was a stack of books
& the still-unopened bottle of saké
 
I brought back from Japan
the year my mother died--
if she were here she would say why,
why is everything you write so sad?
 
The day before that, two
faithfully languishing cactus plants;
I felt ugly seeing them in the supercan.
Because, mom, I never learned
 
how to stop being conquered.
The cat settles between me
and the keyboard, his rumbling,
his querulous warmth comfort to us both.


Read the poetry of Joanna Suzanne Lee
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​

Picture
Veronica Lupinacci

Two Short Poems From Poet
Veronica Lupinacci

Polaroid Haiku: Sarasota: Summer, 1996

Tadpole-mud slimy Birkenstocks. Mosquito bite
legs. Spiny trash-leaves.
 
Summer into fall into summer into fall into
warm gulf brine.
 
Watermelon in salty waves. Rainbow sails crest
Sarasota bay.
      
Oppressive sun leaks in the blinds. AC hum kicks off.
A sweaty nap.



Hospital Thoughts

Looking out from the cardiac floor the caution-
orange wind sock is drunk and vomiting on the roof, slumped
skin-naked, weeping.
My father’s tongue is a purple slug.
If I look away from the monitor, he will stop breathing.
Forty-five minutes is restful sleep, now, good. Good--
sugarfree cranberry peelback cup.
The wind sock is still drunk, but now he’s waving. A nice, sloppy,
Heyyouguuuys!

Read the poetry of Veronica Lupinacci
​Read a profile of Veronica Lupinacci
​

Poet Donal Mahoney: By Not Writing
A Poem, He Does

PictureDonal Mahoney
  Apple Fritter and a Single  
​  Rose


   After 30 years together,
   Carol tells me late one evening
   in the manner of a quiet wife
                       that I have yet to write a poem

about her, something she
will never understand in light
of all those other poems
she says I wrote

about those other women
before she drove North.
And so I tell her once again
I wrote those other poems

about no women I ever knew
the way I now know her
even if I saw them once or twice
for dinner, maybe,

and a little vodka
over lime and ice.
Near midnight, though,
she says again

in the manner of a quiet wife
it's been thirty years
and still no poem.
When morning comes

I motor off to town to buy
a paper and a poem
for Carol
but find instead

undulating in a big glass case
an apple fritter,
tanned and glistening,
lying there just waiting.

So I buy the lovely fritter
and a single long-stem rose
orphaned near the register,
roaring red, and still 

at full attention.
I bring them home but find
Carol still asleep
and so I put the fritter

on the breadboard
and the rose right next to it,
at the proper angle.
When she wakes I hope

the fritter and the rose
will buy me time until
somewhere in the attic
of my mind I find

a poem that says
more about us than
this apple fritter,
tanned and glistening,

lying there just waiting,
and a single long-stem rose,
roaring red, and still

at full attention.

Read the poetry of Donal Mahoney
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​

Picture
Leslie Philibert

From Poet Leslie Philibert, Two
​Short Poems

Incident      

Anywhere. Evening rain.

Snakes cross the road,
                    that is no longer an obvious place,
                    it cracks like old toffee.

Lost souls in nightgowns and slippers
                    foam behind wire.
                    A dark tide bids,

then waits for a gallery of small heads,
blue eyes devoid of doubt.

A world of small signs


Seagulls over Antrim
         ~in memoriam Liam Clarke

The strandcafe 
                   was lined
                   with Hitchcock seagulls

as you looked over
                    your glasses
                    with concern
                    and said

that I did not understand Hegel.

A time ago of rage and joy, of rain.

Read the poetry of Leslie Philibert
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Picture
Photography by Reka Jellema for "A Loom" (Click to enlarge)

Reka Jellema And Brendan Bonsack Write VerseWrights' First
​Collaborative Poem

Picture
Reka Jellema
Picture
Brendan Bonsack
A Loom

Her lap is a loom
Her hands a steady weft
And from the weave a murmuring
Of moths on threads unseen,

Unheard, she listens for the man
Who comes to call, to sit upon the stool
Pulling at the cotton til
Her fingers find his wrist

Cuffed and white and crisp
The buttons tightly imitating eyes
Tucked away in creases and lies
About the place, about the time

As though by stitch and by
Stitch she could hide him
Crouched and hushed and hazardous

As a fine shirt pin
(Reka Jellema lives in the US and Brendan Bonsack
​in Australia)
Read the poetry of Reka Jellema
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Read the poetry of Brendan Bonsack
Read a profile of Brendan Bonsack
​
​
Picture
Roslyn Ross

Poet Roslyn Ross With A Mix Of The
Delicate And The Rugged


​House on the Headland

Headland huddled holding staggered ground,
  house held fragile against the misted sea,
  in distant gazing, silenced windows;
  nothing but the sigh of breathing waves is found.
 
As if dropped at once into final, steady place,
  with each rock gathered from the falling cliff,
  and pressed tightly into possibility and hope;
  so does this small refuge sit with grace.
 
High above the suck and shrug of salty ocean,
  tossing songs of crusting, ancient words,
  cossetted by golden, keening bush and leaf;
  trailing dusty hands with eloquent emotion.
 
Horizon hurls itself into its brutal destiny,
  far away from what is here and now,
  calling softly on the scuds of foaming light;
  so my home sits quiet, ever waiting.


​  Read the poetry of Roslyn Ross
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Poet Rachel Schmieder-Gropen
Remakes Herself

PictureRachel Schmieder-Gropen
 
  Outgrowing

   I am shedding you like snakeskin,
   dropping your certainty of my selfhood
   in the dust like discarded armor,
                       smooth rings rusted sharp,
                       hammered breastplate bent
                       in the shape of a fist, Caroline --
 
I stopped existing the second
you left me behind, remade myself
atom by atom, moment by moment:
 
I have developed a taste for Icelandic
candies, I have stopped cringing
at the mention of sex and this summer
I learned how to use a drill.
 
You don’t know me, not this particular
living me; you can’t find me now
and I am new and safe, undiscovered,
skin soft and raw, red as peeled fruit.
 
I am shedding you like snakeskin.
I will not define myself with your
constriction: watch me leave my own
unfollowed tracks through the dust.


Read the poetry of Rachel Schmieder-Gropen
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​

Poet Emily Strauss: The Outside
And The Inside

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Emily Strauss

​Silent Gaps


out here there is no music
to distract from those tiny
spaces between a sense-object
and its mental response
 
only the whine of insects,
rustle of wrens in thick shrubs
the high-pitched hum of the world
spinning
 
the hollow silence, negative pull
of words left unsaid,
the air draining away
empties the body.
 
I sit alone on a cliff, no
grace notes out here
only empty light, the wind
slightly grazing my head
 
earth tones too subdued
for any song, holding still,
the voices long gone, only
the gaps in my head remain.


Read the poetry of Emily Strauss
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Picture
Layley Lu

Layley Lu Rails Against the Storm With Sonorous Lines

Rest Now, Tempest Rest

I have not been the strong one.
I petrified my suppleness and swallowed cold rocks
from tall island to wide island, crissed and cross with
     jags:
chopped winters into useless grief, ploughed snow,
minced sleet to eye shadow in shades of hoary blasts.

I will no longer shame your house.

I have broken my cedar veins against the wash stones,
and hang my skin in high branches for beating or for
     bleach.

Nor will I longer weep.

These fronds have taken up the rusty saw in their palm:
lopped and fell the hard edged gale gusting on the shore.
Salt and sand trickle down from starlight beacons
​     overhead,
praying: rest now,
tempest rest...


Read the poetry of Layley Lu
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​

Paul Lipman's Poem Opens With A
​Metaphor That Rises To A Conceit

PicturePaulie Lipman

  Bellows

   The human body
   is an accordion
   constructed by
   an unseen craftsman
Perfect in form, but hollow
until a musician moves it
to beauty
 
Buttons
for a mind that
can shift perspective
and mood
 
Ivory keys
bones
when struck in different combinations
determine an existence
major or minor
 
Bellows, for lungs
that can scream
wail
lullaby
or weep
 
And when
the last tarantella is
wrested from its frame
it is laid to rest in
a velvet lined box
and the song
the legacy
is laid to rest

in the wind

Read the poetry of Paulie Lipman
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​

Poet Sarah Frances Moran And How
​Love Finds Its Way In

PictureSarah Frances Moran

   La Comadreja*

    I thought
    I’d developed past the desire
    for consumption.

After the discardment
in the past,
allowing a woman to infest me
set off blazing light
warning signs
neon bright
and squealing.

There’s beauty
in the ability
to skirt walls.
to avoid the spotlight.
to dance around the shadows
of the searchlights.

Even on high alert,
she eludes me.

She weasels her way into the poems
that aren’t even about her.

Setting up residence
in the pit of me.

Turning my soul
into
home.


*the weasel

Read the poetry of Sarah Frances Moran
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​


Picture
Robert Nied

Robert Nied Tells Us To Take Chances And Live! Sort of...

                    Tater Tot

I didn’t break my collar bone on the half-pipe at Stowe
I didn’t unbalance my electrolytes during an open ocean
     swim
I didn’t sustain a knife wound defeating a mugger on State Street
I burned my esophagus eating a Tater Tot
 
I know what you are thinking…
Aren’t you the guy who complains about the lack of fine dining in Upstate,
     NY?
Don’t you grow cilantro on the window sill because your salsa demands it?
Yes, a Tater Tot. Seduced by the siren call of both mono and diglycerides
 
I watch the triage nurse prioritize the injured and sick -
The chain saw logger with the blood stained Carhart
The car wreck survivor with an airbag bruise the size of a
     dodge ball
The asthmatic toddler with a worried dad
 
“Just have a seat, we’ll call you soon” or in an hour, or six
Take your place next to intoxicated dirtbiker with two
     broken pinkies
Slurring the story of the trees that “didn’t look that close
     together”
You can chat with the “bet you can’t jump off the car
     port” teenager, the
     light bulb eater and the auto erotic experimenter.
 
Maybe you can start a card game
with the home renovator in flip flops,
the cactus plant mover
or the orange haired crafter with the crazy glue cap affixed to her eyebrow
 
Just before 1 AM the young resident said that I would be
     fine
“drink plenty of water and take Tylenol”
But not before asking the existential question:
“Why didn’t you just wait until it cooled off?”
 
Indignant, I said because I am adventurer who seizes the
     moment
Why defer, why delay?
You never know when your car could stall on the train
     tracks
Or a 6.5 quake could pit your skull against the falling
     façade of a convenience store
 
I burned my esophagus with a Tater Tot because I am
​     alive!


Read the poetry of Robert Nied
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​

Poet Samantha Reynolds: Mother As
Servant To Her (Princess) Child

Picture
Samantha Reynolds

​Twitchy Servant

This must have been
what it was like
in medieval times
a young princess
flocks of twitchy servants
trying to read her mood
 
this morning
laughing was banned
and now socks
are forbidden
 
last night
I didn’t know
about the pillows
and I sat on one
 
she screamed
no
and I jumped up
quick to obey
to stop the sound of her yell
that scraped the inside
 
of my head
and it must have been this way
with royal offspring
except she might have
stomped and shouted
 
off with head

​
for the pillow infraction perhaps
or for not finding the right pen
or when the balloon popped
and I couldn’t put it
back together
 
and maybe the next day
lopped head buried or drowned
or however they disposed
of the guilty
 
the young princess would ask
for that nursemaid
and someone would softly
remind her what she’d done
 
and she’d realize
she missed her kind smile
and that time they slipped
in the mud and laughed so hard
they peed a little
in their dresses
 
and her heart and stomach
would tighten like she was choking
and she would look around
for who to yell at
 
bring her back.

​
Read the poetry of Samantha Reynolds
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Poet Miriam Sagan's Latest Is A Poem
​Of Shadow And Light

PictureMiriam Sagan

  Shadow Puppets

  West of the sun and east of the moon
   beyond the causeway
   I strolled this morning without dunes
                      just boardwalk and green park

through the slatted window blind
across the palm treed alley
a red lantern hung at dawn
by day was just an exit sign

illuminated boxes show
silhouette of a hill
lone pine, classical ruin
minarets, Japan

the sky breaks infrared as rain
each image there is turned again
the mirror shows a passing scene
once more this world spins upside-down

what was I thinking
statue of Shiva was not
no, was, the sea
turning     so enter me
​

Read the poetry of Miriam Sagan
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​

Picture
JT Milford

Poet JT Milford's Homage To Fellow Poet, Mary Jo Balistreri

Aubade
      ~for Jo Balistreri

May the flowers
of your soul open
to receive the gift
of morning light

That gives life
to everything
the sky lapis blue
and the forever

light of you

Poet's note: I wrote this poem to celebrate Jo Balistreri, her poetry and her help and support given me over the years we have been e-mail friends. Many of my poems would not have come to fruition without her insightful comments and suggestions. Reading her books and selected poems she sent to me has shown what emotion she brings to her beautiful poetry.

Read the poetry of JT Milford
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Eleanor Swanson Probes The Relationship
​Of Poet And Poem

Picture
Eleanor Swanson

​Reading Runes

Older ones are written on scraps
of yellowed paper folded like
letters that will never be mailed.
Some recent ones have been
written in the kitchen and bear
unsavory, unrecognizable stains.
Some are dumb in the sense they
will never speak again, and in
the other sense—full of false
grandeur, silly notions, abstract
weightless ideas, wrong words.
 
On many unfinished poems
the hopeful poet has written
copious notes to herself about
how the poem must be revised:
add a word here, this is a terrible
title.  What does it mean? Here
is the key stanza. Why is it
buried in the middle of the poem?
Some of the notes are questions,
but the poet is scolding
the unfinished poem as well.
 
Most of these works-in-progress
will always be in progress,
because the poet doesn’t have
the sense to know when to stop.
 
Those writers who stop in the middle
of a line presage a failure of nerve
or breath or pure ennui.
The words, the gaps, quenched
flame—all must be read like runes.


​Read the poetry of Eleanor Swanson
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VerseWrights Warmly Welcomes Poet
​Mark Dennis Anderson

Picture
Mark Dennis Anderson
That Thing About Inner Life  ☊​

The clouds this morning are doing that thing
where they roll along the horizon
blacking out the sunrise 
like some ominous distant mountain 
range like I'm out west not stuck 
in this flat middle and this run 
to the gas station is a wilderness 
expedition and this fear in my chest 
is fear for my life 
because beyond that tree (street 
corner) or across that river (stop 
light intersection) a mountain lion (tan 
sedan) or grizzly (black 
SUV) might be doing their thing 
minding their business until their business 
is my business and all this business 
of living crashes and collides 
like galaxies or atoms or lovers 
doing their thing that looks like destruction
but is actually creation until all the things 
quivering with relief
lay trembling on the floor
Enjoy this poem in the PoetryAloud area
Read the poetry of Mark Dennis Anderson
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​

Amauri Solon: The Familiar Becomes
​A Personal Metaphor

Picture
Amauri Solon

​Rocking-chair

My rocking-chair
is my dream 
machine

In my rocking-chair 
I can be happy
at no cost
brave
at no risk
and eternal

In my rocking-chair 
I shyly smile
loudly laugh
and secretly
weep

My rocking-chair 
is my grandmother's lap
my frozen ears 
and blinking eyes
my choking
throat 
and my gurgling
guts

My rocking-chair
is my rumination
machine
rocking back and forth
I wander
and wonder 
I amble
and tremble
I act
and pretend
I live 
and I die

Read the poetry of Amauri Solon
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Two Poems of Romance From
​Jill Lapin-Zell

Picture
Jill Lapin-Zell

​Beach Walk

moonlight painting
shiny silver beaches
shadow footprints speak our path

as we walk along the shore

arms around each other,
heads close together

laughing with the wind

telling secrets about the stars

and naming the waves

as they break gently on the sand
barefoot tidal mambo
surf lapping at our toes
sand sliding back to the sea
grain after grain, magically drawn
like a lover going home
and we stop to honor the journey
holding our intention to be as strong
and our love as vital

and rhythmic as the tide


On My Radar


There you are
A blip on my screen
A glowing green dot
Suggesting you really do exist
And looking for clearance to land
My runway is alight
Lower your landing gear
And taxi on over to my gate​


Read the poetry of Jill Lapin-Zell
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Lee Kisling Imagines His Celestial Self

PictureLee Kisling

   

       Debris

Since I decided to give you some space -
some relief from my bright feathers and insistent call,
I have arranged for you a place to lay low
 
between Orion’s belt, Sirius the Dog Star,
the Big Dipper and the blur of Andromeda
faint in the east, which if connected by lines
 
resembles Wisconsin, except for being
10 million billion trillion times larger, reaching
back in time to the blink of creation.
 
In the quiet of that great space you will not hear
the creak of my bones in the morning
or the sound of my drums after dark.
 
From my position, it seems a lonely place.
Still, in the space that I have set aside for you
there are items of interest, and some things to avoid
 
like the cloud of articles I’ve lost over the years:
socks, books, pocket knives, bikes – all tumbling
through the darkness like a thrift store without walls,
 
or the cloud of crumpled balls of paper
which were problem-child poems or high blood pressure
love songs which missed the waste basket,
 
or a gathering of the ghosts of my former self
huddled by a frozen campfire singing old songs
about so, so many missed opportunities.


Read the poetry of Lee Kisling
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Picture
Kat Lehmann

Kat Lehmann's Magical Realism Is An Enchanting Defense Of Poetry

Being a Poem

I opened a poem – crawled inside,
felt its rough edges around smooth, concave walls.
I – the little spoon – curled knees to chin and speechless
in the warmth as I dreamed.
Cautiously, I crept out (time later)
and steadied myself on the Moon.
The poem still flowed through me like blood
as if I had been born from it.
Its rhythm in my veins brought a spark
to my eyes and a sway
to my hips –
The poem was everywhere I looked.
It was grass bending in a breeze
that traveled the world,
reaching with fingers of wind
to gently slip over its green length
from broad base to icicle point.
The poem was breath
as my lungs expanded like inverted trees
transforming atmosphere and lightly releasing it
like a song.
I touched myself as if touching the poem
with the mastery of self-recognition
only to realize that
I am a poem
that stirs the souls of the lost and found
before sailing like a wisp
of one who cannot be owned
only borrowed.

Read the poetry of Kat Lehmann
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Picture
Matthew Quinn

Poet Matthew Quinn's Latest Is
​An Unnerving Vision

Baptism into Oblivion

The multitude gather,
aged and frail, bathe
in the beautiful river,
wash in forgetting
clean as any absence ever was.

Then all dissolves
to a home
which is not home.
Blank confusion
stares out at bland walls.
Worried hands work
against each other
to find … what was it? …
grasped
a mere moment before.

Behold this sleight of hand
of mind upon the self
where the wide river
shrinks to a dead cistern
and the coin never held
never drops
into an empty well

of wishes never asked.

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In "Samsara," Poet Shirani Rajapakse
​Seeks A Guide

PictureShirani Rajapakse


​   Samsara*

   I’m bored with this life.
 
Can I go home? But where is
home? How do I get there?  Which bus
do I take? Do I fly instead, or can
the road take me there through
its twists and turns? And if I fall along
the way will you lift me
 
up? Give me new shoes and food
 
to eat and a place to stay. Will you come
with me, or do you stay behind?
Alone. I could do with some company
on my way there. To nowhere. To
where I don’t know. For I
cannot read a map and you can.
 
It’s as simple as that.


*Samsara: the cycle of death and rebirth to which
​life in the material world is bound


​Read the poetry of Shirani Rajapakse
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​

Poet Dana Rushin Pretends
​Without Pretense

PictureDana Rushin
 
   i go about pretending

   Most of the time, I go about pretending
    that there is a part (though granted a small part)
                        that wants to be tied up to the bed-post
                        and my naked ass whipped

while I plead that the dominatrix invite me
home for new poems. Especially on those
days when I've slept too long on my face
and the blood wells up behind my eyes.

See,
it's not always the heart;
Sometimes the mind breaks as well. Because to
be separated hurts to touch your elbow
on the hot roof of it

and loneliness makes the room dark
and the furniture licorice
and the sofa a too tight corn roll.
And to that resounding that dragged me to it's lap:

Please stop! I beg of you. Or in other words,

Please don't/

Read the poetry of Dana Rushin
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Poet Jacob Salzer Stills A Black
And White Moment

Picture
Jacob Salzer

​Without Knowing

I stand still with you
 
in an empty building
old voices absorbed into hollow walls
as a sound we cannot hear
 
as fragments of a memory escape
innumerable shapes of black and grey
 
I watch shadows
move beneath dim street lights
 
as the first sight of daylight
pierces through broken windows
 
I'm listening to you sleep
waiting for you to wake
 
to be still with you without knowing
the early light of morning


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Gareth Spark

Poet Gareth Spark's Poem Of
​The Primitive...And Ephemeral


​Megafauna

You see them sometimes, in headache dreams
(The migrainous hours,
Brain dried out by beer and body
hammer-wracked by work)

Lumbering Gods of the Earth's first nervous beats,
Massive shapes in brown shadow and
The rusting African light,
Heat of breath on dust, turned against
The dream's cage;

Colossi moving against
The lotus vault of sky,

Moving always,

Even after we are gone.


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​
Picture
Mary Jo Balistreri

Poet Mary Jo Balistreri's Poem
​After A Painting By Bonnard

Picture
Click on painting for an enlarged view
Bonnard Remembers Marthe in Evening Light
              ~after Pierre Bonnard's View from the Artist's Studio

As I lean toward sunset, the tall trees
hold the sun in such embrace they throb
within me. The stone paths we designed
flow like rivers of molten gold in this heat.
I sit at the open window of my studio
and paint the outrageous color of our garden.
The pulse of hidden seeds beats soft
against the canvas like your small body
against mine. How present you are
in your absence.
 
The flowering orange drifts to the pink
oils in which I dress you, falls beside me as you
carry the pruned stems by armfuls into the house,
the air delicious with sweetness.
My eyes blur as you bend over your hoe,
something passing in that intense light, a
ripening, a flush, the way you open the baked
soil, coax and cajole it like a child.
 
Evening is upon us and a lavender breeze lifts
the hair on my arms. The blues and greens quiver
in the changed air, and you drape my shoulders
in a cloak of violet and yellow. Soon a sea of black
starlight will close over us.
      Je me souviens, Marthe;
life lives not in the brush stroke, but in between.


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Poet Marianne Szlyk And An Escape
To The Cape

PictureMarianne Szlyk
 
​   


 Let's Go Away for Awhile

Thelma and her husband sing along to Pet Sounds 
when driving to the Cape. Jerry Cole’s guitar
begins “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” and they launch
 
into song, his voice too wild, hers with 
the Texas accent she never can lose. They 
plunge in, splashing past strip malls and swamp.
 
But this instrumental is the song she loves best,
the vibraphone like sunshine against drums like surf,
the horns like the wave that crashes furthest
 
onto the rocks, not quite the highway.
The strings are clouds, meringue she has whipped 
up in a stainless steel bowl at home.

She almost forgets that the east coast 
has weak surf, and slimy seaweed clings to 
waders’ calves in warm, knee-high water
 
as she and her husband waddle in among 
the thin girls from Boston.  She then remembers
cold, cloudy Mondays when the two of them 

drive back home, listening to their inland music: 
Chicago blues, Texas swing, Hank Williams’ “Honky Tonkin,"
the old songs that better suit their voices.
 
Maybe she likes that this instrumental comes before
anyone can see the bridge or the traffic.
Or she likes to catch her breath

before “Sloop John B”’s lyrics grind her down
like the refrain of a whiny child.
She catches her breath.


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​

Picture
Robert Walicki

Poet Robert Walicki Imagines
​The Someday In This Day

                  Lego

Only if you are ten and it’s rainy and a Saturday--
You are hungry, but there are worlds to be built,
a rainbow of mismatched brick.
 
Plastic, but small enough for your hand, not like
those heavy piles of red and that mortar splattered
scaffolding stretched outside
 
a yellow window where you watched those men from an
     eighth
grade classroom sweat and lay brick, lift cauldrons of
​     mortar
by rope to a bridge made of split two by tens.
 
How could you know in ten years you’d be just like them,
cementing storm drains into manholes 8 feet down?
This baptism of mud drying on your gloveless hands.
 
And now, you watch your nephew kneel down as if
his act was sacred. A birthday gift of Legos,
the grey and black bricks spilling to the floor.
 
The picture he is making is a war plane with missiles
He discards instructions and builds what’s in his mind,
 
resolute with each piece he snaps into place,
The inevitability of the structure taking shape.


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​

Poet Grant Tabard With A Poem From A Different Perspective

Picture
Grant Tarbard
In My Lover's Womb

1.
In my lover's womb
I play her ribs like
A xylophone. We
Make music until
The roses wither.
2.
In my lover's womb
I knew that I would
Have to clamber down
Out of her jelly,
Swaying crook morning.
3.
In my lover's womb
She flowers inside
A crimson kiln, a
Roses firestone
Seeking the Sun's flames.
4.
In my lover's womb,
It is a place for
Making noises, hear
The breeze outside her
Lining of sunset.
5.
In my lover's womb
Desire is a red
Dye of joy untold,
Cocooned in her shy
Blue November eyes.


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