VERSEWRIGHTS
  • Welcome
  • All Poets
  • PoetryAloud
  • Inbox Peace
  • The Press
  • Journal Archives

Archive #36
June, 2016


Christina Strigas With A Love
Song — Of Sorts

Picture
Christina Strigas

Don't Read Me

With one look
You will need many
One for my eyes
One for my lips
One from my legs
One for my ass
One for my thighs
One for my naked hips
As your warm hands slide
Up and down my curvy back
And wait for me
More than five seconds
More than a drag of a cigarette
Longer than the stop at the red light
Turn your car around
And find my keys
Lost in the corners of my empty pockets
When the song ends its riff
Still no one can understand
Show me how
Tell me now
What makes a good man good
And a bad man an asshole
Or both
Keep on washing the dishes
While I swell.


Read the poetry of Christina Strigas
Read a profile of Christine Strigas


Picture
Gene R. Turchin

Gene R. Turchin's Tree: Metaphor And Conceit

Ragged Tree

The light hums and crackles a counterpoint
Around the quietness of midday
In electric yellow,
As you stand to be witnessed,
Innocently unashamed.
With no apologies offered
For your dress:
I am, you seem to say.
 
Bone white bark stretched.
Tightly covers
Sinews made strong by years
Of bearing greenery.
Seems to me, to ripple and pulse
Like blood fed muscle
Beneath your skin.
 
Were you a dancer
In another life?
I thought I saw your form,
In the ballet.
 
The track print of brushes
Swirls through the heavens in muted blue.
A painted backdrop that plays
With a silence that is like
Basso booming kettle drums.
High, arcing hammers beat air
With raging arms.
 
Staged in front of you
Tiny winged things dance and twirl
Like notes in the warm September air.
And in the clearing
The yellow grass, a rabble audience
At your knees.
I am, you seem to say.
 
Though your roots be dry
And your branched crack and creak.
An opus or symphony, pianissimo,
Bowed by the wind
Or whispered from the breeze.
In this clearing quiet,
Quotes
I am.​
Read the poetry of Gene R. Turchin
Read a profile of Gene R. Turchin


Janet Aalfs: Stunning Family Moments,
​And The Aftermath

Picture
Janet Aalfs
           
​            Queer

When my mother at the table noted
the roast tasted queer,
I watched my father stare
as if to freeze the air
that sizzled like spit
on an iron skillet
          and disappeared.
No one saw me
          gone.
Every nerve and current spoke
          invisibly true.
Like the slap he had meant
to stop a boy
from kissing me, or worse,
the girl he did not see, silent
lips to mine.
I trusted every feeling.
          My ground.
          My spine.
And learned the meaning
of mercy then – love
blessed that word my choking
parents swallowed to live.
          And pierced my heart.
          And pushed me out.

Read the poetry of Janet Aalfs
Read a profile of Janet Aalfs


L.L. Barkat, Priestess, Ponders
Culinary Questions

Picture
L.L. Barkat

​Mused

Let's say a person took words
at a table. Let's say I was
his priestess, Henkel in hand
(the weighty one with the silver vein 
down its back).
Would it need to be chanterelles 
every morning, and the expert chive
scattered just so...
would he require veal
in the evening
(though veal makes me weep)...
would he settle 
for the common wineberry
in June,
or would I need to import
the lingon (I don't even know their season)...
would he prefer his wine dry, or sweet
(I drink sweet alone).
And after the last draught
was taken, the last ridiculous
little chive on a silver tine,

would he linger for a song?

Read the poetry of L.L. Barkat
Read a profile of L.L. Barkat


Picture
Peter V. Dugan

Peter V. Dugan Details A Flood's Aftermath
​Down To An Index Card

The Wake of the Flood

Boats from marinas miles away
washed across highways, carried
down Reynolds Channel, swept up
Mill River and Swift Creek
beached on fairways and bunkers
of Bay Park Golf Course.
 
Further up river at East Rockaway High School,
the newly renovated auditorium
lies in ruins, all seats submerged
except those in the balcony.
The gymnasium floor, its wood
warped, resembles ocean waves,
complete with fish and crabs.
 
Cars and trucks are immobile,
askew in parking lots and on lawns.
Sink holes erode streets;
branches and uprooted trees block roads,
crush cars and lean on homes.
Television, telephone, internet cable
and power lines torn down,
communication and information cut off
or extremely limited.
 
Up river and up the road
a woman finds her undamaged hot tub,
still filled with water, standing alone
in the center of Lister Ball Field.
 
At night total darkness envelopes
the neighborhood, save for the flashlights
and lanterns inside occupied houses.
The smell of low tide, sewerage,
and burnt gas and oil permeates the air.
The sound of autumn crickets drowned out
by the drone of generators.
 
The next day, piles of carpet, furniture,
and other remnants and wreckage
form mounds in driveways and on front lawns.
Someone plants the American Flag atop one.
Curbside I find a child's index card
from school, labeled #10 and it reads:

"Fearing death for himself and the rest of the men,
they decide to build boats and float them down

the Mississippi in hope of finding a Spanish settlement."

Read the poetry of Peter V. Dugan

Read a profile of Peter V. Dugan

Picture
Witty Fay

Witty Fay Writes About The
Nature Of Language With
​Evocative Imagery

I, linguistic animal

There is this frigid weather inside my bones.
As I measure my coldness in the marrow of the day,
The blue of the ink and the silver of the words,
Coil around my shoulders to warm the arms that carry them.
And I bid their personal music to speak to you
And my frames to smolder quietly, against the ice.
So I say: Occupy the words!
Squeeze your all into them and own their every fiber
Till they borrow your skin and you clothe theirs.
This silent speaking of mine is a risk
I always fail to see in the way you take it,
Building a mighty crimson architecture
Inside a half peeled pomegranate of Persia
For words of you are blood builders
Of such cold days of mine.


Read the poetry of Witty Fay
Read a profile of Witty Fay



Edjo Frank Considers His Own Mortality

Picture
Edjo Frank

​Imagine


the clock of life
counts back
encouraging
to imagine
the world
without me
in the center
 
I realize the
vulnerability
of my home
called body
since major repair
is no longer
an option
 
kaleidoscopes
of impressions
come and go
make me laugh
strong
helpless
 
an appointment
without date
time or place
I encounter
a stranger
without a face
without a name
yes I know
my destination
 
I wonder
how it feels
under a stone
square of yew hedges
surrounded
by trees
reciting
my name
 
my departure
fixed long ago
announced
by those who know
the direction
and took away
my worries
 
I know
you bring flowers
I do not see
play music
I cannot enjoy
speak words
I will not hear
but I love it all
forever


Read the poetry of Edjo Frank
Read a profile of Edjo Frank


John Grey And How The Awkward Can Become...Comfortable

Picture
John Grey
Reunion

​We meet up again
in an east side cafe
after ten years -
I won't say
ten long years –
 
our words of greeting
match shock
against curiosity,
send old angers
into battle with
the heavenly tenor
of current situations -
no wonder
there's mumbling
and stuttering
and some particular riffs
on the unspoken:
 
would you like
some coffee
with my unanswered questions?
how about a Danish,
to go with
real or imagined hurts?
 
eventually,
we laugh together,
catch up on a decade,
end up feeling better
for the encounter –
 
accidental reunions are
all the rage so I've heard -
funny but I used to think
that rage was all the rage.


Read the poetry of John Grey
Read a profile of John Grey


Picture
Tracey Gunne

Tracey Gunne Finds A Sad,
​Seasonal Spirit In Love

the blue cedars we ignored

you stumbled dark onto the arbitrary surface
of my heart's grave. deep in the woods buried. 
all the unloved and brittle bones. 
i assumed forever meant a willingness to betray 
the necessary. no longer steady in the black and white. 
submerged beneath the divided shelter 
of your hands. the half moon frostbitten tips 
of spring form bruises out of love. but never in. 
summer's lust leaves us barren 
with branches tense. the rough bark undressed and
ready for the sensation of a single breath. the autumn 
wind a reminder. a somewhat forgiving truth 
in this never ever land. love is fiercer than 
two souls combined. the blue cedars we ignored 
fondly confirm a lack thereof. love is the downward 
spiral of a sky falling through our seasonal essence. 
our infinite and intimate core.
where winter left us cold, waiting.


Read the poetry of Tracey Gunne
Read a profile of Tracey Gunne


James Croal Jackson: Glue And
Human Mortality

PictureJames Croal Jackson

​ Lance's Lament

  as we gathered to mourn
  the puppy struck by a car
  outside of the bank,
i was reminded of glue:
how it encrusts fingers; if
it could seep through skin
it would sleep in your lungs
& heart & hasten the path
to the common rest

they couldn't have fastened
the coffin with glue– too cruel,
they said– 

if your hand could even summon
the will to move

a square, red magnet fastens
your snow origami valentines forever
to green construction paper, tiny prayers
bottled

i hope there is another side, even when i open
the door for orange juice, cool breath of air
within, glass, it breathes, infested
with my own fingerprints, tartness
prior to the swallow
& acceptance– for as long as i am,
you are, too

Read the poetry of James Croal Jackson
Read a profile of James Croal Jackson
​

Picture
Wayne F Burke

Wayne F. Burke's Paean To Muhammad Ali

Muhammad Ali: Dead at 74

boxer with a knife-sharp mind; his decency
shone through, through the cameras he sat
or stood in front of, framed in the picture of
our times: his metamorphoses from caterpillar
to butterfly part of the history of the 21st century.
He's in every family's tree; real as Nixon and
Ho Chi Minh and Malcolm X and Martin King;
his victories "shook up the world," his defeats
saddened all who favored brains over brawn,
wit over witlessness, poetry over the prosaic;
he brought class to a de-classed sport; brought
light and laughter to those trapped in dark places;
brought good-nature to an ill-nature world;
he was the King, like Elvis, of his domain, and 
glad I am to have lived during this King's reign.


Read the poetry of Wayne F Burke
Read a profile of Wayne F Burke
​
Picture
Claire Scott

Claire Scott And A Travel Challenge To Assuage Grief

Strange World

After he died I went to Morocco, land of Paul Bowles
mysterious, ominous, unfamiliar
my well meaning friends were aghast
                  you can’t go by yourself
                  you don’t speak the language
                  you will get lost or sick or lonely
and they were right. I landed alone in a country of
strange food and scenery, strange sounds,
peculiar prayers and exotic smells
exactly the world I needed
and I did get sick and sicker
and I did get lost again and again
wandering crooked streets that looped
and looped through dark alleys
I saw bustling souqs with hills of spices,
silver hands of Fatima, chess sets made of 
cedar wood, tagines and garden pots,
carpets dyed in henna, indigo, saffron
the call to prayer of meuzzins chanting
the language of my bones
my grief thirsty for strange water
in a strange world that would
be mine for the rest of my life.

Read the poetry of Claire Scott
Read a profile of Claire Scott
​
Picture
Jen Stein

VerseWrights Extends A Warm Welcome To Poet Jen Stein

Miss Maude Hires an Assistant

She lines them up in front of her, six
women, each wearing their best clothes.
One woman is wearing pearls and a
 
pink sweater set. Maude admires
her dark hair, parted to the side,
cut jagged and uneven, but oh
 
how it shines like brown butter.
Another is wearing heels so high
Maude is afraid she may trip and fall
 
flattening the pansies in the pots
set on the tables inside. Maude asks
questions – why do you want to work
 
here at Hallelujah! Hotdish! and where
have you worked before? What do you
want of this job? What do you dream
 
when you close your eyes – do you see
signs in the clouds? Have you ever caught
yourself staring into the oven and you
 
imagine yourself there, home there, hot
but not burning? Do you know when you
really, truly learned your name? The women
 
laugh, nervous laughter, save for the one
with the jagged hair and the quick-bit nails.
She tells Maude she learned her name when
 
she came home and found all the chickens
and the ducks and the dog dead, and they
were laid out like they were constellations
 
and she knew then that her ex-husband was
who did it because she’d left him for another man.
Then she knew, she knew her name wasn’t Cathy
 
anymore, it was Cassiopeia, Cassie, and she cut
her own hair and she never saw him again. 
Maude accepts this as gospel and dismisses
 
the other women. She offers Cassie the job
and a mint julep. They drink sisterhood
through green straws. They drown in it.

Read the poetry of Jen Stein
Read a profile of Jen Stein
​
Picture
Collin Kelley

Collin Kelley Grieves Over A Life With Stark Realism

                        Atonement  ☊

I am sitting in a London cinema watching Vanessa Redgrave make amends for a life of deceit, to a soundtrack of rushing water I believe subliminal, to drive home melancholy, but when silhouetted heads turn in search, I realize it is real. It is raining hard outside, echoing behind the screen, and suddenly your death comes rushing back to me, Christopher, who I have not mourned.

Fifteen years ago we watched Vanessa give away Howards End, thrilled at elegant despair and handwringing, the way the rain never looked ugly there, was always just enough and never too much. When our sweaty young palms found each other’s in the dark, our dreams came in fast whispers, the promise that we would go to London one day.

I am here now, Christopher, and I feel you near. I am writing these words for you in Leicester Square, the English rain cold and perfect on my skin, yet the ink does not smear. You will not let me forget so easily, although I have tried to make you a stranger, a casualty of your own vices.

My fear is that I passed you on the street, when you were homeless and addicted, unrecognizable ghetto scarecrow, invisible and all the same, part of the city landscape. Maybe you were behind the gas station in a cold sweat, shooting meth to forget the HIV shame. Swallowed up in pride.

Your death is a voice mail, left by another with a phone number. The somber tone is unmistakable, a hush earmarked for the dead. Four days gone – long enough to have shaken off flesh gravity – I expect your ghost to rattle the unearthly chains of your discontent. Even when I skip the memorial, numb on the couch as twilight approaches, picking the memory of you like a scab, I realize that you are not so much a wound, but a scar that will never fade.

But today, you come back as the sound of rain; fill me up like a bucket until I brim. Not a dry eye in the house, anyway. So clever, you, subtle and un-paranormal. I mourn you with celluloid, Christopher, with dark rooms where stories unfurl, with rushing water, with a city that pulls me near and pushes me away, with clocks that always know the score.
Enjoy this poem in the PoetryAloud area
Read the poetry of Collin Kelley
Read a profile of Collin Kelley
​

Scott Thomas Outlar Brings His Unique
​Brand Of Horror

Picture
Scott Thomas Outlar

One Night Pass  ☊

She bled crimson lust
with dragon breath
when the fire came
to wash my soul
to hell and back
with a one night pass
to fever dream city
as Satan moaned
at every touch of flesh
and hiss from fangs
that poured ecstatic venom

She laughed long and hard
with eyes lit up
as the sky wept down
in bullet point rain
straight to the vein
with mercury overload
singeing the chaos
of a symphony choir
in love with the siren
that remains a liar
but still gets the meal in the end
​Enjoy this poem in the PoetryAloud area
Read the poetry of Scott Thomas Outlar
Read a profile of Scott Thomas Outlar
​
Picture
Doc Burkard

Doc Burkard And Desperation In America's Rust Belt

On Earth,

a kid in Detroit learns the easiest things to remove from
     a car. 
These new ones are really just computers and imported
     plastic
,
his cousin tells him as they lift a CD deck from a Pontiac
downriver, in the shadow of an abandoned factory, sharing a forty of Bud Light. 

A Milwaukee woman fills up her brother's van,
with one window missing, moving to Des Moines, in the
     winter,
her fragile hands exposed, cracking from the dry cold and
and edges from the boxes filled with faded clothes.

In this rust belt, we're dead, and the color of dirt,
all we can do is shake our fists, beat the sidewalk,
until we fall asleep on the street when our bottles are
     done,
and the rats check our pockets for five dollar bills.

It's one of the mildest winters of memory.
This wind a rusted knife, wet and the temperature of lies.
In Saint Paul, at the liquor store on Christmas Eve, I buy
​     as much
as I can hold and get ready for another year.


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


Picture
E. Michael Desilets

E. Michael Desilets With A Vestige Of The Not So Long Ago

​Old Iron

Typewriters at yard sales squat in relief
against toasters and tireless bicycles, always
ready to tell you something.
 
Even gibberish delays the eyes, precipitates
a cursory search for meaning, a disgruntled
delight in mere literacy.  One Royal veteran,
rusting with iron pride, clamps in its guts
a sheet of stationery from the defunct
New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad Company. 
Someone–Years ago?  Yesterday?–X’ed out the names of
     the trustees,
who were X’ed out themselves the previous century.  The
​     old machine
is simply too inexpensive to believe.
 
And much too cheap to buy, one more chunk
of the unnecessary.  Literal junk.  Typewriters
at yard sales.


Read the poetry of E. Michael Desilets
Read a profile of E. Michael Desilets


Lisa Folkmire Considers The Firmament
​From Terra Firma
 

Picture
Lisa Folkmire

​To Heaven

I.
 
In Grandma’s drive you pointed up
and counted: one, two, three.
There’s the belt.
The great Betelgeuse.
Somber Rigel.
 
II.
 
Follow the handle
down to the brightest star
there is the North.
 
But I couldn’t see the gourd.
I felt for the moss on the trees instead.
 
III.

We always tried to chase the Northern lights
only to imagine them between wakings.

IV.

O, Cassieopea, Queen of the Night.
 
I wanted your beauty most of all.

V.

Star-gazers of the summer
catching fireflies between palms.
 
We never cared how our universe
flurried amongst us
Or how we
could capture it between
our fingers.

Read the poetry of Lisa Folkmire
Read a profile of Lisa Folkmire


Katherine Gallagher's Poem Leaves Us
​With A Final, Edgy Metaphor

Picture
Katherine Gallagher

​Leaving


we watched seasons
seep into our skins
 
saw the seasons fail
fought them
 
now we find ourselves
packing once more
 
choosing a direction
the sky weightless
 
tracks ribboning
before our eyes
 
the cart piled ready
we scratch final messages
 
wedge ourselves on board
elbows jarring our sides
 
suddenly the driver
jerking the reins in
 
hard
as the load tilts
 
and crockery

starts to break on itself

Read the poetry of Katherine Gallagher
Read a profile of Katherine Gallagher


VerseWrights Warmly Welcomes
Poet Suchoon Mo

Picture
Suchoon Mo

​Hocus Pocus Mantra

caucus ruckus
iganoramus

walrus chorus
tremendus

venus anus
apparatus

coitus hiatus
confucius

tungus phallus
asparagus

bogus virus
suspicius

typhus bacillus
hippopotamus

lupus tetanus
serius

hindus genius
homoerectus

plus minus
calculus

hocus pocus
hilarius

Read the poetry of Suchoon Mo
Read a profile of Suchoon Mo
​

Matthew Henningsen: A Passenger Hears A Prelude To History

Picture
Matthew Henningsen

​Eaves-Dropping

Two rows back on the
Opposite end of a train
Car that belches and roars
Out a thick, bewildering
Ash of pastes and particles
You seem to over-hear-

      “Taney and James – they’re in
      On it they are in
      Cahoots. Conspiratorial
      You might say.”

The steel train grinds-grinds-
Grinds bolts and bars and
Breaks down coal with a
Hiss a loud-loud hiss-
Of delight.

      “And a friend told me
      That a friend of his who
      Was there heard from a
      Man that Lincoln had said that
      He makes a chestnut
      Horse a horse
      Chestnut.”

Your bolted-down seat
Shakes from the pound-pound-
Pound of pistons screeching
Out steam that clings to
The misty panes of pale
Glass that you, buffeted and
Blockaded, squint through and
Through.

      “Like the roar-roar
      Of Chicago when Honest Abe’s
      Nomination came through.”


Read the poetry of Matthew Henningsen
Read a profile of Matthew Henningsen




​
Picture
Picture
Amy Soricelli

Amy Soricelli Goes to the Beach, And Then Goes To The Beach

We Missed the #68 to Orchard Beach and Went Home Instead (July, 1969)

Dusty tunnels in the afternoon 

a kaleidoscope of dust  - 
you can squint your eyes to see the particles 
streaming through the Venetian Blinds like a magic trick. 
If you hold a pipe cleaner up to the window 
and wave it like a sword you can
cartoon yourself back into your sandals; 
escape the odd feeling of a bathing suit under your jeans.
The cats under the couch looking for the lost Spalding balls -
someone's mother calling from the window 
screaming Spanish accents into the dirty Bronx air.
It's all you could do to get away from the sun
the sun -
streaky down on your neck 
little pools of streaky sun.
Packed deep into ice - 
lost sandwiches kicked down the street 
like a failed math test.
Ice cream money singing loose change songs 
in your sweaty pocket.
You can hide under the cushions/ find pennies there.
go outside go outside go outside.
Her voice trails along the lines of the wall 
where we scraped our shoes kicking the boredom -
the sadness.
Everything is always the same here- 
everyone hates us.
Blending into the wallpaper 
we creep along the ceiling - 
lost children 
right under her nose.
why can't you go outside.
We shuffle through the boxes under the bed -
she hides things there 
in between the dead shoes single socks.
Found a dollar folded like a swan.
He punches me sometimes hard on the arm 
bam bam bam.
Same spot all the time 
leaves a blue and green mark 
round like a puddle.
Pulls my hair across the room 
until i land smack in the middle of his nightmare.
go outside go outside go outside.
Motown music walks a tightrope 
from the electric chord on the kitchen table its copper penny brother
steadying its arm 
scratching out the angry move your hips music.  
We all know i got no rhythm.
Soap bubbles tossed in the bathroom 
buckets of water like a beach.  
Make a beach from blankets 
spread across the flat blue carpet in the bedroom.
Pails and shovels 
and shells made from broken dolls without eyes.
No waves/ ocean sounds.
But it's a beach for today.  
There's all this sand. 


Read the poetry of Amy Soricelli
Read a profile of Amy Soricelli


Picture
Kim Talon

Kim Talon Returns With Two
​New Poems

10,000 Holes

10,000 nail holes weren’t enough
to hold the frames
that held the photos
to hide the crack you made
when you smashed the walls--
the walls you thought kept you out
when you forgot they kept you safe

another hole
10,001
so a frame might cover
another tentacle of the crack
racing from floor to ceiling
stretching out finger-like
plaster cast of a broken heart
​

Battered

You play music like a man possessed ...
you tell me this is the only time
you feel liberated and unfettered
from the banality of day to day
and I don’t feel slighted
because we all hanker for a soul’s pure freedom

You tell me the notes are demanding
and you, their instrument, must do their bidding
until the music stretches the ordinary
as tightly as you stretch the strings of your battered Gibson
until the notes become something else...
something you lay claim to

Read the poetry of Kim Talon
Read a profile of Kim Talon




​
Picture
Claudine C. Wargel

Claudine C. Wargel Finds The Rhythm Of The Cypress

The Wind

So much is gone, fleeting
Yet captured, 
Seared into matter that records, inexplicably.
Cypress rests in piles where it had stretched skyward,
Embracing a bounty of golden grain.
Flow. Fill. Chaff-filled sky. 
Flow, deplete, wait.
Then fill.
The corn, the beans—an annual tide. 
Moved in, moved out.
Coon, sparrow, rat-- 
They come, play, eat and lay.
Down, over, up, across. Grain moves.
Up, then down, goes man, goes child.
Down, then up, go beans, go corn.
Up then down go beans, go boards.
Kittens duck amid its feet, darting through the dark.
It hulks, it holds.
It shivers as its treasure lays in.
And then, 110 years in…
The Wind. 
Potent. Unyielding. 
Stressing. Straining. 
Snapping cypress.
Now - long gone the grain, the rat, the cat.
Still near the watchful man, the now-grown child. 
Down, down, back to soil 
Go cypress beams, go cypress planks.
But never gone 

The days of gold and hearts well fed.

Read the poetry of Claudine C. Wargel
Read a profile of Claudine C. Wargel


Two Minimalist Poems From The Pen
​Of Danny P. Barbare

Picture
Danny P. Barbare
​
​Your Eyes

In your eyes
I find kindness
that sits and sits
  with me awhile
oh how they
  shine
like a candle so
  still
they are warm
like a glass of
   wine
a moment that
   is crystal.


At Bojangles

I like the chatter
    of people
as it’s like
    gravy on my
    mashed
    potatoes,
    with
    cold
    coleslaw,
    soft
    biscuits,
    and a spicy
    breast of
    chicken.


Read the poetry of Danny P. Barbare
Read a profile of Danny P. Barbare
Picture
Ann Huang

Ann Huang's Latest: A Small Window Into A Life

Sarah  ☊

Those are the moments that keep you alive.
You whisper to the candle light.
You eat cake
Beyond a close proximity--
The reservoir bank
In the way that age moves on.
You are young except for those who are younger
Over and over.
And to be glued on to each other
Both of us like shards awaiting to be glued on,
That were not what age enlisted.
The planters you refused to receive
With tea tree oil and berry currants,
The crescent springs you created upon yourself.
Enjoy this poem in the PoetryAloud area
Read the poetry of Ann Huang
Read a profile
 of Ann Huang
​
Picture
Charlie Brice

Charlie Brice Ponders The Last
​Of The Moments

We’ll All See God but Not with Our Eyes

What was Jim Harrison thinking
the day before Easter 2016,
the day he died. He lay
 
on his studio floor
pen in hand. He’d
been writing a poem
 
when his chest closed. He
believed, despite all evidence,
in the resurrection.
 
Was he thinking of Jesus,
His blood spoor lancing
the atmosphere as He ascended,
 
or was Jim preoccupied
with holding on as he fell
through the upended sky,
 
grasping souls of the Anasazi,
not yet inured to the mud bath
of death, or the nitwits
 
he’d have to put up with
in heaven? Was he thinking
of Linda, his wife of fifty years,
 
gone only months before,
or of the many bears he knew,
revered, and feared?
 
Was he scratching the chin
of a favorite birddog, maybe
his hound Rose, whom he loved
 
beyond expression? Maybe
he had a vision of the rear-end
of a waitress he knew in town,
 
how she smelled, to him, of roast
beef, potatoes, and gravy.
Was he thinking of the meadowlarks,
 
crows, kingfishers, and cowbirds
who accompanied him on what
he called “this bloody voyage?”
 
And what of the pounds
of pork roast, foie gras,
and quail he ate--
 
the gallons of vodka shooters
and Brouilly he drank,
the packs of American Spirits,
 
the brisket from Zingerman’s,
buckets of tears shed
over impulsively opened
 
and consumed cans of Hormel
Chili, or the Herculean effort
expended on that famous
 
thirty-seven course thirteen wine lunch
he ate in France with a few cronies?
Or maybe he finally became
 
a bird, his lifelong ambition,
and flew into that cloud he dreamed
and shared with us.


​Read the poetry of Charlie Brice
Read a profile of Charlie Brice
​

Caleb Coy: Conception, Heredity, Miracle

Picture
Caleb Coy

​Birds and Bees

Hearing of birds and bees
I stood at the threshold of life:

It wasn’t dad’s idea,
Nor was it mom’s,
That when two parts joined
I would have dad’s brown hair,
Mom’s effortless smile,
Grandpa’s distinctive laugh,
Grandma’s needful vision,
To be sewn together intricately
With the entire history
Of mankind—hearts and
Vessels, nerves and
Brains, bones and
Sinews, livers and
Nodes, all trailing behind
A single spermatozoa,
A bright future ahead of him,
Driven by divine laws of nature
A single agent of fertility.

Genius and Venus
Could never conceive of such a “thing”
Not even with twinkles in their eyes.


Read the poetry of Caleb Coy
Read a profile of Caleb Coy


Picture
Angele Ellis

Angele Ellis With Heat And Fire In Her Latest Poem

Flashover

~ the sudden spread of flame over an area 
   when heated to the flash point

too armored to feel
searching for bodies
our gaze is forced upward

counting as the flames
in the control chamber
rise to this moment

near the melting point
smoke clouds churn
the room goes dark

flashover

blue-white fingers beckon
from the roiling ceiling
as if to guide us

on each new call
we must decide
whether to stare into the fire

or flush it out


Read the poetry of Angele Ellis
Read a profile of Angele Ellis
​

Picture
Torrin Greathouse

Torrin Greathouse And The Shock Of Earthquakes

This is Not a Drill

When the shaking begins in your feet,
when the desks and windows begin to shake,
you will know it is coming.
The aftershocks are more dangerous than the initial
     quake.
 
Get under your desk, curl up as tightly as you can,
wrap your hands behind your head to protect it.
If there is not a desk, hide your body in the safety of a
     doorway,
if you can, get outside, get away from anything that could crush you.
 
In school they did drills
twice a month, taught us to recognize the signs
of a coming earthquake and prepare.
 
You will feel the shaking in your feet,
but no one taught me what to do
when it begins like a well trained bullet,
right between my eyes.
 
When there is nothing to curl my body under,
when wrapping my hands around my head
will feel like locking a wolf inside of my bedroom,
feeding it on only my blood,
and expecting safe passage to sleep.
 
When everything is shaking like I am a rabbit in
    Rottweiler jaws,
and nowhere seems safe from the gut stomp
of the sky curving in on me.
 
There is no training course for this,
and it is never a drill.
There is only collapse,
and rebuild.
 
Two fractured knuckles and the jagged scars
crisscrossing my upper thigh,
one steel frying pan left practically unusable
from the fist sized dent we couldn't work out.
San Francisco, 1906.
 
Waking up drunk in a field,
socks, shoes, and my favorite shirt never recovered,
calling off work for the first time
because my shift started in two hours 
and I still couldn't stand.
Loma Prieta, 1989. 
 
Tonight I had to hide the knives again,
and I am staring down the bottle of wine like a dog dare,
like the safety of a doorway blinking green with the word
​     exit,
like the barrel of my father's favorite gun.
 
But I do not drink,
I sit here on the balcony, chain smoking,
waiting for the sky to crush me,
or the shaking to cease.
 
Remembering the aftershocks
are more dangerous than the initial quake.


Read the poetry of Torrin Greathouse
​Read a profile of Torrin Greathouse

​
Go to Archive Index

​Thank you for visiting Tweetspeak VerseWrights.
© 2012-2018. VerseWrights. All rights reserved.:
Acrostic Poems
Ballad Poems
Catalog Poems
Charlotte Perkins Gilman Poems
Epic Poetry
Fairy Tale Poems
Fishing Poems
Funny Poems
Ghazal Poems
Haiku Poems
John Keats Poems
Love Poems
Math, Science & Technology Poems
Ode Poems
Pantoum Poems
Question Poems
Rondeau Poems
Rose Poems
Sestina Poems
Shakespeare Poems
Ship, Sail & Boat Poems
Sonnet Poems
Tea Poems
Villanelle Poems
William Blake Poems
Work Poems

To translate this page:
  • Welcome
  • All Poets
  • PoetryAloud
  • Inbox Peace
  • The Press
  • Journal Archives