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Archive 3
September, 2013


"Chew You," A New Poem From Ana Caballero

PictureAna Caballero





Chew You


I’ve always loved left overs
Cold, by the kitchen sink
With dirty fingers and appalled mothers

These, though, I will eat alone
Sitting up
In bed

It was a good, unapologetic lay
The day we tried
To play for good

But, it was really only a day

One good day
Condensed
Into one good chew

And now:

One Strained Swallow
Down the Hollow Drain


Read the poetry of Ana Caballero
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New On VerseWrights' Pages: Mark Windham

PictureMark Windham





Fangzi Mian


It is difficult to decide
between the complex flavors
of the house noodles
and the fire of the spicy chicken.

She was the first -- a rare beauty
in an east Texas town -- with burning
desire and a rebellious nature.
She searched for something
the boys who surrounded her
could not provide. She tired
of me faster than the fill
of the lo mien fades,    
or the fire of the sauce subsides.


Lately, I order the noodles more,
preferring to savor the layers
of life embedded in each bite.
Occasionally though, there is still
an appeal to the heat.


Mark Windham lives in the northwest suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia with his wife, two of his three children, and three dogs. He is self employed. His writing may be found on his personal blog entitled AwakenedWords. Publication credits Include Poetic Bloomings, The First Year, The dVerse Anthology: Voices of Contemporary World Poetry, and The Dead Mule School Of Southern Literature among others. Read.



"two good wanderers" From Joanna Suzanne Lee

PictureJoanna Suzanne Lee
   


   

two good wanderers
☊

our tongues travel
cross continents
in dreams as if
 
they were camel-borne
on some silk road, as if
their shadows
 
were tied in tangos, as if
the sum of our kisses could
account for something.
 
your words are rain-
drops that coalesce
into the sadness
 
of my plateglass thought-
stream. they make for good
poem weather, wet &
 
expectant & yet
a color is too weighty a thing
to give singly and before a storm.
 
still, it is better to build bridges
from the edges of oceans:
i would give you the blue
 
in my eyes, except
on the days they are green.
there are many true worlds,
 
poet, and the night
touches them
--all.


See this poem read by Joanna Suzanne Lee
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From Debbie Strange, A New Poem: "folding"

PictureDebbie Strange





folding
  ☊

the faded pink sweater still hangs
by the unravelled threads
of her life
from the broken hook
of my heart

edges worn thin and frayed
warp and weft remember
the shape of her body
but never
the scent of her skin

buttonless now
seams gaping as wide as grief
i fold into her
fingering the torn pocket for shreds of comfort
from the last crumpled tissue


Hear this poem read by Debbie Strange
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One and Three Line Haiku From Christina Nguyen

PictureChristina Nguyen





Haiku


harvest moon
pulling a weed
from the empty garden

amethyst dusk crosses the lake

garden mint
seemed like a good idea
at the time

the harbor seal's eyes gathering clouds

broken pieces
of robin's eggs
postpartum depression


Read the poetry of Christina Nguyen
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jacob erin-cilberto's Newest: "Zoom Zoom"

Picturejacob erin-cilberto




Zoom Zoom

i was not going to write yet another poem
about writer's block,
but then, well
 
i heard a poem blocks away
revving its engine
so loud the window of my mind shook
in its loose frame
 
and then i heard the roar of it approaching
braced myself for the vision to go with the noise
and finally there it was, driving past my house
 
past my pen, past my thoughts
passed me
shifted gears, dropped a few words
in liquidated form from the tailpipe
 
revved again just to taunt me
then sped off down the block
to another block but kept me
in writer's block shock
shaking like my window
 
as i started typing
a poem about writer's block
on my block
still hearing that engine roaring
a block away
in the back of my mind.


Read the poetry of jacob erin-cilberto
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We Welcome Carey Rose O'Connell to VerseWrights

PictureCarey Rose O'Connell





The Feaster  ☊

I am the individuality of five
helically wrapped into the
hologram of one

I speak the voices exhaled
by the stones and translate
the songs of the sun

I am the feaster

I breathe energy
and eat rising fear

I am the feaster

I bleed synergy
and drink falling tears

I am the feaster

I walk in spirals
and die with each step

I am the feaster

I love in sacral
and translate our next

I am the feaster


Hear this poem read by Carey Rose O'Connell

Carey Rose O'Connell resides in the American Southwest. She has written for a number of years, but her "calling" as a poet did not come until late in 2010. This change in her writing life inspired the launch of her website, The World Poetized, in early 2011. She constructs poetry in all styles, but enjoys sharing her inner musings first in free verse and then into a poetic form, often a variety of micropoetry. She has found a connection to this style, which is featured along with her photography in Snapshots, her recent self-published book. She is presently working on a new manuscript of her work, and will soon complete a compilation of her poetry readings to be entitled Walking Enchantment. Read.


MD Friedman's Poem, "Finding My Own Moon"

PictureMD Friedman





Finding My Own Moon  ☊

there is
something
in this skinny howl
of coyote
that juliennes
the night
as if it were
a brick
of dark chocolate

something
that chases
its own tail
in wild circles
contagious
with the joy
of a dervish
something
in that slide up

to the high howl
and in the quivering
sustain that follows
that chills
the blood
and makes me stop
whatever I am doing
to find
my own moon


Hear this poem read by MD Friedman
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We Welcome Poet Stephanie Brennan

PictureStephanie Brennan



   


Memory Lane

Her new coffee cup is matte black
on the outside
the inside is a
beautiful porcelain of lime
green
the color of rice paddies
three weeks old

The particular shade of lime
reminds her
of the trip they took
to Vietnam, years ago

At a temple
a dozen children
wandered, begging
their tiny hands
palms up, pleaded
eventually she handed one
a few coins

And all the rest of them
cried
real tears
down their dirty
cheeks
and so she ran away
having no more coins

She sips that coffee
and thinks how angry
she’s been at her
husband, for years

It dawns on her
why now
that it’s the sound
of those children
crying
that slams doors
storms out of rooms
raises her voice
pleads
with palms up


Read the poetry of Stephanie Brennan
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Stephanie Brennan has settled, at least for now, amidst redwoods and fog in northern California. She has a B.S. in Education, but never taught anyone anything. Instead she roamed the world, returning to the U.S. to work at a wide range of jobs, and then hurried off again to another far-flung destination. She’s been writing fiction for many years, some of which may be found at her blog: People Do Things With Their Lives. Only recently has she ventured into poetry where to her great surprise she finds calm, and now can’t stop, doesn’t want to stop. She started a poetry blog, restraint unfettered, where she hopes to expand her micropoetry into longer pieces. Read.


Laura Madeline Wiseman Is Now On VerseWrights

PictureLaura Madeline Wiseman





Weekend Naps

After lunch had been put aside in plastic wrap
and the radio, tucked under the cabinets,
had lost the orange glow of its face,
those hours were made lawless on the acre
on the rise above the lake’s slate surface,
like the dark forest that banked the river
and the prairie soil once tilled for corn
had a hold of time and could pause it,
while you, with a preference for the wild life,
reached for me beneath white sheets
and quilts, on lace trimmed pillowcases,
as the shadows stilled below the trees
and the only sound anywhere for miles
was the gentle creak of the springs
as the tabby purred at the foot of the bed.


Laura Madeline Wiseman is the author of nine collections of poetry, including the full-length book Sprung (San Francisco Bay Press, 2012) and the chapbooks Men and Their Whims (Writing Knights Press, 2013) and First Wife (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2013). Her chapbook Stranger Still (Finishing Line Press, 2013) is forthcoming. She is the editor of Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2013). She lives in Nebraska, where she teaches at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Visit her Web site at www.lauramadelinewiseman.com to learn more about her and her work. Read.


A New Poem From Natalie Keller

PictureNatalie Keller





What I Don't Understand About the Universe


They say light is the absence of darkness
and life is the absence of death,
but how can love be the absence of hatred?
How can love be anything less than a
drawer full of handwritten letters from my
shaking, unnerved hands to your
crescent moon eyes, taking me in
like a night above the water?
How can love be a leap,
a flick of a light-switch away
from you being my entire world
or just a stranger down the street?
There are no simple things in this life,
love alone being the most complicated thread -
strung through us all until we hang like
paper people on a wire, shaken until
there is nothing left to us a but shells
and a promise that something once
lived in them.


Read the poetry of Natalie Keller
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Poet Gary Maxwell Is On VerseWrights

PictureGary Maxwell





Calendars


Have you ever mourned your way
from Christmas to Epiphany,
worn out by the weight of streaming shoppers
darting madly through the maze
of lights, partaking of the sacraments
of savvy salesmen, easy marks
for mercantile manipulators – priesthood
of the golden calf?

Have you smoked and screwed your way,
Fat Tuesday clear to Pentecost,
never coming up for air,
pituitary pitted like a peach seed,
keeping its own calendar,
counting down the days until you drown,
stone like, having skipped the sea
and then, well spent, you’ll seek the bottom?

Spare me all those Etch-A-Sketch
constructed constellations, I’ll take
fists of stars straight up, flung carelessly
where velvet shows, most intimately,
all the acts and outcomes of creation,
having no regard for cardboard boxes,
shipping crates or inventory tags
we use to keep that Power in its place.


Gary Maxwell was born in north central Kansas and lived there a grand total of six weeks before hitting the road for a life of wandering with his Air Force family. He started playing the guitar in high school and began writing songs shortly thereafter, but it wasn't until the final semester of a BS degree in Computer Science - 30+ years ago - that he started writing poetry (Shakespearean sonnets, to be precise). Gary divides his time between reading (his first love), writing, and keeping body and soul together as a day laborer on the information superhighway. He maintains an online presence at Fools' Blog, and tweets @yeoldefoole.  He currently resides (appropriately) in Reading, Massachusetts - just north of Boston. Read.


Two New Poems From Leslie Philibert

PictureLeslie Philibert





The Crystal Palace Is Burning


You do not expect glass to burn;
letting out the fire trapped in panes,
white light having been caught before.
But it does.
They say you can see the flames
as far away as Brighton.

The end of an age.
A widow in a frame of
melted lead and cast iron.
Flowers of smoke.
A fallen bird,
with ribs of a serious time.

Walk Slowly At My Burial

take the pace out of step;
the black beetle crunches over gravel,
a block of ice, stupid silence

carried like a china cup
nearly down, a ring of flowers,
the first prize packed like a gift,

six strong men are needed to carry
my boxed bag of bones;
flaps of skin and the old-man smell.

Hold on. A moth in a lampshade
couldn`t bruise its wings less;
scared of the fall into cold loam.

Read the poetry of Leslie Philibert
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New Poem: "Original Nassoon," from Janet
Aalfs

PictureJanet Aalfs





Original Nassoon


Young men harmonize
Perfidia at the station.
Train cars empty, lights

dim, an old man
humming in a wheelchair
could have been my father,

original Nassoon, singing
in the smoke of wartime
as the world kept swinging

on a rope of tunes
like one of those bath soaps
that smells like a lily, golden

strand at the center
woven through every cell,
a common note

you'll find if you listen closer
than a dream. Heart's refrain a spiral
stretched like a strand of pearls

reaches from earth
to the cobalt moon forever
in a glance, my father's voice

a gorgeous bloom among all
the voices lit
as the wheels of iron turn

back to the first
song we learn
in silence darker than blood.


Read the poetry of Janet Aalfs
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We Welcome Poet John Jackson To Our Pages

PictureJohn Jackson


   


Tempe, Arizona, 1963


a scent of sunshine
baked into sheets on a line
certain smells take me back

a little boy, eager, struggles to keep up
her gentle admonitions oft repeated
"don't let them touch the ground, honey"

methodically we folded
longways, longways
toward and back, toward again

every week, just her and I
while the girls were in school
all her troubles subsided

and for that little while
my world seemed right
longways, toward, and back


John Jackson grew up in Arizona, but has lived in Alaska for the last 24 years where he and his wife, Ayla raised their two children. Encouraged by family, and teachers, he began writing poetry as a teen. Writing now as an adult, he is inspired by poets such as Pablo Neruda, Joy Harjo, and Langston Hughes--and by poets on VerseWrights. He has been active online at WritersCafe for two years, but this is his first publication elsewhere. Read.


Poet Mike Jewett Joins Us On VerseWrights

PictureMike Jewett


   


Tattoos & Cigarettes

I remember when you were all
Tattoos & cigarettes
For me-

Cherries and swallows inked on your skin
You knew how tattoos got me going
Especially on you.
How you used to light a Marlboro
With a devilish grin
And blow your smoke right at me

Maybe a few smoky kisses,
Sexy in your scally cap
While you’d snap inhale

Huge white balls of smoke
Popping out of your mouth,
Right back in,

God how I loved that,
And you knew how your smoking got me going-
Your smoking was always the sexiest.

In our little barn
You’d show off your new tattoos
Smiling like the sun.


Read the poetry of Mike Jewett
Read a profile of Mike Jewett



Jill Lapin-Zell's latest: "Tea Time"

PictureJill Lapin-Zell



   


Tea Time


Dark amber tea in a glass,
neither half full nor half empty,
 
He smiles,
raises the column to his lips,
holding the thick base in slim fingers.
 
He sips like a wine taster,
drawing breath over the tea’s shoulder,
sucking Constant Comment through his teeth,
almost imperceptibly nibbling each sip,
invisibly swallowing.
 
His head tips back,
the tumbler bottom a Cyclops' monocle.
 
He lowers the empty glass
to the warped wooden table,
micro-maneuvering the base
into the dark, dry ring.
 
It knows where it belongs.
It just doesn’t know where it is.
 
He kisses his white napkin,
as if it were a prayer shawl
smiles enigmatically, and murmurs,
 
Chew one hundred times,
Write one hundred prayers.


Read the poetry of Jill Lapin-Zell
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"Cling," A New Poem From Poet Jonterri Gadson

PictureJonterri Gadson

 


Cling


  We both grip the fountain's
  damp lip, lose our knuckle tips
 
  just beneath the water's surface,
  our cheeks lift into simultaneous
 
hello smiles, while the ivy spreads
like fresh disease in the corner's shadow.
We've come here to talk about us.
 
Had I known freedom
could matter so much,
 
I would have loosed the ivy’s vines
from the cold stone hold
 
of that mildewing, chipped, brick
wall then; would have plucked
each leaf off above their stems,
 
let the vines sprawl naked
in the dirt like earth's veins.
 
I'd had enough of watching
the slightest changes ripple
 
our reflections unrecognizable.
You'd grown tired of the shade
 
shifting, had enough of trying.
Still, we walked out together,
our wind rustling the evergreen ivy
 
that, unlike us, would lose nothing
for clinging, climbing, desperate,
 
struggling to rise
toward an unreachable sun.


Read the poetry of Jonterri Gadson
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"Recurring Dream,"A Pantoum by Val Dering Rojas

PictureVal Dering Rojas





Recurring Dream


  I am alone
  standing in a room
  where nothing is where it should be
  where even the fireplace has moved.

Standing in a room
wondering where my belongings are
where even the fireplace has moved,
now everything the color of skin.

Wondering where my belongings are--
the green chairs, the clock, the cats--
now everything the color of skin:
I remember where I am.

The green chairs, the clock, the cats
in an apartment, in the living room.
I remember where I am
and it’s all backwards.

In an apartment, in the living room
everything has been rearranged
and it’s all backwards.
This isn’t the life we shared.

Everything has been rearranged
where nothing is where it should be,
this isn’t the life we shared,
I am alone.


Read the poetry of Val Dering Rojas
Read a profile of Val Dering Rojas


Now on VerseWrights, Louise Hastings

PictureLouise Hastings
  



The Shape of a Soul


    On the night of her death
    you looked down and watched
    as she left like a wisp of smoke
    by the hole in her head,
    floating up through her half
    of the purple nocturne sky.

And as she lies fragile like a bird
soft light filters through her paper skin;
the moon turns red,
a scarlet surge spilling a waterfall.

And what is the shape of a soul?
Is a woman’s the same as a man’s?
All she wanted
was what we all want -
a chance to live, to learn, to love.

But I hear no response, no reply,
just your mocking laughter
as she lies bleeding there in the dark.


Louise Hastings is a writer and the author of a first collection of poetry, Phases of the Moon, published by Winter Goose Publishing in 2012. Her newest book is a children's fiction novel, Beatha - A Badger's Story written to help raise funds for the Badger Trust. A nature lover and defender of Gaia, she is inspired by the beautiful countryside of Somerset in South West England. She loves reading and writing, and "allowing my thoughts and emotions to breathe through the power of artistic expression." Read.

"One Minute Dead," A New Poem From E. Michael Desilets

PictureE. Michael Desilets


 

One Minute Dead


  He was nonplussed to discover
  that Heaven was his grandmother’s kitchen,
    not the Buñuel film
    he had anticipated.  There was custard
    in the oven and no one seemed to notice
    the kettle whistling.  There couldn’t
    possibly be enough beatific tea bags
    in the canister.  But Heaven
    didn’t
    have to make sense.  The linoleum
    was still cracked and there weren’t
    enough chairs.
 
    “Where’s God, Auntie Rie?” he asked his godmother.
    She was a girl again, the sublime babysitter
    who taught him how to tie his shoes and play
    Hangman.  “In the parlor,” she said, her voice
    a silken whisper, “watching Lawrence Welk.”


Read the poetry of E. Michael Desilets
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A "Letter" From Kelli Russell Agodon

PictureKelli Russell Agodon



   

Letter to an Absentee Landlord

I write letters to God
       and answers don’t appear
        in words, but in blue jays

and beetles, in hummingbird
    beaks.  I’m spinning
    my wings and hungry.


What God doesn’t say is,
    You are not your salary.
    Practice this a million times
.

God says through the honeysuckle:
    Allergy season is three weeks away.
    And sometimes: Your father died

and you still feel that pain.  No one
    wanted my father’s birdhouses. 
    No one wanted years

of soap on a rope.  I donated it all 
    to charities.  I didn’t eat
    for weeks after losing

my opening act, the comedian
    with wide ties and broken body. 
    Now in my reflection, veins appear,

lines where there were no lines
    before. I finger a prayer
    on a steamy bathroom mirror.

Practice this a million times.
    I dust, fill a closet with linens,
    a comforter, pillows.

What I really need is sleep,
    what I really need is the squawk
    of a blue jay to wake me up.


Read the poetry of Kelli Russell Agodon
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Poet Christopher Clark Now On VerseWrights

PictureChristopher Clark





The Train

distracted with the burden of guys,
sideburns caught up in cornered eyes
of girls who sometimes play guitar
their rucksacks stuffed side by
side, across carriages where
feet spread wide, angled exactly
perpendicular.  this is where I asked how many lies
you could tell over potential courses, like sixty seconds
in the potent manner of the most heavy
of your forlorn lovers.  You smiled, in reply -
you only counted the backs that bled
where scratched flaws fell like songs
in heavy rafters, waiting to tiptoe out
from covers, at some time
like six in the morning.

Christopher Clark is a London based poet currently entering the final stages of study at Goldsmiths, University of London.  He has previously been featured in various publications such as Astronaut Zine and has worked on commissions, including The Royal Philharmonic Society.  He enjoys mediocre 90's television and has a penchant for cheese.  His website can be found at neveraboutyou.com and you can follow him @chriswillclark on Twitter. Read.


Daniel Klawitter Joins VerseWrights' Pages

PictureDaniel Klawitter





The Fundamentalist

The Scripture opens and a multitude of voices,
assaults your ear.  But you can only hear
the one Voice.  The one that echoes what
you were taught:  that God is truth, not love.
And truth is a club to be used in war.

So you shouldn't be surprised that it strikes me
as being somewhat medieval, this small fortress
with very high walls that you would die for.
I prefer the cathedral, where there is more space
for grace to overcome the evil that men do.

Men like you, for whom certainty is a relief,
prove only one thing: you don't really believe
in God.  You believe in belief.  That's why any
contradiction results in a fatal hemorrhage...
a faith without a doubt, is a god in your own image.


Daniel Klawitter lives in Denver, Colorado, where he has been an actor, a singer/lyricist for the indie folk-rock band Mining for Rain, and a union organizer for mental health care workers. His poems have been published in numerous literary journals and magazines both in the United States and in England, including: Colorado Life magazine, Focus, The Journal of South Texas English Studies, QuietMountain: New Feminist Essays, and Shot Glass Journal. He invites you to his website, where you can learn more about him. Read,


Poet Robert King Joins VerseWrights' Pages

PictureRobert King





Another Bird


Life, I seem to recall
from a year of Anglo Saxon poetry
in the old days, is like a bird
flying out of the cold and dark
in one door of the heroes’ mead-house
through the smoke and warmth of fires,     
earth-smell, sweat-stench, roasted meat,
and winging out the other door
into another cold and dark.

I remember this suddenly
on the bank of a mountain stream
watching an ouzel flutter
into the shining, its body
dipping and bobbing as it feeds
under the push of the current,    
and then flutters out again
to its rock: wet and satisfied.


Robert King Lives in Greeley, Colorado, where he writes his poetry and directs the website for the Colorado Poets' Center. His first book, Old Man Laughing (Ghost Road Press), was a finalist for the 2008 Colorado Book Award in Poetry. His second volume, Some of These Days, was published this year by Conundrum Press. He recently won the Grayson Books Chapbook Competition with Rodin & Co. Read.


Diana Matisz Is Now on VerseWrights

PictureDiana Matisz
   




I Wonder


    i thought about her today
    and wondered
    where she'd gone,
    that magical
    windswept creature
    braving the gusts
    of an ancestral spring
    on a two-tree hill

i remembered that day
and the ease with which
she held herself
once they could cajole
her into actually looking
at the camera
clasping her own hands
as proof of her comfort
in her exotic singularity

i recall she was a dreamer
lost in worlds of knights
on white stallions
and sword bearing
princesses in hennins
easily distracted
by leaves
clouds
the haunting poetry
of a whip-poor-will

she hadn't a care
in the world that day
not one
there wasn't much of a past
to remember and the lumbering
weight of her future had yet
to settle on her shoulders
she was living in her moment,
that day

i thought about her today
wanted to take her
by the hand, run
up the two-tree hill
and hide away,
just the two of us
but i was too late
by the time i'd found
my way back to her,
she'd gone ahead
into our future,
never once looking back
for me

Diana Matisz is a late-blooming writer and photographer. She was born and raised along the Allegheny River near Pittsburgh, PA, and it is the river which is a constant source of inspiration for both her poetry and her photography. Diana has published one book of poetry, two photography books, and is currently in the editing stages of a collaborative book with a colleague in Portugal. During this last summer, three of her photographs were selected for display at the Carnegie Museum of Art. She tweets @Diana605 and maintains a page on Facebook. She invites us to visit her main poetry site at Diana's Words, and her photography page, Life Through Blue Eyes, where she has found the means to combine her love of short form poetry with her photography, as well as her joy in collaborating with other writers. Read.


"Hummingbird II," New From Barrett Dillon Hycner

PictureBarrett Dillon Hycner
   




Hummingbird II


    Bring on the young virgins
    Blood and sacrifice
    Missions of doom
    On the altar lay
    The machine in us
            Or are we the dream
            Metal gears
            Sweet grinding tears
            Drinking milk from the teat
            Like we were born from it
            We are all calves sucking
            Meager existence
            We are all drowning
            Mired in the snow
            Ribs showing
            No sustenance in weeks
            We are all burning
            With desires
            The opiate of our needs
            Turning toward heaven
            Like there is something there
            Breathing air
            Like someone cares
            Oblivious to the leaves
            Falling around our heads
            The masses sprawling
            Controlling our fears
            Can you feel the mob rising
            Can’t stop the dying
            Guns firing
            While the dancers gyrate
            Wish I could be a martyr
            Feel the pain of religion
            But a deep cold flows
            From the soul leading
            To the edge of the abyss
            Revolution’s kiss
            I can feel Rome threatened
            All the spies
            Murmuring curses
            To save our lives
            Because witches float
            And people spurn
            The god they believe in
            God, I want to be a martyr
            I want to die
            Sucking Existence Dry


Read the poetry of Barrett Dillon Hycner
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New From Marsailidh Groat: "Ida"

PictureMarsailidh Groat





 Ida

I felt once a strength
that people listened to.
I held, for a second,
a voice that carried
me through skies and into
Possibility. I was
a child tasting champagne;
I didn’t understand the
taste, or that which comes
Later, a bitterness, loss,
obsession, fingers gnarled in
Senescence, voice
Forgotten. I saw once
whole halls filled with
understanding, not of my life
but the purpose. Now, I speak only
To give others voice.


Read the poetry of Marsailidh Groat
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The Newest Poem From Paul Mortimer

PicturePaul Mortimer





Sheep Spine
☊

Life and death,
bleached on to this peaty moonscape.

Here it is elemental.

Moor and sun,

a harsh unforgiving beauty.

Knuckle on knuckle.

Each notch etched clear

in its whiteness.

No wool.

No flesh.

No muscle.

Picked clean.

Purity laid bare.

Simplicity of structure in

the chaos of wilderness.

This is where it all ends.

Bone and earth.


Hear this poem read by Paul Mortimer
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"unprotected," A Poem From Marie Anzalone

PictureMarie Anzalone





unprotected

      The problem is my heart,
                you see.
       It just plain refuses
          to hard boil, no matter what
              I do to it.
 
                I have tried full immersion
                  in roiling hot seas
                    pickling spices, microwaved
                      depravity, open flame,
                           abdication of duty.
 
                       And I tell you...
                  after these decades, still
                          if you pried off its shell,
             pricked it with your fork,
                    sliced its midline with
                        a sharpened knife-
 
                 you would find the center
                        liquescent, golden
                 running into the shadows of your life's
                     serving plate; and utterly
                            unprotected.


Read the poetry of Marie Anzalone
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Rowan Taw Gives us "The Wrong Winter"

PictureRowan Taw





The Wrong Winter ☊

I wish for a winter walk.

Not the cool, clear, sun-burning walk of the blue skied             South,
but the bladder tightening winter of the North, where...

Blood brambles through hedgerowed fingers pricked
        with frost,
leaves crack, twigs snap, echoing the rise and fall of              brittle bone,
as each breath smokes numb, chill-toed warnings.

Branches, sparse stage, for a frugal Robin’s
solitary song of seasonal poverty,
bow humble, unlike..

Proud Ponga, warrior Nikau – always fully robed,
leaving me.. ever-green for a British winter.


(Ponga: New Zealand tree fern; Nikau: New Zealand’s only endemic palm tree.)

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