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

Archive #40
October, 2016


Picture
Witty Fay

Witty Fay Returns, And Is
​Keeping Her Head

Beheading

I flinch not from the javelin, the spear or the bullet,
Nor am I shielded in cast iron.
Still, heart and vein are safe 
From thoughts of life and force,
Getting lost within the four chambers.
It is the reverse side of fear 
Where vulnerability is offered with both hands
That I hide from your eyes.
The diversity and opulence of the square inch of skin,
Swathed by the stealing gaze,
Makes the most intriguing attribute of us.
Something growing in a certain place of my world
That comes unclothed and at risk,
First to the mirror, then to the touch of your hands-
It is the very neck of love.
When the face falls like a cowed Cain,
It is such a reminder of the otherness 
In both of us, as sin and grace 
Inhabit the rest of the world.


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


Picture
Wayne F Burke

As We Bid Farewell To The Month, A New Poem From Wayne F Burke

October

the afternoon sky black,
baby blue, charcoal gray,
streaked white, full of specks,
birds, windblown leaves;
the hissing trees
jiggling
and a witch 
with pointed hat,
broomstick,
shoots
like an arrow 
behind two big pines 
and goes down along
the ridge line somewhere
as the air turns ice cold
and a mile-long train of
crows, ragged scraps
flap their fingered wings
over trees blood-red and 
tangerine.


Read the poetry of Wayne F Burke
Read a profile of Wayne F Burke
​
Picture
J T Milford

J T Milford Gives Us Two Lyrics For Two Seasons

Early Fall

The decision has arrived
A leaf begins to fall
After a season of work and art
Through a circular path of cold air
Sometimes attracting light
Other times shade but always down
How green the long summer days
After an early expansive arrival
Now this once and only time has ended
The leaf blows over the countryside
Blowing where it blows
Becoming the earth



Out on the Bay
                ~After Two Barcarolles
                         by Ned Rorem

In a boat rowing over low surf    
Under an immense sunlit sky
Rising up gentle swells 
To see the sparkling light
Then down into the spray

Rising up gentle swells
Then down into the spray
In a boat slowly rocking
I row over deep blue-green waters
Hoping to go from here to there
To take my inland soul
Out on the bay for dreaming


Read the poetry of J T Milford
Read a profile of J T Milford
​


Picture
Heather Feaga

Heather Feaga Enlightens From The Dark

Forest

Bladed shadows
Whir through minutes
Where skinned landscapes
Drew beneath fingers

Winter reigns glass dry
And wives sleep
Drifted down torn from
Shallow goose flesh

Rutted canyons
Break with smiles
Mud stained walls bleed
The yet unknown

Specks of change
Rattling pockets
Like subway tokens
I stand

In this old growth forest
Tasting dew
From mossed leavings

Waiting for the sun


Read the poetry of Heather Feaga
Read a profile of Heather Feaga
Picture
Michele Riedel

Michele Riedel Becomes Suspended in Time And Place

In Between

Somewhere between two waves
between first and second base
the way time shifts
a second becomes a minute
the platform becomes a stage.
somehow an ant remains frozen-
skittering stops
A wave freezes and time
moves into a backwards paradigm
up through
the hourglass
particle by particle
and our breath becomes breathless
and changes into a lumpy swallow
and I think maybe I will 
 
My mind becomes a part of yesterday’s
thinking
and my words sink into a state of rest
between the rug and the floor where dusty
secrets are swept scared
and some dissolve into visible air
never to be loved or hated
remaining suspended
there as we walk through
and return and sometimes just sit and
watch as in a dream
when the sun settles
underneath leafy trees as leaves sprinkle
shadows at my feet.
 
I become
camouflaged.


Read the poetry of Michele Riedel
Read a profile of Michele Riedel


Picture
Amauri Solon

Amauri Solon Tries Shattering, Inviting 

​In the Streets

There was a poet
in the busy street
downtown

He was silently
handing out
his poetry
amidst
noisy passers-by

I visited him
once
twice
on the third visit
we talked
shared poems
and smiled

He said:
passers-by
pass by and
stop at my eyes
never come in

Poets in the streets
are stones
thrown away
to infinity
breaking windows
and glass

I met a poet
in the street
shyly handing out
poetry
amidst shrieking
cars and people

I stood by him
and handed out his
poetry
and we both started
singing out our
poetry

Passers-by
passed hastily away
stoping at our eyes
sometimes
but never
coming in


Read the poetry of Amauri Solon
Read a profile of Amauri Solon


Picture
Gareth Spark

Gareth Spark Captures A Time, And Its Loss

Things I gained that winter

Slap of river Esk through narrowed ice channels
among black frost rocks and night cold--
almost xmas, and huge houses lit like
amber with the sun behind seemed far from
the winter slip of the track--
too much to drink, we arm in armed
crunchfooting under boughs like wet coal.

She was there for a winter—her sports coat
patched wet by frosted branches--
blonde hair dark beneath a knitted hat--
snub-nose pushed with laughter--
the light dipping and falling--
she was there for a winter
and like that night's crystal charm--
at the first murmur of heat, she was gone.

Read the poetry of Gareth Spark
Read a profile of Gareth Spark


Picture
Amy Soricelli

Amy Soricelli With A Poem Of
​Warmth, Light, Friendship

Those Things That Just Are

In a field of Octobers the deep sun wrestles with blank
spots of sky -
it warms the very tips of our fingers and shuts our eyes against the heat.
We can squeeze the last light out of any day 
and nestle it close in the palm of our hands.

And it is with the single strands of friendship  -
those delicate threads that gather us together 
that keep us strong if strong is needed.
Between our pages the notes on doors and scribbled along the edge of the air -

we whisper our deepest secrets in code with blinks of an eye.
Or sounds between the sounds.
There are place-settings and jumbled tightrope tricks of the wrist
and we can sit anywhere and there is room.


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


Samantha Campbell: Soon, A Mother

Picture
Samantha Campbell

​Two Souls

I have a
chestful
of love

A heart beating
sighs of lust

Lips that
speak poetry

Eyes that
convey hunger

Fingers that
all other
poets
envy

And a soul
on the pulse
of the Universe

Because I have
two heartbeats

And for
a little
while

I carry
two souls

Read the poetry of Samantha Campbell
Read a profile of Samantha Campbell

​
Picture
Mark Dennis Anderson

Mark Dennis Anderson With A Poem Of Longing, Love

To the Addict Named James

When the man from California asked
if you were alive, I was thrilled
to be the one to answer yes. I didn’t tell him

I named a candle after you, how
hours after the wick went out, you called,
left a message, I called back, left a message,

and by noon you were safe again.
I didn’t tell him I washed and folded
your clothes, tried on that shirt, the red,

white, and black plaid flannel – the one
your mother gave you – and took pictures
of myself in the mirror. I didn’t tell him

it took less than three seconds
to fall in love with your legs. The man
from California didn’t believe me

when I said you were clean.
Now, almost a year since I didn’t tell
the man from California

these things, months after your latest
disappearance, I name every candle, star,
tree, and bus stop James.

This time, if you don’t call, if
you don’t leave a message, after I throw up
one of my ribs, I’ll tell the man

from California it’s your voice I hear
every morning, whispering
never is a long time. 

Read the poetry of Mark Dennis Anderson
Read a profile of Mark Dennis Anderson


Picture
ayaz daryl nielsen

New Poems From ayaz daryl nielsen

this evening

this evening
cat
thinks of
cat
light, drizzly 
rain
spider web 
flutters
from a corner
of the ceiling
a web  
I could
remove,
yet, was 
here with 
grandmother
a web
my grand-
mother knew. . .
so, just this
cat, rain,
and web
the poetry 

of an evening

Haiku


bring me upriver

erase my grey hairs and thoughts

tell me my story

Read the poetry of ayaz daryl nielsen
Read a profile of 
ayaz daryl nielsen

​
Picture
Daniel Klawitter

Daniel Klawitter With Two Poems: One Insightful, One Not So Much...

A Flock Made Flesh

The sudden birds erupt upwards
In a shower of speckled confetti--
Startled starlings taking wing.

Like my love in feathers
For you my dear darling--
When you turn and preen

So spectacularly.


Buddhist Constipation Haiku

Face red with straining--

Zazen on white porcelain…

Life is suffering.

Read the poetry of Daniel Klawitter
Read a profile of Daniel Klawitter


Picture
Rosa Saba

Rosa Saba Confronts A Fraught Rhythm

Something Silent

that
empty/heavy 
feeling

a walking oxymoron
moron
the little voice says
for even trying 

morning feels choking, grainy
afternoon is soft and sinking
evening drags on, kicking up the day's dust
night is calm but the mind still paces
and morning comes again 

words are hard to chew 
thoughts are slow and weary 
like two tired and dirty feet that must keep walking 

I must keep walking, breathing
seeming fine through seething teeth
lines buried in the sand between my brows are telling 
something silent

that
empty/heavy
feeling


Read the poetry of Rosa Saba
Read a profile of Rosa Saba


Picture
Wally Swist

New, Selected Haiku From
​Wally Swist


beside the river
among cockspur hawthorn bowers--
a catbird’s cry

                                        ❦

                              above blowing meadow grass--
                              the tree swallow’s sudden dips
                              and swoops

          ❦

the harbingers of autumn
nodding in woodland shade--
purple asters

                         ❦

                              sailing among
                              cabbage whites and coppers--
                              thistle seeds in the wind

          ❦

parched September earth--
joe-pye weed’s early sepia
inflorescence

​

         Read a note about these haiku
         Read the poetry of Wally Swist
         Read a profile of Wally Swist


Picture
Ramesh Anand

Ramesh Anand Observes The
​New Season

Autumn Wrinkles: A Haiku Sequence

calm twilight
a blossom circling
in its fall
 
on the lake wrinkled face of wind
 
inside and outside of me autumn wrinkles
 
autumn waterfall listening deep to my inner voice
 
all the journeys 
i shouldn't have taken –

sunken boat
Enjoy this poem in the PoetryAloud area
​Read the poetry of Ramesh Anand
Read a profile
 of Ramesh Anand
​

Picture
Emily Strauss

Emily Strauss: Recollections in Tranquility

Writing at Dawn

memory recalls--
scenes reaching out of silence
fragments lodged between pauses
this yearning to keep pictures from melting away
like knowing by heart the shapes of sculpted
canyons after a ruby sunset has flared out
ghost shadows flooding the plain
when the full moon rises and you follow
the trail past sheer walls remembered--
later setting down glimpses of sky and smells
until the view clarifies and stills
elements of perspective resolve
as the night gives way to cool rocks at dawn--
writing faster​


Read the poetry of Emily Strauss
Read a profile of Emily Strauss


Picture
William Fraker

William Fraker And A Metaphor That Fits Like A Glove

Beside the Road

Made for durability and protection,
a grey canvas work glove,
lined in blue, with wide cuffs,
reminiscent of railroad engineer attire,
lay flat on the road.
It probably fell from a truck.
It will be missed.

Half a pair of work gloves –
What use?
The article may be reclaimed,
by carefully retracing the route
from the previous day or so.
Might belong to the owner of the lawn
abutting the road?
Or a workman who maintains the yard
or services the furnace in autumn?

Loss, being half a pair,
lies in the first longing;
the catalyst for the lessons of love.


​Read the poetry of William Fraker
Read a profile of William Fraker


Clarence Wolfshohl With A Little
​Avian Irony

Picture
Clarence Wolfshohl

​Patience, Audubon, Phoebe

Audubon sat in a cave
for days—I don’t know
if also the nights—to grow
familiar to a nesting phoebe.
He wished to tie a string
to her leg to see if she’d
return to the same nest
the next year.  He read
while he sat, only moving
his eyes, his hands and wrists
to turn the pages.  I don’t know
what he read.  His plan worked.
The next spring the phoebe
returned and sat unmoving
watching Audubon.  After three days
she tied a string around his ankle.


Read the poetry of Clarence Wolfshohl
Read a profile of Clarence Wolfshohl
​
Picture
ayaz daryl nielsen

Three short poems from ayaz daryl nielsen

everyone, a neighbor

born in the heart of 
these Sand Hills 
on a remote ranch  
homesteaded by our 
Danish grandparents, 
life as cattleman and
beloved uncle, sturdy 
friend of neighbors 
surrounded by all 
who loved him
as a lifespan ends
Uncle Arnold, you 
were what poetry is


Two Haiku

​old wallpaper
the soiled and faded roses
how to say good-bye


      ❧

how do I love you?
both silly and serious
and still unfolding


Read the poetry of ayaz daryl nielsen
Read a profile of ayaz daryl nielsen

​
Picture
Lynn White

Lynn White Warns: Be Careful What You Say...And Promise

A Disappointing Day

If they hadn’t asked her
to smell the nice scent.
If she hadn’t remembered
the scent from before.
There would have been 
no screams, no stamping 
up and down on the trolley.

The nurse would still 
have her cap on
and the doctor would have
no fist or feet marks
on his white coat,
no red hand mark
on his pale cheek.

There would have been
no shock, horror reports
to those who had put away
Red Riding Hood
and were waiting
anxiously for news
of their little girl.

But they did ask her.
They did ask her.

The scent wasn’t nice.
She knew it.
And there was no ice cream
afterwards either.
They’d lied about that
as well.

A disappointing day.


Read the poetry of Lynn White
Read a profile of Lynn White


Picture
Jeffrey Zable

We Warmly Welcome Jeffrey Zable To Our Pages

Waiting to Hear

I was writing my memoirs when all of a sudden I ran out of life. I had only three sentences but I thought they were good ones: I was born caesarian when it was still considered a precarious operation. Next, I had sex with a blond named Dolores in the backseat of my parents’ Buick Special. And finally, when I realized I had grown old, I couldn’t decide whether to commit suicide, or keep flipping through magazines until I found a coupon for a new life. I could say it’s been a long strange trip and that I’m still with the same therapist who I pay $200 for a 50 minute session in which I whine and complain, but find that when we meet again he can’t remember a thing that I’ve said. If I felt lucky I’d venture out into the darkness, but I’m afraid of the streets at night and I never turn out the lights in my bedroom. For now, I think I’ll make myself a salami sandwich and wash it down with a bottle of pop. And who knows. . . maybe some day I’ll return to my story with some brand new insights that will fill many a page. I know that the world is waiting to hear from me.

Read the poetry pf Jeffrey Zable
Read a profile of Jeffrey Zable


Picture
Judy Melchiorre

Judy Melchiorre Observes A
Growing Distance

Untethered

He stares at the stranger in the back room,
who wears the same pajamas every day,
talks to the mindless television,
describes busy-ness yet does nothing.
She takes her pills with sips of water,
gasps small breaths of air,
eats half a sandwich.
She speaks of demons
with sharpened claws,
he sees no devil-spirits,
only an untethered cast to her eyes.


Read the poetry of Judy Melchiorre
Read a profile of Judy Melchiorre


​
Picture
Marianne Szlyk

Marianne Szlyk's Poem Is All
Destination—If Even That

The Space Between

She remembers riding, being driven
from county to county on state roads
 
two blue-black lanes cut through
cornfields, no houses, trees, or towns,

no radio or mixtape in the old car,
only their words, only talk.
 
Or maybe they did not like the same music.
He liked disco; she liked hip-hop.
 
Fifteen years after, she mourned John’s death;
he did not even own one Beatles CD.
 
She didn’t know what was there
beyond the car, the road, the books they’d read,
 
in-house gossip, the stars he knew but she didn’t,
the drive to Indy or Champaign.
 
She didn’t know about the trees
or the wildflowers she was not seeing.
 
To her friend, this was still the East,
only twenty four hours’ drive from the coast

fueled on Diet Coke and cigarettes
bought at Wal-Mart on Route 26.
 
Having left home, she imagined
that she was changing

in the space between, going someplace
different from where she’d been.
 
She shook her newly red hair then.
She shakes her short brown hair now.

Back East again, she puts on her glasses
as if to see all that she had missed:

the abandoned farmhouses,
the yellow and red marigolds that outlast
 
trees and walls, crumbling brick towers,
people who emerge from whitewashed storefronts
 
in someone else’s online photographs
of all that grows in the space between.


Read the poetry of Marianne Szlyk
Read a profile of Marianne Szlyk

​
Picture
Judith Brice

We Warmly Welcome Poet Judith Brice To VerseWrights 

Lesbos

Up onto the rocky shore they washed,
small bodies between
delphinium blue and sparkling
breaking waves, which tumbled
from the Aegean water, the sky--
 
but no one new knew their names
 
Up onto the rocky shore they washed,
yellow life jackets that were only toys,
never promised
to be devices for flotation,
for rescue
never promised to save lives--
 
no one knew whose lives, what names
 
Up on the rocky shore break more waves,
more small bodies without names,
families lost;
no play in the summer sun,
no splashing in the salty sea.
No one knows their names.


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


Picture
Dana Rushin

Dana Rushin: What Else But Love?

the spirit of the deep keeps watch

In my daughter's old schoolyard, the building is boarded
     up now

with curly dock and eclipta growing thru the brick
     walkway

like those brown folk in Gauguin's Polynesian journeys,
next to the chop shop that, according to Ms. Walker, was
raided three times this calendar year. She makes a
     motion

with her teeth out, of engines and transmissions sitting
     in

their oil and trans fluid like a kind of burgundy blood that 
will not dry. The posts for the wire fencing standing
     erect,

one bent by an Alero in sudden reverse; the fence long
stolen by the scrapers. Nearest where the pit-bull strains
     his chain

between blue moons and ambulance sirens; it is his
ceremony of interring. His way of finding freedom and
perhaps some interlude of love. What else could it be?
What else can anything be but love if you do it all the
​     time?

If you do it until it chokes you?
​
​Read the poetry of Dana Rushin
Read a profile of Dana Rushin


Picture
Kat Lehmann

Kat Lehmann Goes to the Heart of the Matter—Joy

A Heart Made of Hearts

A heart is made of hearts,
one from each loved one –
collaged in their keeper (that’s me),
an emotional cacophony
dependent as a colony.

What do the hearts do all day?
They pump as a matter of business, thud-ump,
     thud-ump.

Sometimes they meet for tea
to marvel at their filigree.
But mostly they bleed.

A heart so divided
is always mourning, always rejoicing, always terrified.
The hearts fill my heart like a project:
so bloated, contradicted and panicked,
desperate as an addict.

In this tapestry threaded with textured loss,
the patchwork finds comfort
while scattered loved ones roam,
leaving heart-trails through space-time,
like breadcrumbs to home.

What does the tapestry do?
It filters the flow, netting for a pearl.
It warms like a crowd huddled in diversity,
and eats like a vagrant in scarcity,
anonymous as a city.

I offer you my quilt of threadbare rags,
carefully gathered and colorfully stitched,
fragile in its hoarding like binding sheaves.
An obsessive curator of precious gems, grieving
and groveling to keep away thieves.

But all of this fades when I sail on your breath –
and my grounded heart,
heavy with hearts,
grows wings…

with a harmony that sweetly sings.

Read the poetry of Kat Lehmann
Read a profile of Kat Lehmann
 


Picture
Valarie Bacharach

VerseWrights Welcomes Our
​Newest Poet, Valerie Bacharach

Journeys

You lie on the narrow berth, stare
at the bottom of the bunk
above. Tears form, overflow,
roll down the sides of your face,
dampen ears, neck, the flat pillow
beneath your head.
You make no sound.
Silence has been burned into you.
Don’t tell your mother’s lullaby.
Your questions shuttered behind lips
stitched with the thread of your breath.
Never an explanation--
A dead father, fraud, poison, suicide.
You are 18, away from home for the first time.
The troop ship rips through rain-drenched waters
across the dark skies of the Atlantic,
bound for Europe’s battlefields
and broken bodies.
 
You will survive this war, bury
its horrors in the hidden place
under your bones.
But now, on this night, you curl
in on yourself, contort
your body into the man
who will become my voiceless father.


Read the poetry of Valarie Bacharach
Read a profile of Valerie Bacharach


Picture
Janet Aalfs

Janet Aalfs Studies The
​Shell, Its Detail, Its Irony

Channeled Whelk

Within the spine
     another spine, memory
         a ribbon of eggs. Venus necklace

strung in silence. Countless
     perfect specks become
         large pear-shaped bodies

of turreted whorls.
     Buffy blue-gray sculpture,
         such fine revolving lines,

within memory, another spine
     small as a grain of sand begins
         the wordless form that ends

hurled from surf to shore.
     Empty then, held to an ear
          like a mirror the ocean sings.

Wind, heartbeat, tidal
     pulse, base to crown
          at the suture, a broad and deep

channel spells a winding
     terrace of dreams. Twisted columellas
          cut into elongate beads:

wampum, each tongue-touched
     curve, each mother-word forgotten here

          yet lost, yet found.

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

Jorge Davis Bites His Tongue,
​So To Speak

Picture
Jorge Davis

​The Obstructionist

I sat there holding, and rubbing
my larynx, trying perhaps to find
a word in there. But something
shut me down. And the word lay
trapped. And they began to pile up.
All the while this extraordinary
woman kept looking at me; kicking
the table leg with her biker boots
(and I know this because I have a
pair just like them: sexy.)  And 
the vibrations originating from those
leather boots only exacerbated my
condition. And she grew frustrated,
and left; left me there, rubbing
my larynx and wondering what
a doctor would say: You will need
immediate surgery; to remove that
middle finger lodged in your throat,
by the ex


Read the poetry of Jorge Davis
Read a profile of Jorge Davis


Picture
Mikels Skele

Mikels Skele's With A Span Of Song And Lore


​Mackinac Bridge

In the center lanes, your tires
whine against the taut steel grid,
five miles of heartache
standing in for gray tarmac,
which knows nothing of music,
and so, stays mute.

In the center, in the heart, you can hear
ballads of the iron workers
who laid the steel across wind-warned
waves, whitecaps straining to reach them,
to pull them down among the generations

of sailing men and women, who,
heedless of candled windows and
widow’s walks,
never came home.

“You belong to me,“ sang the lake,
“you who know no bounds
but sky and steel. I will be your bed,
your limit, your last true lover.
Come to me.”
​
And they did,
and the bridge, knowing this better
than all the histories of men,
sings with the voices of ghosts
wrung from the iron waves.

Read the poetry of Mikels Skele
Read a profile of Mikels Skele


Picture
jacob erin-cilberto

jacob erin-cilberto's Motel, Where Love Has Checked Out

do not disturb

sensibility checked out of the motel
reason became a vacancy sign

and love left without paying its bill,
now the neon light flickers with rage

and old age,
a bunch of rooms with empty beds
no one sleeps together in harmony
anymore

they stand at attention
with threats as bedfellows
munching midnight snacks

staring at the closet door
listening for monsters
praying,

the cleaning service quit years ago
the manager threw up his arms in surrender
and moved to a new country

but the lights keep flickering
enticing hearts to stop for comfort
and empty the closets of old woes
and restlessness

put sheets of poetry on the beds
let minds roll over in peace,
and maybe pay for another night 


just to feel safe for a page or two.

Read the poetry of jacob erin-cilberto
Read a profile of jacob erin-cilberto

​
Go to Archive Index

​Thank you for visiting Tweetspeak VerseWrights.
© 2012-2018. VerseWrights. All rights reserved.:
Acrostic Poems
Ballad Poems
Catalog Poems
Epic Poetry
Fairy Tale Poems
Fishing Poems
Funny Poems
Ghazal Poems
Haiku 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
Work Poems

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