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Archive #41
November, 2016


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r soos

VerseWrights Warmly Welcomes Poet r soos
​To Its Pages

your voice on the phone

urges me to think beautiful thoughts
vacations we took, restaurants we loved,
wines we tasted together, trails we hiked
 
every thought simply becomes a new burden
the past invading current pains in my chest
which feel like they will succeed only with death
 

thank you for calling

                ❦

​you thought

you wouldn’t survive here
without the light of the sun
 
the crime of other lifetimes
allow you to recall there is guilt
 
this punishment will cover
the suffering of your whole life
 
you will survive as a flower

blanketed by shadows

Read the poetry of r soos
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​
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Ellen Conserva

Ellen Conserva Celebrates The Simple...And The Important

Flowers in My Bed

A cactus nub
Among the neglect
And disarray
So carelessly, I tossed it
In the earth bed
And forgot.
I found
The red buds
Among the spray
And dark green spikes of
Pointing fingers in the dirt
And remembered
I am not in charge of anything.
I said a word
Among the pain
And wrapped it
Lovingly into a gift
And placed it
In lonely hands.
And remembered.
I can make a difference
In anyone.
Careless tossing
Taking root
Making flowers
In my bed.


Read the poetry of Ellen Conserva
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Leslie Philibert

From Leslie Philibert: Two
Poems, Two Trees

Falling

the wind turns my apple tree
into a victim, a lover banging
on a closed door of gnarled wood;

a dance makes this ringing evening
singular, the leaves agree to fall
and turn in the dull faith of air,

they tell us about birth and departure,
about leaving together, stories of

ending as the sun arcs and protests


Tree Child


rest among the gentians
                     like an exhausted lover,
                     the road has thrown

you out of track and youth,
                     a line of rescue wakes
                     the rooks in the cold trees

there is a nest not far away
                    waiting to fall, a pause
                    before the first call, a damp leaf.


Read the poetry of Leslie Philibert
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Matthew Henningsen

Matthew Henningsen's Post
​Apocalyptic Vision

Mementos from the End Time

         “… scraps of memory found in dull minds…” 

At the end of time, when 
The trees can no longer stand and 
Small birds fall 
Down from the pale sky, I 

Think I’ll take that barren path that 
Stretches out to the 
Forgotten, though calm, lake… 
And sit – 
And pick up little sharp rocks – 
Tossing them into 
The broken water. 

While the lone boat of a 
Lone man paddles off into 
The distance. So, 

This is the place I’ll be and 
Where you can find me, if 
You want. Look for 
The stick up against 
The hollow tree. The 
Golden time-watch inside. Or, 
Find me in the dirt on boot-soles 
Left warming beside slowly 
Dying fires. The letter left 
Unopened in the metal 
Mailbox… but waiting… 

Always waiting like the man seen 
Far ahead on a trail. His 
Back to us as he rounds a corner by 
A tree… but, somewhere, in 
The green thick of the trees he 
Waits, a walking stick 
In hand.

While an old, worn
Book remains open and 
Hidden in a deep, quiet 

Cavern, somewhere…

Read the poetry of Matthew Henningsen
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Ken Allan Dronsfield

VerseWrights Warmly Welcomes Poet Ken Allan Dronsfield

Rusty Wet Leaves

boots of black, whetted by rain
forgotten memory left far behind
woodpecker tapping upon birch
moss covered granite whispers
deer disappear into fern & pine
partridge drum in the deep hollow
woodland faeries smiling softly
path covered in rusty wet leaves
gentle breezes calm and serene
a bear moves in lumbering grace
car horns heard off in the distance

peaceful surrender, enchantingly.


Sunday Smiles


eggs are on the boil
stove hot and ready
cat in my old chair
toaster takes awhile
sausage and taters
frying as I dodge
spatters of grease
coffee pot beeping
cat trades for food
ready my blue plate
sun peeks over trees
I smile on Sundays.


Read the poetry of Ken Allan Dronsfield
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Phil Boiarski

Phil Boiarski's Indelible Memory Of Fire And Darkness

Playing With Matches

The match moves to light the cigarette,
where mother still sits beside my crib,
watching my thumbed hands.  It stops in
midair.  The white tube of leaves does not 
swell the bronchial tree.  The smoke is
rooted in my mother’s clenching hand.

Her hold around the smoke ring is
caught by the light of match fire.
The glow filling the room with a 
burst of yellow light then fading in a
moment.  Her fingers make shadows round my
wrist, smear the ribcage negatives.
Her hand points to red-mouthed women
leaving their lipstick on filters in the ashes.


Read the poetry of Phil Boiarski
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Maja Todorovic

VerseWrights Warmly Welcomes Poet Maja Todorovic

That Moment

Do you     
remember the day
when Earth sweat and
invisible drops exchanged scorching kisses,
every furrow dried and crumbled
in grey powder?

It wasn’t ash – rather
a numbing substance
we prayed for:
and your eyes became stars again.


​
Gone with the Rain

It was typical rainy day: grey. A wet curtain hid tired steps of people passing by. At the end of the street, just below the tiny slope, every tortuous creek plunged into the porous mouth of the busy, thirsty drain. Wet sand blunged in the rhythm of soft, muffled sobs as a young woman, with unvoiced stone face, continued to cradle her empty hands.

Read the poetry of Maja Todorovic
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Claire Scott

Claire Scott Writes To Us From A Warmer Clime...

A Message From the Fifth Circle

You know the story, everyone does
 
lost in a dark wood, he finds a pal to escort him
through the nine circles of hell
spiraling from lust to fraud to treachery
where Judas is locked in ice while his back is
shredded & flayed for all eternity
 
do you think Dante was abused as a child?
 
he emerges on Easter Sunday beneath a star-stippled sky
ascends the mountain of Purgatory
to find a spiritual muse willing to guide him
on a tour of heaven for only fifty cents
& his soul is purified by God’s love
 
really? how come him & not me?
I am still stuck in the fifth circle
 
I do hope you get this message
 
eternally fixed in the foul waters of Styx
not one of the naked ones on the surface, snarling in fury
battering & bludgeoning each other
but one of those submerged in sullen anger
(passive-aggressive says my therapist)
 
beneath the surface slime
gurgling & gagging & choking
on unexpressed rage
nothing remotely divine or comedic
Virgil and Beatrice long vanished
                  relieved to be retired
 
so dear friend
 
it looks like I won’t be back any time soon
text me: fifthcircle@hell.com
let me know how you are
please send a fan


Read the poetry of Claire Scott
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Darren C. Demaree

VerseWrights Warmly Welcomes Poet Darren C. Demaree

Their Human Voice

There is a raging
bride in each
of my children

& though they
are sweet, kind
& loving, they want,

god dammit, they want
all of the bees
to bring them honey

& they want the lions
to protect them
& they want 

to scream again into
a new world
where an ocean

carries them home
when they are done
on the beach.

I hear all of that 
rattle inside of them
when they tell me

that they love me.
I am proud
they know 

of a good life,
that way it will
really burn them up

when the nature
of all things
comes calling.


Read the poetry of Darren C. Demaree
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Stefanie Bennett

Stefanie Bennett's Metaphor Perplexes, Then Pleases, Then Disturbs

Perfidiousness

Someone’s perfected an Odyssey.
Someone’s thrown the ball in the court.
Someone’s lauded the catch;
Watch him trembling.
Someone’s imagining there’ll be ‘no pass’.

Someone’s bodily coveting the ground.
Someone’s got a hooter she can’t blow
... It’s not half-time!
Someone’s dreaming... I’m dreaming...
Someone’s convinced this is traitorous.

Someone’s taking off an expensive suit.
Someone’s emptying their pockets.
Someone’s writing IOUs – and
                          Someone’s shell-shocked
By ovation as the bald planet

Ticks on over into the grandstand.

Read the poetry of Stefanie Bennett
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Collin Kelley

Collin Kelley On Sadness
And The Hope For Solace

Victoria Gate  ☊

​Maybe she was crying before she got on the coach at Marble Arch, settled in the seat across from me, but by the time we reach Victoria Gate, tears stream down her face, mouth open to receive her own sacrament.
 
Indian, ageless in tasteful floral, a blue sweater despite summer heat, an iPod clutched in her hand. Traditional music bleeds from earbuds, then shifts to Bollywood techno beat. And still she cries. Along Bayswater Road, her glassy eyes reverential, meeting her gaze feels like blasphemy. Who is she missing or mourning, or maybe it’s what – her own bed, mother’s cooking, stillness.
 
London is short on sympathy when it comes to heartbreak and homesickness, not so subtly tells you to walk it off. But sometimes at night when you’re riding past Hyde Park and dusky silhouettes arm-in-arm are framed by bus windows, a familiar song can collapse resolve, make you reach for the red hammer over your seat to crack the escape glass. Then unbuckle and rise through the treetops until the lamp at Victoria Gate is a pinprick, insignificant, up to the stratosphere where equilibrium inverts and tears become the stars that will guide you home.
Enjoy this poem in the PoetryAloud area
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 of Collin Kelley
​
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Marsailidh Groat

Marsailidh Groat Probes
The Dark, The In Between
 

The Small Hours

I awake in the small hours from a sleep fitful and restless
into a time of muffled colours and softened sounds.
The peace doesn’t soothe me, but serves as a backdrop
on which to project memories of my unquiet dreams.
Many times I have felt trapped in my reflections
by the honesty and deepness of silence
where there are no distractions from nightmares
and the world sleeps on, oblivious.
The light is not uncaring, but unbiased
as it watches a merging of extremes,
radicalism fading to a sleepy ambivalence
in the grogginess of the space between asleep and
​     awake.
And who exists in this time?
Those who are acquainted with it, by profession,
whose movements are routine, but with cushioned edges.
The stumblers, stunned by sudden silence,
music still pulsing through their bodies.
And, perhaps, two people so entranced
there was too much to talk about to fall asleep.


Read the poetry of Marsailidh Groat
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​
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Reka Jellema

Reka Jellema Considers The Possibilities

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Photo art by Reka Jellema. Click for enlarged version.
What-If
           ~ For Bea Last

If the paint dries,
it dries.
No question;
nothing stays
saturated. A fresh coat? A fence-post?
Canvases crack. The face
of the actress.
But what if
green was more than green, if
green was verdant
dewy,
sweating grass
beneath your fingertips, bottle-glass-green,
smooth jeweled chips
of green glass you find washed
on shore
what if
you pocketed the color & it bled
through the fabric,
what if the gallery called
& commissioned
your blue jeans
what if
the denim faded​


Enjoy the poetry and art of Reka Jellema
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Ria Meade

We Warmly Welcome Poet Ria Meade To VerseWrights

Cape Cod

Steamy July evening—oppressive.
I take one of my dogs out for his last break.  
Pass my garden privet hedge.
The scent awakens the memory
of when I was five years old on Cape Cod.

The shingled, rented colonial, 
weathered dark, not painted.
Wood floors throughout. 
My sister Anne claims everything was wood--
floors, walls, bathtub, toilet seat, kitchen sink.
Possible, fifty years ago.

A long, narrow, dusty road ran along the beachfront.
Colonies of family cottages dotted both sides.
We six siblings scattered,
playing everywhere, joined by similar summer kids.
Parents never worried, confident we’d reappear
when the bakery truck arrived,
the ice cream man’s bell rang, 
or Wee Packet fried clams were served 
in someone's backyard.

So excited, we walked the ribbon of sand and dirt, 
to the arcade at this road’s end.
Think of it!
Paddle boats, miniature golf, 
forbidden games of bingo,
cones piled high with strawberry ice cream.

I bring my guide dog back inside.
Weighted memories come in, too.
Sit down, dwelling on that road.
Maybe it was just a lane, 
possibly, fifty years ago.

Was it the loneliness I felt this July day,
the evening's air so thick,
like my impenetrable blindness?
I wept, hard, loud, my animals silent, anxious.
Damn—my nose for filling up 
with the smells of the privet hedge,
that perfumed and protected,
each side of that road I knew.

I never thought I wouldn't see Cape Cod again.


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Matthew J. Waters

J. Matthew Waters Finds
A Metaphor In The Stars

charting the free verse sky  ☊

those stars we used to wish upon
the ones first appearing in the twilight
or the ones falling from the
sky while sitting on the front porch step
where have they gone
now when you need them the most

sometimes I think of a certain star
that shined so bright it had no choice
but to crash and burn in some
remote forest you’ve never heard

those are the kinds of stars I miss the most

this universe is nothing but a free verse
poem with a little sizzle and endless syllables
spherically rotating around your ever
expanding mind
your inner child
charting the course of events

of every single moving object
Enjoy this poem in the Poetry Aloud area
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Peter V. Dugan

Peter V. Dugan's Imagery For
​The Season Resonates

Just Before Dusk

black heron
            takes flight
 
leafless tree
            branches,
                        bent,
 twisted,
            contorted, seek
                        the sun
 
white billow clouds
            float      
                        across
            turquoise sky
 
golden cattail
            reeds sway,
                        shake,
shudder
            in the breeze
 
autumn marsh glows
            beneath
magenta sunset
 
lifeless leaves,
            red, brown,
                        yellow
            carpet
                        the grass
silence
            a wake
                        before burial
            by winter
            snow


Read the poetry of Peter V. Dugan
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Mark Gordon

Mark Gordon Finds Radiance In Autumnal Darkness

November Trees

I could stand a long time
under a tree with yellow leaves
this time of year.
 
It makes its own light
even as it says goodbye
until the snows have come
 
& then departed. It reminds me
of people who are
their own light
 
before they too depart.
I have stood in the light
of such people
 
have learned
that they grow brighter
with all the light they shed.


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Scott Thomas Outlar

Scott Thomas Outlar: Intentions
Surpassed By Splendor

Written By the Whispers
​of the Wind


I wanted to write a poem
about the perfection
of this moment,
but the wind
whistled all the words away
as the melody of a breeze
gently swayed
through the branches of trees
in these woods
where the world is at peace.

I wanted to gather my thoughts
in an effort to memorialize
this magical scene,
but the sky caught my eye
with its brilliant shine
and so my mind
became enchanted by the design
of God’s loving light
as an amazing grace
pierced my heart with faith.

I wanted to write a poem
about the perfection
of this moment,
but instead
it wrote itself

into my soul.

Read the poetry of Scott Thomas Outlar
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​
​
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Tracey Gunne

Tracey Gunne: A Complex Relationship Reflected In Shades

complicated orange

you offer testament in open fields forcing me into the still  
     unknown where 
the charitable orange of a breaking dawn betrayed my
     hopeful heart 
bound by common tragedy i stepped into your open palm
     bravely 
to atone for my congregation of sins 
all the times you fucked up smiling through imagined
     grievances still 
your hands remind me of a complicated garden where 
all my words are smothered by the depleted earth 
exposing me as a flower inlove with the sun 
even as it decays a beauty reminiscent and unraveling in
​     the vines 

even as petals fall a bitter orange
​​
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Katherine Gallagher

Katherine Gallagher: Zelda's
Therapeutic Passion 

Zelda Fitzgerald Practising Ballet

Zelda dances, dances
weaves her implacable dream:
sometimes it drifts
but her eye snares it in,
the pattern that she counts on
to screen her other face -
glittering flapper-doll
harrying the night.
 
All that fever and sequins
discarded like an empty day,
past the fret of her marriage -
the book-heroine yoke.
Beside her old zany flights
she has sworn now to dance for real,
to make her own name. It is not too late.
 
Hours lag, skein the day -
she loops and dips, dizzy with steps:
there are no crowds lighting, wrapping her in
but with each wild leap, she parcels fury,
strains for a choreography
to reach her self.


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​
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Laurie Kolp

Laurie Kolp's Poem Embraces The Otherworldly

Phantasm of a Widow

The shutter’s rap startles you awake.
Two men in ditch behind your house
wrestle like brothers vying for a show
of dominance, their lithe bodies like
pretzels dipped in moonshine.
Slumberous you close your window
unfurl the dusty blinds, return to bed
 
but a sudden clap of hands against the gutter
lures you back to take a slotted peek outside
and suddenly you’re lucid
looking into eyes you recognize, eyes
you once loved— the musky sweat
of slaps in rush of rapture.
 
You want to touch his whiskered cheeks
just one more time, want to shatter
glass and reach your arms into
this other realm. You’re so close
you can almost taste his lips,
can almost rub your fingertips
in sticky blood he shed that night
he lost the fight, blood dripping
from your glass-shard skin.


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Donal Mahoney

Donal Mahoney: Two Birds,
​Two Cats, Two Poems

Wrens in the Poplar

There are peeps 
from the wren house
high in the poplar 
as the sun peeks 
over the roses.
Or maybe I'm wrong. 

Perhaps I hear altar boys 
reciting their prayers 
at the foot of the altar
at the start of a Latin Mass
decades ago in a church 
silent now for years.

Whether it's peeps 
or prayers I'm not certain 
until I see the cat 
hunkered like a tank
under the poplar, hoping

to receive communion.

            ❦

A Quiet Beauty in Gray

The beauty of gray

I never noticed until
the other day I saw

this mockingbird, 
a quiet beauty in gray,
on the bare limb

of a dogwood tree,
peer down through snow
and scold below 

a Maine Coon cat,
a jungle of fur in gray,
sitting and staring at 

a feast that will never be, 
the two of them a watercolor

in the quiet beauty of gray.

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Jill Lapin-Zell

Jill Lapin-Zell Decries Disparities...
​And The Attitude

Posh Poverty

Resplendent retinue
Of voiceless vagrants
Subway synchronicity
And boxcar blues
 
Nameless faces
And vacant stares
Under tattered caps
And castoff clothes
 
Society’s sad silent souls
That no one wants
Discarded demons
Tarnished goods
 
But you’re home safe now
Sheltered from the despair
Warm instead of cold
They cease to matter
 
Yet they’re still out there
Only more of them now
While you feed your pride
And gorge on your greed


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Layley Lu

Layley Lu In The Land Of
​Bikes And Bikers


​Softail

asphalt fatboys

k . i . s . s l . o . v . e
inked into knuckles inked into knuckles

smoking pistols on tattooed biceps


i have been with the bikers with the beefy voices
full throttle 
silver bullet 
growling

+ chained lightning ‘round my sprockets +

softail ~
prowling


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Edjo Frank

Edjo Frank's Poem Reminds Us Never To Forget

Kristallnacht
        9th November 1938

no tears on her cheeks
but rivers deep inside
words dried in her head
the loss that always cried
faces in the clouds
never saw the sun
darkened by the past
they stole the painter’s paint
and burnt the poet’s dream
they broke the clarinet
and crushed the violin
they raped the freedom call
the books containing truth
 
the light of life
beheaded from its root
and the little girl
she cried
her doll torn into parts
the bayonets of shouts
that killed the mother soul
the nightmare picture
stored deep inside
 
eyes once soft
evolved
stones of cold glass
behold
the sepia surrealism
deprived of form
she speaks in silence
hollow words
not meant be understood
 
there is music
from the stars
that sound not as it should
dissonances disturb
familiar harmonies
into dark voiced tympanis
drowning, drowning
sorrowful thoughts
of shameful histories
of broken Kristall
into lamentations
into a never ending Nacht


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Thomas Canull

We Warmly Welcome Haiku Poet Thomas Canull To VerseWrights

From Selected Haiku    

    much like the ocean
    gentle waves then stronger tides
    grieving ebbs and flows.

            ❦


                              clouds slowly drift on
                              Fuji-san peeks through her veil
                              smiles then hides again.

                                            ❦


    listen to the wind
    wonder what secrets it holds
    whispers in the night.


            ❦

                             lighthouse leads me on
                             lost in the fog that surrounds
​                             His light calls me home.


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Jen Stein

Jen Stein's Miss Maude, In
The End, Finds Guidance
 

Miss Maude Uses the North Star

Maude has always wanted to be a fortune-teller
with a penny inscribed upon her ear. She envisions
 
          a woman with full skirts, layers of cotton duck and silk,
          tassels and coin, a blouse off the shoulders, scalloped
          collarbones cut in marble. She sees herself reflected
 
by moon, flute, candlelight.  She has tried to read
cartography of her palms, but she can’t decipher
 
          the stones of her hands. She traced her lines
          reading maps she found in an old Glamour magazine
          using witchery her grandmother would’ve said.
 
Her life line is long, wavy, it shows she is untamed.
Her heart line makes whorls, it wends. Is she insatiable?
 
          Is she a minx, a ravisher?  Her hands are warm,
          strong enough to knead dough, they splay sticks
          to winds, capture roly polys beneath milk vetch pods.
 
Where is her fate line? Maude cannot unjoin the twinning
can’t peel life from viscera and what is that? A smudge
 
          of dirt or chocolate mousse, dried blood maybe, there
          beneath the fat pink pads of fingertip, the permanent
          indentation on her ring finger arcing lines from knuckle
 
to bone, wrist to wonder, an oubliette of twelve years pressed,
counted as rosary beads fallen on the floor. She closes her magazine.
 
           She closes her eyes and sees the North Star, etched behind
           her eyelids. It leads her to the kitchen, her hand to spatula,
           whisk and forgiveness. Grateful, she blossoms into plum cake.

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                               ❦

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Charlie Brice

Charlie Brice Ruminates On this Go-Around, And...

Just Once

After losing the big game,
I’d like to hear a star athlete say,
You know why we lost? We lost
because Bruno’s doing coach’s wife
and Jesus is not just smiting him,
He’s smiting our entire team;
 
or some centenarian attribute his longevity
to ardent atheism—my long life
was possible because guilt never sat
on my eyelids like the coins of the dead.
I never worried that I’d burn in
a metaphysical furnace run by a dork
 
with a pitchfork; never fretted about
sitting on an old bearded guy’s right
or left hand, or, god forbid, one
of his knees. The downside?  I can’t hope
to see again those I so dearly loved
in this life. We’ll never talk
 
about what we missed. I’ll never hold
my wife again, stroke her silky hair, or feel
her breath upon my cheek. Still, we die
wrapped in the loves we were lucky enough
to garner in this life. Whatever those last minutes
I’ll be grateful for my time on this green orb.
 
I’d gladly do it again and again. Maybe
Nietzsche got that part right.


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John Grey

John Grey With A Portrait Of The Artist

John The Author

So John it is. Not the King. Not the Baptist.
A discussion of dust...a pillar of ice.
Moonlight scavenging my eyes at night
like gulls at a picnic plate.
Always one step in the circle,
always beginning again,
in this house, a place I know
more from memory than feel,
surrounded by the yawns of empty coffee cups,
closets stuffed with past lives.
back cramped by chair in which I carry on
changing short sighs into long sentences,
on this latest round trip called writing
Thursday is it?
I abandoned the calendar years ago.
I am an inspector of study windows.
of illustrated books and dictionary meanings.
I surrendered my claim to life
the morning I noticed the dew
like diamonds twinkling on the grass.
"You can't eat grass," my mother said.
But fawns do.
And here you are, come visiting
as if I'm nothing but a street sign,
as my life is not lived between
a bookcase and a trash can filled with
crumbled up sheets of paper.
I do nothing whatsoever outside of here.
And yet you speak as if I'm standing
in twenty acres of land.
No, this is my tomb.
You speak to the dead
in the clothes he slipped on this morning.
But you arrive with love,
the universal predator.
And what do I have to fight you off with.
A keyboard? The Complete Works Of Shakespeare?
For all this, I conform.
Your head rests on my shoulder like a cloud.
I kiss your check, that treasure of last century.
We make love, rows of faces,
sweaty, unkempt, fading into night.
"You can't fade into night," my mother said.
But fawns do.


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Miriam Sagan

Miriam Sagan And The Opera,
​The Bomb

Madame Butterfly at
​Glimmerglass


blue flax lines the highway
on the way to see blessed Kateri
in her shrine
portrayed with a sheaf of corn
three sisters garden

is scarred by the contact
smallpox who like a European saint
resists a forced marriage
must pledge a troth
to god

meanwhile at the opera
as if in woodblock
of “Old Japan” 
Madame Butterfly, shown half hidden
by a screen, a fan, japonica, a sword
things that can be wrapped
(a corpse)

in the city of Nagasaki
with warships in the harbor
I can’t help but see
a mushroom cloud
blossom
over the final applause

and in a little local park, mostly neglected
by baseball loving tourists
Indian mound
with an explanatory plaque

where the reverend poet wrote
speaking as if in the voice of the deceased
mistakenly thinking those buried there
were Iroquois  

beneath old trees that loom
“the wide land 
which now is yours was ours--
friendly hands have given back
to us enough for a tomb.”


        (Quotation from Rev. W. W. Lord, 1874)

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​


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