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Archive #42
December, 2016


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Kat Lehmann

Kat Lehmann With A Way
​Of Looking, Coping

The Fear of It

They say that
resistance
to something inevitable
makes it seem worse  
than it is. Maybe the trick

is to give in,
try to increase the worry,
bend like a tree in the storm,
give pain its due,
find the center of it and look at it plainly,
turn it carefully
in the palm of your hand,

and realize it can own only so much
of you,
unless you give it more.

It is a balloon
that can get only so big.


Anything more is just the fear of it.

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

Janet Aalfs And The Emotion Of Separation

Saying Goodbye

Lie down, but not too flat, she said.
We blew kisses
through the nursing home window,
hands flat as flounders.

I stepped on one once, buried in sand.
It wriggled and I fell
in the ice-cold shallows.
Ribs lashed like a raft, I wanted

to lie there, but not to die.
In my undershirt, too smooth for a bra,
I walked through the house
holding a mirror like a large platter

and looked down into it
like into a glassy cove
so it seemed like I was
walking on the ceiling.

I had to step over
light fixtures and lintels.
The mirror was completely flat
yet so many sharp things

flew out of it. Beyond those walls
her favorite tree shook its dark mane,
and the sky rounder than a wagon wheel,
and the clip-clop of hooves.

Through the glass, I could still see her
white hair. And I thought, I could lie down
in snow-clouds, and open close my limbs, and leave

an angel in the field.

Read the poetry of Janet Aalfs
Read a profile of Jante Aalfs
​
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Marie Anzalone

Marie Anzalone Has A Warning About Love
​And Its Loss

Losing the Magic

But you will lose her-
the day you make her always reach out 
to you. When you stop believing
she has something to contribute
to your world; when she cries
at night from old fears and new 
and there is nothing below her to hold on to:
you will lose her. When you assume
to know all the answers without asking
the questions, when you judge her 
present without knowing her past; when 
you are afraid that her brilliance makes you 
shine less, so you tell her she must be less 
than who was made to be; 
when you tell her who her God wants
her to be, and stop trusting her own voice. 
When you ask her to give up her world
to make yours feel less small. When 
she carries the world on her shoulders
and feels alone doing so; when 
busyness dictates whether or not 
you respond the times she needs your hand;
when your fear that she could never love
someone such as you, makes you 
stop trying, when excuses outweigh 
compliments, when you see her only for 
what she has failed to accomplish, 
when you think she is weak for no longer
holding back the water that fills
her longing to be something great, 
to someone worthy. When her greatness 
becomes an annoyance, when her 
feelings stop being heard. The day you stop 
believing in magic, in love, in her. 
If she has any self-respect: 
you, my friend, you will lose. 

Her. 

Read the poetry of Marie Anzalone
Read a profile of Marie Anzalone

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Rachel Schmieder-Gropen

Rachel Schmieder-Gropen: Where Art, Science, And Speculation Meet

To the Ex-girlfriend in
​My Writing Circle


Listen. I do not,
now, know which classes you
are taking or your favorite song
or how you spend your Sundays.

What I know is the state of your
wrist, the beat of your heart. I dig
into the hard earth of your last
poem, pry up dry slabs of shale
and find bone fragments beneath
— the fossilized moments that
keep you up at night.

(And I an archaeologist working
late nights at the lab, trying like
hell to piece together a skeleton
with nothing but the unwieldy,
impermanent intimacy of art.)


Read the poetry of Rachel Schmieder-Gropen
Read a profile of Rachel Schmieder-Gropen

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Amy Soricelli

Amy Soricelli: Keeping It In, Getting It Out

Ellipsis...

We run away now
 
from 
this world.  
We pack our black thoughts 
into suitcases -
lock them tight -
turn around three times 
then spit.
There is not enough 
salt over shoulders 
or red ribbons fastened tight 
over cribs and sick beds.
If we stuffed coins 
into our socks -
curled our toes deep
around them -

or pulled out a deck of cards -
our eyes would bleed
from the weight 
of lost hope.
Fear would part 
our eyelashes 
with each joker 
or ace.  
We can't wave away 
the ugly truth; swat it away 
like a lazy summer fly.

We kick our sorrow 
down the street/a dented can 
of angry shout-y noise.
We carry our burdens 
in our open hearts -
marbles into words 
and handfuls of rain.


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


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jacob erin-cilberto

jacob erin-cilberto's Moving
Portrait Of Aging, Lost Love

his own house

a man of age
wisdom filtering out of context
the wrinkles remember,
he doesn't
 
skin tight parables
a Jesus recluse at this juncture
his eyes on fire,
his heart burnt by the torch
he lived with for so many years,
and the smoldering life that makes
him feel trapped,

a bonfire of vanity seceding
from the union of his mind

his pride celebrates another year of existence
he only wishes he could recall
what year this is

and where the other half of his life
has moved to

still he clenches his fist
the emptiness within,
blows out the candle or two of regret

holds on to a feeling that no longer
inhabits his heart
but knows better than he
it lived there for nearly a century

he sheds a tear
and it extinguishes the last candle
the one he wished upon

to see her again.

Read the poetry of jacob erin-cilberto
Read a profile of jacob erin-cilberto
​
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Sharon Brogan

Sharon Brogan Has Many
​Reasons...Excuses

Why Not to Write Poems

“I’m a poet” makes for awkward social introductions.
No one reads poetry anymore. It’s old-fashioned,
irrelevant, and adolescent. 

You don’t see the universe in the heart of a lily.
It just spits orange pollen all over your black turtleneck
and makes you sneeze. 

Grammar is confusing. Poems are unnecessary.
They make nothing happen.* They don’t even 
rhyme anymore.

You are insufficiently weird. Only goth teens, 
hippies, queers, suicidal women, and old people 
write poems. 

Poets have to read poems. You read a poem once. 
You hated it. The only famous poets are dead poets. 
There are no rich poets. 

You have no talent. You’re the wrong ethnicity. 
You don’t know enough big words. You’ve got no 
rhythm. And WTF are “line breaks”?

You’ve read that it takes years of study and practice 
to write even one good poem. The only easy-to-write 
poems are list poems. And they’re boring.

Read the poetry of Sharon Brogab
Read a profile of Sharon Brogan
​
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Lee Kisling

Lee Kisling Offers A Sweet
​Solution—To It All

Just One Kiss

Just one kiss, in a world filled up
with darkness and disappointment,
band aids and barricades,
sunspots and insomniacs,
virus and vanity in the belly of a world
full of pressure and persuasion,
angst and admonitions,
foothills and phantoms at the edge of a world
full of danger and discovery,
full of worry and wondering, but
 
just one kiss, lips to lips, eye to eye –
just one stolen kiss, and sharing this,
the taste of adoration and the breath
of confession. Just the
whisper of a kiss, in a world so filled up.
Only one. Just one kiss.

Maybe more.


Read the poetry of Lee Kisling
Read a profile of Lee Kisling

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Grace Pasco

Grace Pasco Morphs Well
​Into A Metaphor

I Go Toward the Well

I walk to the well
To see how much water can fill
My eager bucket.
The water does not have to quench thirst,
For I but come to observe the way liquid plays
In the solid wood.
 
But sometimes,
I run to the well--
 
To splash fresh water onto my face.
With it, my tears and sweat blend together
And I beseech relief to meet me.
The water reflects to me a steadiness
That was not allowed to me by
Distractions and a raced pace.
 
I look into the designated hole on the ground
And see the sky above,
Bright and dancing.
And darkness ceases to be a thing of fear.
Instead, it’s a theatre for potential
Within the well toward which I run.
 
Today, I sit by the well.
And watch as strangers, too,
Draw their bucketfuls.
I am not ready yet to look again
Into the depths of the designated hole on the ground,
So I will wait
Until I have no choice but to pick up my wooden retriever
And let it fall and scoop up
What it will.


​Read the poetry of Grace Pasco
Read a profile of Grace Pasco

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Mary Jo Balistreri

Mary Jo Balistreri Captures
​A Delicate Sadness

The Fourth of July

Sitting together on the porch swing.
Sipping Champagne, swallowing bubbles
of memory. Ropes creak back and forth.
 
How could we have known—without sparklers,
the flap and flutter of tattered twilight, shouts,
giggles, commotion of the children—we’d be so lost?
 
Fountains of light cascade from the sky,
pinwheels and spiders.
Your too cheerful voice offering one more glass.


Read the poetry of Mary Jo Balistreri
Read a profile of Mary Jo Balistreri

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Amauri Solon

Amauri Solon With A New
Haiku Collection

Five Night Haiku

the cry of an owl echoed 
in our bed my son murmurs
- stay here, dad


                 ❦

            unable to sleep
            I amble through the garden -
            night blooming cestrum


        ❦

a lazy dog
keeps me company -
he stops at a street lamp, not me


                 ❦ 

            soon after lights are gone
            I invite her -
            Shall we dance Moonlight Serenade?


        ❦
​
If I were a humming-bird
I would kiss
this late blooming flower


          Read the poetry of Amaurie Solon
          Read a profile of Amauri Solon
​
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LA Lorena

LA Lorena: A Gift-Giving
​Tradition—And Its Legacy 

Can You Keep a Secret?

every year, every blessed year
since he walked into my life at the age of 19
when I really didn't need or want, a father figure
to replace the one who died (or so I thought)
he gave me chocolates
 
Ferrero Rocher to be precise
 
proudly selected and wrapped by him
and placed in my Christmas stocking
every year, without fail
 
countless thousands
of milk chocolate and hazlenut enrobed candies later
(and many years after his death)
I still receive a box or two from well meaning souls
who carry on this tradition in his absence
 
Until the day I die, I will never let on...
 
I hate those damn things and always have
Just never had the heart to break his heart
I will choke them down with the tears
 
over sweet chocolate made bittersweet
with good intentions


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

William Fraker With A
​Wistful Paean To Autumn

Anticipating

Acorns scatter where children used to play, 
where long-sleeved shirts wrapped
around waists by lunch recess.
 
Summer foliage lingers.
Shorter days promise, “Just not yet.”  
Geese honk near dusk.
Evening rains portend the earth’s shift.
Before any shotgun, before the first frost,
                  deer slip into the field’s darkness.
 
There are no crops to harvest, the land
no longer a farm.
Brambles conquer the former garden
and I am no longer a youngster.  
 
Each autumn redeems the past.
Memory in oak roots,    
                  vibrations of all who pass,
                  drop to the ground again
                  and feed the squirrels.
My dog considers each acorn a rose.
I long for the forest’s campaign ribbons,
yellows, reds, and orange -
dress and ceremony before winter.


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

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Ali Grimshaw

VerseWrights Warmly Welcomes Poet Ali Grimshaw

Visiting With Chaos

Spills splattered the walls.
Counters filled with clutter,
multiple piles creating a new geography in the room.
There is a relief to cleaning it all away.
Everything in order. Repair and replace.
The seduction of a new cycle, sparkling clean.
Free from marks of history.

What if we could sit with Chaos
for just a little minute?
Feel the wind in our ears.
Hearing her secrets of cleverness.
Soaking in the learning of this undone space.
Before an opportunity is erased.
A past disinfected before she can author her story
From which the plot differs from
perpetual duplicating.

​Read the poetry of Ali Grimshaw
Read a profile of Ali Grimshaw
​
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Mikels Skele

Mikels Skele And When The
​Unthinkable Becomes The Realty


How Swiftly Came the
​Killing Season


How swiftly came the killing season
swept in from hinterlands
just when we had remarked upon
the sameness of it all.

How soon the must-not-be-named
became quotidian.
Weren’t we standing there,
thinking how sensible

not to raise a ruckus,
how preferable to simply
turn our backs to the foul wind?

How did we come to this?
Didn’t we say how better we were?
What comfort are platitudes
now?


Read the poetry of Mikels Skele
Read a profile of Mikels Skele
​
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Lynn White

Lynn White's Wistful, If A Bit
​Vengeful, Wish

If I Were a Butterfly

If I were a butterfly
where would I fly?
I could grace every home
bringing good luck every time.
Make sure that my children
ate up all the weeds,
and recycled the waste
without judgement or hate.
In a world that’s at peace
I’d find my place.
Hmm, if I were a butterfly
I’d think this must wait.

If I were a butterfly
where would I fly?
If my soul were parochial
it would hang in my space,
It would look pretty in my garden,
propagate where I said,
and keep watch with indulgence
as my kids ate the rest.
If I were a butterfly
I’d think this was sad.
A life is too short
to live in the past.

If I were a butterfly
where would I fly?
Like all souls of dead warriors
for justice and peace, 
I’d fly
down the throats of the haters,
war mongers, arms traders, 
parasitic self servers.
Yes.
They’d choke on my body
and ingest my eggs.
My children would eat them,
feast on them, thrive
then fly on to the next.
Yes.
If I were a butterfly
that’s where I’d fly.

If I were a butterfly
then where would I fly?
I would grace every home
bringing good luck every time.
I would make sure that my children
ate up all the weeds,
and recycled the waste
without judgement or hate.
In a world that’s at peace
I’d find my place.


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

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E. Michael Desilets

An E. Michael Desilets Rogues'  Gallery Snapshot

Heartless Tom the Gangster

He can take
or leave the ladies
looks good in a hat
the brim
taking away his eyes
when he’s done thinking
about whatever
lies before him
life
death
an empty glass.
 
An ordinary man
like no other
impeccable
at funerals and wakes
undiminished by loss
or the slow sweet savoring
of his own swagger
he leaves us behind
to watch the credits
rosary in his pocket
purgatory in his chest
hell in his hands.


Read the poetry of E. Michael Desilets
Read a profile of E. Michael Desilets
​
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Dave Borland

We Warmly Welcome Dave Borland To Our Pages

Copper Penny by the River

​It lies
        Silently, as clouds pass by a full born moon,
        as if covering up the rusty hands upon her breast
        that have flaunted feminity for thousands of years
Yet, of course, the man was obscure, in yellow pain.
 
Why does the sun ignore his sister in such violent pain?
        Not because rain is due but only from the storms lying along
        the African coast predicting havoc along its way.
        Alas, it shines from moonbeams escaping the gaping grasp
A penny by the sea is worth what, these desperate days?​

​

Picture in a Box

​I’ll be a picture in a box
         Under an old, discovered bible in a drawer in disarray.
                   Faded in gray and darkened white.
A smile, today, as I think of that time to come
         When a curious grandchild explores grandpaw’s “things,"
                   Days after I’ve have gone astray or wherever.


​Read the poetry of Dave Borland
Read a profile of Dave Borland

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Kathleen Everett

Kathleen Everett With An
Uncommon Correspondence
 

postage paid

I am writing to you
from this side of life,
though I know your answer will only be
in birdsong
or the autumn breeze
in the cedar boughs.

Longing for word
in faded ink,
written in your strong hand
or a picture postcard
from the other side-
‘Wish you were here.’

I await your reply

Going thru your desk, I find
the note you wrote
on the day I was born
and I know the longed for missive
has arrived.


postage paid

Read the poetry of Kathleen Everett
Read a profile of Kathleen Everett
​
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Dana Rushin

Dana Rushin's Subjective, 
​Non-Traditional Take...

Seasons

if truth be told,
there are no real seasons; no plausible
connections to the cold. Only
that at certain times
we push damp towels into the door jam

so that boneless mice might not squeeze their
bodies into warmth. 
I wrote a poem last evening about their great migration:

the onomatopoeia of it. How the soul of everything
searches for that certain buzz
that suggests the eternal voice. Then how that voice lays

dormant, perhaps slothful
until the image of meadows
corrals the conspectus of learning. As if Lewis and Clark

didn't think twice about
having to eat the flesh of uncooked buffaloes
while discovering the great Northwest 
then sat their foil asses on the ground, writhing
​     for

Pepto Bismol. This past hot summer burned up my lawn,
so I fertilized it in June which burned it up even more.
So I stopped doing everything and it became green again.

Then the neighbors boy played in it's glade
and ran for his ball.

Read the poetry of Dana Rushin
Read a profile of Dana Rushin

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Ana Caballero

Ana Caballero: A Performance, A Father,
​A Mother

                  Paco

Last night, I heard Paco de Lucía play the guitar
in a theater cut out of a dry rock in the South of Spain.
 
My father could not go because he fell
and hit his head
and has been in bed for fifteen days
and it could be longer.
 
My brothers are not here and do not know.
 
So I went with my mother
to see men with faces that look like the first face,
 
the face of the Gypsy and the Jew,
the Arab sage and the hanging Christ.
Hair around the eyes,
a focusing view of enemy foot
through rising desert sand.
 
El Farru, the great flamenco dancer, danced in the middle
of the music men and lost a dancing heel
in the middle of the song.
 
The dead heel lay dumb
like a bitten fig
while El Farru beat his sounding heel down.
 
Then he bowed
and held up his mute heel to make our hands applaud.
 
De Lucía. His nephew-apprentice to the left.
The singers with no voice, dry rock slicing their throats.
The bass that seized a place and played a role.
The flamenco hair whipping Farru’s face
like a despot riding his despot horse.
 
I filmed it all to show my father.
But the clip will deepen
the slip of the heel and the dry rock
against the head.
 
So I keep it for my mother
for when she’ll need
her music men.


Read the poetry of Ana Caballero
Read a profile of Ana Caballaro

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Valerie Bacharach

Valerie Bacharach Finds Sad Symbolism Amid Commemorative Art

At the Judaica Store

And            again
Aisles of yarzheit candles:
beeswax
packs of four
kosher candles from Israel
decorative metal
handmade and painted
designs of pomegranate
wooden holders
Jerusalem scenes on pottery
Hebrew script
Jewish stars…
 
And            again
I choose the same small one.
Simple glass. Unadorned.
Four inches tall
a cylinder of sorrow.
No birthday candles
for a grown son.
Just this--
A strike of a match
a wick trembles
burns in silence for 24 hours.
 

Then, like him, gone.

Read the poetry of Valerie Bacharach

Read a profile of Valerie Bacharie

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Neil Fulwood

Neil Fulwood Has A Take
On A Monstrous Film Genre

Kaiju

Godzilla in pain,
wracked with toothache from chewing
buildings, bridges, cars.
 
Incisors shattered
by lumps of brick and concrete,
molars set on edge
 
as metal screeches
against enamel. Gums bleed.
Dumpsters fur his tongue.
 
The ocean was clean.
The city’s anything but.
Godzilla retches.


Read the poetry of Neil Fulwood
Read a profile of Neil Fulwood

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Jeffrey Zable

Jeffrey Zable, Adept At  Reading The Signs...

The Omen

I was lounging in the hotel’s graveyard when I realized
I left my passport in the bathroom of the hotel lobby.
When I got there, in its place was a good-sized fish with
the following words written on its side: “If you are Carey
Grant please take me home with you, and never do another picture with Hitchcock unless he allows you to direct yourself.” Picking up the fish it immediately disintegrated in my hands. “This is a bad omen!” I thought to myself. And when I returned to the graveyard I knew I was right because two dozen black roses had replaced my chair and a huge red hand was sticking
out of the earth pointing directly at my wife who had turned into a pig with the face of her father who didn’t like me from the moment that we met.


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

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John Carroll Walls

VerseWrights Warmly 
​Welcomes John Carroll Walls

A Poem for Tears

Come in out of the cold and cry
We'll find a vase for your tears

Cry in the warmth of my presence
Cry in the calm of my verse, and I'll dry you up with a melody

Taught to me be by the winsome wind
I learned it all the way through just this morning

It's as new and pure as an infant's dream
Held by the Madonna, under a Bethlehem sky



Autumn Couldn't Have
​Feigned This Shiver


The last shy tree bare; an updated burden,
Perpetual risk has been the methodology of this season,
Our willful tug-of-flower has mastered the wilted,
‘Tis time to grow and harvest an arcane frost from within,
Something austere and winter-bosomed;
A crystalized motif,
And a rush of skin-veiled blood as its garden.


Read the poetry of John Carroll Walls
Read a profile of John Carroll Walls
​
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Debbie Strange

Debbie Strange With The Latest Of Her Tanka/Tanshi

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Photo art by Debbie Strange
                  aurora
                      lithesome spirit walker
                      shimmering
​                      above the taiga
                      rainbow ribbons in her hair


Enjoy the poetry and art of Debbie Strange
Read a profile of Debbie Strange
​
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Dane Cobain

For Dane Cobain, Beauty Is Indeed In The Eye Of The Beholder

Rebecca

She was famous
for dancing in the darkness,
sexy confident
because she knew
her body moved
the way she wanted.
 
She was beautiful,
like a crossword puzzle
with the clues filled in,
or two thousand books
in perfect alphabetical order
on the shelves
of an independent
charity shop.
 
She had a gift for sleepwalking,
a sonorous somnambulist
in the back of an ambulance,
but she didn’t take food
into her bedroom.
 
And so she danced about
with the lights out,
all away with the fairies
like the top of a Christmas tree,
thrown out with the rubbish
and still decorated
on a cold, dead pavement,
waiting for men
to take it away again.
 
She was blue
like a summer day;
she was blue
like a smurf
with a black eye.
 
She was mine
and that’s the way
I liked it.


Read the poetry of Dane Cobain
Read a profile of Dane Cobain

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Ann Huang

Ann Huang And The
Complexities of Change

Crustacean

​You had gone out of the state, beyond havens of flowers,
Backing a voluptuous sea.
Something stayed, —hummingbirds hovered and left,
Moon and confections lurked in.
Where the sore nose was after you 
And the hurting knees,
Bent down under a bed, listening behind a wall.
The watery nose, the woman in bed
Reappeared in the water.
That is a love scene for one life. 
More things would remain.
The beginning would make it less dark,
Or the fate twists.
 
The air would never rise, and then rise,
And the hummingbirds sing.
The clouds would never be the same gray
Lime on the horizon.
[And you are lying like a shaman
Amid the neat firm night,
Your nose near the blue pillow,
Which makes our promises real.]


Read the poetry of Ann Huang
Read a profile of Ann Huang

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Kerry O'Connor

VerseWrights Warmly Welcomes Poet Kerry O'Connor

Landscape from a Window

​What comes in at the window
is more than the bitter tang of noon grass,
the aftertaste of love’s hidden thunder
you imagined you heard
as you lay, supine, on the single bed
the sunlight askance upon your hip and thigh.

What drifts through the window
is the feather of a bird that fell through sky,
its black mass defines the leaf and blade;
it is the isolation left behind
the corner of a farmhouse where a single garment
snaps the line at the bite of a colder breeze.

What lifts the edge of curtain lace
from the frame is a terrible precision of sight
that views the empty field with horse
standing in its lonely traces,
and sees its own mortality in the landscape
of your shadow cast aside in naked sleep. 


Read the poetry of Kerry O'Connor
Read a profile of Kerry O'Connor
​
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