Archive #43
January, 2017
from Selected Tanka and Haiku... Full dark winter's quiet crickets begin chirping The crescent moon lifts up her arms to catch the evening star ❦ no camera and a heart too full of holes to hold this sunset ❦ I couldn't tell you why I'm crying today . . . I put out my tongue like a child to taste the salt ❦ November . . . dead leaves rolling sunlight down the street Read the poetry of kris Lindbeck Read a profile of Kris Lindbeck
Our Ship of Love
fair wind blows the sails our ship steady rolling my face buried in your long sisal hair I hold your hips lips softly caressing bodies raise and curl the ocean swell we try to conquer boundaries of the earthy fly like wild swans entangled in love hands clenched bare feet twisted speechless history shared future behind helpless, helpless insatiable hunger beyond understanding we move on love is to end in the fire of passion time no longer on our side no choice but sailing to the limits of awareness where freedom waters wash our tired souls Read the poetry of Edjo Frank Read a profile of Edjo Frank
Afternoon at Frick Park
We hike downhill-- just my speed these days-- Rupa and Kevin deposit me at a bench climb back up to retrieve their car, then me. The park seems deserted. I’ve been reading too much about guns, suicides, murders. A beat up car pulls into the parking lot a creepy guy coaxes his dog out onto the grass where the poor thing can barely move. “Goldie’s fourteen and her hips don’t work so good,” he says. Pedestrian traffic picks up: almost every passerby has a dog on or off a leash a child in or out of a stroller. A park ranger whose green shirt reads STAFF demonstrates how to strap a hammock to two trees, spaced well apart invites his colleague to lie down in it. “Is the hammock for park visitors?” I ask. “No,” he laughs, unties it, puts it in his car for when he wants a snooze. A clutch of clouds obliterates the sun, triggers a sense of unease. Two years ago today my neighbor shot his wife. The papers are full of such stuff—toddlers with loaded guns, terrorists, tedious accounts & statistics of bodies violated, mutilated, murdered. Wars spring up like children’s toys, Bop and Pop. The tale of Mayerling palls, ho-hum. Can we care about Crown Prince Rudolf--tsk! tsk! when history is steeped in our killing fields, in the French blessé during the wars, in the dried blood of Babi Yar or of Burundi, the Mexican clandestinas or prehistoric mass graves in Kenya? Is it still possible to mourn the murder-suicide of Crown-Prince Rudolf? For three years Niki de Saint Phalle was addicted to shooting works of art, mesmerized by pellets bursting from a .22 long rifle into bags of paint embedded in plaster. Boom! the monochromatic white blooms as sacks spurt and splatter violets and reds, oranges and blacks. Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns likewise take part in such innocent massacre. A woman in high heels and chiffon, a crown of flowers in her hair steps out of a Toyota, grabs a child’s hand. Friends and family (and the fiancé) arrive, spattering the grey parking lot with finery in greens, pinks, blues. The cluster of celebrants walk across the road to a secluded area where a minister intones blessings. Read the poetry of Judith Dorian Read a profile of Judith Dorian
Time in the Body Time feels like growing to a child, ache of bones, changing clothes, outgrowing shoes, the awkward length of leg or foot. It is the ecstasy of fireflies and the anguish of acne in the mirrored bathroom light. Time has no relationship to stability, it is that cataract that gushes along, crashing friends in high school or losing them to war. Then the pinnacle is reached, adulthood and the beginnings of nostalgia. Growth becomes girth and each day, gravity pulls us closer to the earth. Read the poetry of Phil Boiarski Read a profile of Phil Boiarski
After Dinner at the Legal Tender
Summer is over. Leaving Lamy You drive south into basin and range At sunset. I sit in the passenger seat Buckled up, not quite Knowing where you are taking me Quiet as a farm wife or any Girl just along For the ride. Darkness, autumn, you turn around Finished with expanse Head home. I know my story And I know yours And why we both Have a taste for this. Read the poetry of Miriam Sagan Read a profile of Miriam Sagan
Swallowing Spiders in
Your Sleep well, lover, your fears although irrational are charming the misery you imagined hiding now travels closer dents in the pillowcase, tickle on your nose all evidence of my nocturnal wanderings weaving past desires through eyelash in spiral orbs of silk perversions I will leave eight reasons on your skin eight synonyms for love every vibration will lead me crawling inside your perfectly round opening a darkness so lovely Read the poetry of Tracey Gunne Read a profile of Tracey Gunne
Unscathed,
If you can allow yourself to walk The perils of the inner time And still dream a cosseted dream Of the world, at ease. If not, climb on the sill of my window, I owe you endless stories of delivery And my voice speaks all earthly tongues. Down like the rain, Down like the rain- A fresh injection of people In the veins of the inhumane Shall give all the hardihood It takes to cut them open And stuff all the souls inwards. Commitment The cells and strings, This biology of you Spreading its limbs next to my skin, Warm and prickly and alive- I want to wrap myself into the smell of it But the split infinity of their stance Saddens the day of me, the night of me, The all of us That is neither everything, nor anything Under the breath of a sun too short. In a word, I am not wise and there yet. Read the poetry of Witty Fay Read a profile of Witty Fay Four Petite Poems From Four Poets
Breaking Fast
~ Mark Dennis Anderson Your lips, coastal – open to me. Chili pepper, I want to sweat you out. ❧ 
The Core
~ Rivka Zorea At the epicenter of the earth's core Is a boiling, raging fire Once in a while it pushes forth in an explosion of violent passion ...me too ❧ 
Water
~ R. Gene Turchin She likes water sounds Table top unit pumping water From the base through plastic lines To a metal water fall. Landing with a splash on pebbles. Says it soothes her soul. I hear water dripping from a Broken faucet. ❧ 
Dramatis Persona
This is the gestalt of Ego Everypoet, E.E. (not e.e.), Psyche’s female lead: To the Superegos— all egos are illegal aliens in need of severe restraints, ergo: wing-clipped zoo flamingo, casino macaw chained to tiki bar, caged cockatoo in $ Store window. To the Id named JoJo the Poet-- E.E. is a wildling enraptured raptor: Rio Negro harpy eagle, Amazon-eyed, Nile River falcon-headed sky queen, Colorado River canyon-conquering condor. She admits to a certain ferocity of syllables. Read the poetry of Karla Linn Merrifield Read a profile of Karla Linn Merrifield
Rooms of Joy
We will build four rooms of joy to honour the monastic sigh, to understand the kestrel on its perch and the wheelchair halted at the steep curb. We will sanctify our moon with paint, clay and easel - letting colours and moisture drip through our fingers, malleable as a conscious dream. We will bellow out music that towers over the thieves of daylight, races into our bodies, offering grace where there is none. We will write poems and stories of fact and fiction to bring definition to our visions, to lose ourselves, naked as the calling gulls. We will hold our meditation stones, like a horse’s beautiful mane, brushing, braiding, all the while, softly whispering our affection into the copper-coloured ear of nature. And the animals will bind us. The enormous love between us all will cut away the scar tissue of disappointment. We will plunge into this temple, playing games, bearing fruit. In our four rooms we will love, expand and often falter - fresh and deep, rooted into the floorboards of this true home. Read the poetry of Allison Grayhurst Read a profile of Allison Grayhurst
Setting Some New Priorities
I no longer worry that my thesis on the Ghost Orchid and her shameless romance with a Cypress in the swamps of Florida will ever reach the desk of the President; or that Congress will debate my proposal to hold sessions on the shores of the Potomac complete with fried chicken and whisky. Age and resignation have stripped me of such ambitions, and smaller more attainable goals consume me. Mostly I consort with the dead these days: Confederate colonels on horseback gathered beneath a shade tree on a hill, awaiting the newest orders from their General; or the massacred peasants of Khitan and their wives and their children that the Khan sold off into slavery. Yesterday a boy in Chicago was killed in the crossfire and a twelve year old girl was strangled and raped in LA. The President and Congress have troubles enough I think, they should be forced to read poetry; but those colonels, those peasants, those kids in LA and Chicago? Perhaps they might need me. Read the poetry of Mark MacDonald Read a profile of Mark MacDonald |
Henry
My kids call him Henry the little sapling that stands a foot high on our forest path he is mostly stick with a few green wisps of hope and even though they measured him this year and last they don’t seem to notice that he hasn’t grown at all yesterday they gave him a maple leaf for a hat and ferns for shoes like a pitiable summer version of a snowman and they hug him so gently every time we pass him leaning way down and telling him you’ll be big one day that as I walked by him today on my own and I saw that one of his flimsy arms had snapped I tied it upright with a piece of grass and found myself whispering to him you’ll be just fine. Read the poetry of Samantha Reynolds Read a profile of Samantha Reynolds
For Julien at Six Weeks
Already you have taken the world by your fingertips small hands closing on grapes of air, first fruits that you touch and hold at arm's length to choose and choose again. Soon you will learn how days are layered with secrets, how the sun combs back its fields of light, how the wind unveils its colours. You have all the time you want – a careful mime rehearsing routines as old as the eye. Read the poetry of Katherine Gallagher Read a profile of Katherine Gallagher
Aftermath November 9, 2016 Hello whoever is out there I find myself under serious covers offering scant protection despite the heavy quilt sewn by my great grandmother despite the drawn shades the twelve orange vials of blessèd Xanax lying next to my pillow certainly not a solution for the next four years or ten generations for that matter a slideshow of despair loops endlessly a Muslim woman her hijab torn & tied around her throat apoplectic faces shrieking go home to a black man born in Baltimore a woman in a back alley undoing the work of a rapist a teenager returned to El Salvador where death stalks on legs of steel their faces indelible, crowding, rustling begging, screaming, sobbing while a mad man plays with joysticks on Pennsylvania Avenue KA-POW KA-POW tweeting triumphs at three am Hello are you there Read the poetry of Claire Scott Read a profile of Claire Scott
we can't grow just
to diminish let's dance as if death were not at our shoulders, or doctors prodding at words we'll never siphon the meaning from. let's curl hands like wood knots on the park trees flowing with their own sway, walk the hospital grounds, breathe undying air. we're in our own country of sick and solitary, of weak and vanishing. our bodies want to shrivel back into themselves, like raisins at breakfast. we’re used to the ebb and dip of wrinkled worry. we don't have to love like our young successors. we have more in common in mind than they do in longing. let's see each other not because we have to, but to endure the withering of memory. Read the poetry of Liam Strong Read a profile of Liam Strong
Introducing Cliffs
My children fall down gently. Even on sidewalks, the scrapes to cuts & the blood that follows, there is hardly any scarring. My children fall down gently. Even in waves they are delivered to the beach. My children fall down gently. So, when the bodies of other children are on the news I do not change the channel, when they talk about death & it’s not the death of our beloved cat, I leave the volume high. I will not frighten my children, but I cannot stop them from forming the questions, from looking at abyss & feeling that they could fall forever from that cliff. I’ve taught them safety. I preached some caution. I’ve let them hear about the amount of blood in the American ocean. My children fall down gently. I say it out loud so that I can hear it when my worst fears creep in from the wind. Read the poetry of Darren C. Demaree Read a profile of Darren C. Demaree
Turkish Tango
The aromas of sweet, fresh bread and robust, dark coffee, the sounds of syncopated rhythms and melodies in a minor key, the sharp tang of ginger soda, the warmth of a croissant, the flakes scatter onto the table and my lap, the clear soprano voice accompanied by guitar, punctuated by the siren passing, the high-pitched buzz from an amp that defies adjustment, the odd bits and snips of whispered conversations. Focusing on the sounds of an unknown language, the constant chatter in my head stops - - I tap my feet to the beat of a Turkish tango. Read the poetry of Judy Melchiorre Read a profile of Judy Melchiorre
Progress Report
So many of us are sliding down the ridge of our own shadows, hands held out for sun on creased skin silked up from bottles. We’re walking on belly pain and nylon knees, feeling the bite of cheap shoes, wondering just what keeps us trudging, flat-footed over the stubborn ground. Beneath our gaudy fashion and false leathers, what gets us knotted is seeping through our fingers, smearing a fog across touch screens. We’ve got it all scheduled without an outcome; sunken comfortably down in the spent springs of suburbia like coins fed between the lips of a slot machine for a random selection of promises and a long empty silence. Read the poetry of Julia Stothard Read a profile of Julia Stothard
The Raccoon Ball
I watched it all day out the window at kindergarten-- I’m sure of it, Mom. It was sunny, no rain, no clouds. I could see it for sure, the gym next door, all those inside rooms. And there it was, the black and round raccoon ball, pounding one wall, then the next. And they all kept crashing down when that big old ball kept hitting the doors, the windows, and building sides after it swinged way up. Boy mom, I could really see it. Even furniture, Mom, smashed into pieces! I saw a yellow truck on the ground and a little man working levers—two or three—. And, oh yeah, I saw a couple of long lines close up to the sky, before they ‘tached on that one last lever-- Really high, it was, I swear it, before those long lines came down and ‘tached again to the raccoon ball, all big all black, which swinged wider, stronger, wilder. The rooms went to small pieces. Doors cracked, too tiny splinters of wood. All more and more a wreck. Read the poetry of Judith Brice Read a profile of Judith Brice
Fall
Trying to decide what to do with myself, I sit on a park bench in the sunlight to think and I get caught in whirlwinds of yellow and rust-colored leaves rushing from one side of the park to the other like a mob storming a Bastille but then lying down just as quickly, spent apparently, until they get up and renew the rush only in a different direction obviously confused and unruly; a tornado of them whirls into the road and is run through by a truck and scattered; they are a spiritual force mainly though make a clatter on the sidewalk like tiny horses' hooves scuttling like the clouds across the sky, not sure where they are going either. Read the poetry of Wayne F Burke Read a profile of Wayne F Burke |
Leaf
When I left the light most life depends on, nature's landscape became so very still. I am always in darkness—alone. It is late, dark, still. I am here in the drive. Hear a scratchy shuttle-- a lonely leaf speaks. Back and forth, left to right, wind or no. Separated from its mother limb, disfigured by dryness, pliability and color gone. In the bareness between fall and spring, silence is severe. Admit fear within me, not of being alone, but of the loneliness which finds me everywhere. It is late, dark, still. I am here in the drive. I am desperate. Are you here, leaf? Read the poetry of Ria Meade Read a profile of Ria Meade
a love that didn't love back ☊
a love that tried to love back (hard) but failed, stepped on by experience dragged away by abandoned words taking their revenge (softly, slowly) a love that began like the crash of drums into a song that went on with a bridge spanning miles and a chorus just bright enough to make me believe (hard) this love could love us back, and stay past the end of the show, through the slow shuffle of a drunken crowd and i'd take your hand (naturally) and lead you home (steadily) and show you my mind (carefully) but this love recoiled (fearfully) and did not love again Paul Mortimer And The
|
|
|
Enjoy this video in the PoetryAloud area
Read the poetry of Paul Mortimer
Read a profile of Paul Mortimer
Read the poetry of Paul Mortimer
Read a profile of Paul Mortimer
Rushika Wick
|
VerseWrights Warmly Welcomes Poet Rushika Wick |
Cardiac Rehab
Listening to the radio
on the experiences of young people waiting for heart transplants
(hope and diminution in equal measure; a pendulum ride)
I have a compulsion
to donate mine
now- immediately.
If only I could survive without mine
to give the boy his ...
A strange idea?
Ripping open the rib cage and proffering a
bleeding
beating
heart
to someone who is desperate for it;
The ultimate demonstration of love
The destruction of the possibility to love
in
one
fell
swoop.
Let Them Eat Cake by Poe
Or, do I need to thread my needle
And
start
sewing up
my own collapsing
atria?
Read the poetry of Rushika Wick
Read a profile of Rushika Wick
Listening to the radio
on the experiences of young people waiting for heart transplants
(hope and diminution in equal measure; a pendulum ride)
I have a compulsion
to donate mine
now- immediately.
If only I could survive without mine
to give the boy his ...
A strange idea?
Ripping open the rib cage and proffering a
bleeding
beating
heart
to someone who is desperate for it;
The ultimate demonstration of love
The destruction of the possibility to love
in
one
fell
swoop.
Let Them Eat Cake by Poe
Or, do I need to thread my needle
And
start
sewing up
my own collapsing
atria?
Read the poetry of Rushika Wick
Read a profile of Rushika Wick
Ryan Quinn Flanagan
|
VerseWrights Warmly Welcomes Poet Ryan Quinn Flanagan |
Mouths to Feed
He had only started working at the full-serve
two weeks previous.
He landed the gig through his parole officer
and though the job wasn’t much
it was more than he had.
And it was summer and the oil cartels
were gouging a little less for some reason
so the cars were lined up in long rows
their gas caps removed, each tank hungry
for the nozzle;
many mouths to feed
and he pretended they were all his children
because he had no children
or woman either;
that made things bearable, filling all those tanks
as though they were his children
and depended on him.
When he was finished he wiped his hands with
a crusty blue rag, clocking out before
the short walk home.
His tired feet throbbing in his shoes
like someone else’s stinking
heart.
Read the poetry of Ryann Quinn Flanagan
Read a profile of Ryan Quinn Flanagan
He had only started working at the full-serve
two weeks previous.
He landed the gig through his parole officer
and though the job wasn’t much
it was more than he had.
And it was summer and the oil cartels
were gouging a little less for some reason
so the cars were lined up in long rows
their gas caps removed, each tank hungry
for the nozzle;
many mouths to feed
and he pretended they were all his children
because he had no children
or woman either;
that made things bearable, filling all those tanks
as though they were his children
and depended on him.
When he was finished he wiped his hands with
a crusty blue rag, clocking out before
the short walk home.
His tired feet throbbing in his shoes
like someone else’s stinking
heart.
Read the poetry of Ryann Quinn Flanagan
Read a profile of Ryan Quinn Flanagan
Stefanie Bennett
|
Stefanie Bennett's Complex Farewell |
Thrift
Anna Maria, let’s pretend
The years haven’t
Bridged the steps untaken;
The calendar turned
Without one twinge
Of pitying.
If memory serves truly, we played
Blind-man’s-bluff
In that
Very same refuge; there
Beside the wood-pile, where
White rosemary
Dazzled
The bronze hill – and
The grave wept
Shy atonement.
Anna Maria! The Matriarch
Died three
Decades ago.
Only
Providence knows why.
Let’s say
Our farewell...
Mother’s
Depart because
Daughters don’t.
Read the poetry of Stefanie Bennett
Read a profile of Stefanie Bennett
Anna Maria, let’s pretend
The years haven’t
Bridged the steps untaken;
The calendar turned
Without one twinge
Of pitying.
If memory serves truly, we played
Blind-man’s-bluff
In that
Very same refuge; there
Beside the wood-pile, where
White rosemary
Dazzled
The bronze hill – and
The grave wept
Shy atonement.
Anna Maria! The Matriarch
Died three
Decades ago.
Only
Providence knows why.
Let’s say
Our farewell...
Mother’s
Depart because
Daughters don’t.
Read the poetry of Stefanie Bennett
Read a profile of Stefanie Bennett
Marianne Szlyk
|
Marianne Szlyk Fashions An
|
Visiting the Ancestors
The deer are visiting the ancestors,
nibbling on grass at Mt. Calvary,
waiting in the shade of winter
underneath the low trees that could be
on a riverbank in the deep
South that the ancestors fled from.
The five deer browse on the
pale green fringe of the cemetery,
limp parsley left on winter’s plate
beside the river that neither flows
nor freezes. The deer have bodies
the color of earth in shadow,
but they could be spirit animals
of family living elsewhere come to
visit great-grandparents in the ground,
the great-grandfather who was gentle with
farm animals, remembered horses and mules,
the great-grandmother who kept a pot
on the stove for family, neighbors,
and friends, served Red Rose tea
with milk and sugar like coffee,
The deer linger on the fringes
like the awkward children they
once were when the ancestors
were alive.
Read the poetry of Marianne Szlyk
Read a profile of Marianne Szlyk
The deer are visiting the ancestors,
nibbling on grass at Mt. Calvary,
waiting in the shade of winter
underneath the low trees that could be
on a riverbank in the deep
South that the ancestors fled from.
The five deer browse on the
pale green fringe of the cemetery,
limp parsley left on winter’s plate
beside the river that neither flows
nor freezes. The deer have bodies
the color of earth in shadow,
but they could be spirit animals
of family living elsewhere come to
visit great-grandparents in the ground,
the great-grandfather who was gentle with
farm animals, remembered horses and mules,
the great-grandmother who kept a pot
on the stove for family, neighbors,
and friends, served Red Rose tea
with milk and sugar like coffee,
The deer linger on the fringes
like the awkward children they
once were when the ancestors
were alive.
Read the poetry of Marianne Szlyk
Read a profile of Marianne Szlyk
Will Reger
|
VerseWrights Warmly Welcomes Poet Will Reger To Our Pages |
Spaghetti Stain
Thumbing through One Hundred
Best Poems, I came upon lines
from the poet Kunitz--
powerful words about the moment
he waits for the mailman to bring his draft
card, from which he takes us
back through all
the generations of his ancestors--
But what catches my eye
is the wide spaghetti stain
in the margin with a tiny scrim of tomato
skin caught in the smear, rubbed in
by the big left thumb of the reader.
Was he so caught up in the poem,
so passion-smeared,
olive oil on his lips,
that he laid aside his fork
to grip the page inscribed
with the poet’s seminal moment?
Did the poem channel his own despair?
His own loss? Was this smear of red
a metaphorical bloodletting,
a grander vision that the poem pointed to,
or was it some thoughtless passing,
like a mailman who has nothing
for the hushed address so passes on?
Read the poetry of Will Reger
Read a profile of Will Reger
Thumbing through One Hundred
Best Poems, I came upon lines
from the poet Kunitz--
powerful words about the moment
he waits for the mailman to bring his draft
card, from which he takes us
back through all
the generations of his ancestors--
But what catches my eye
is the wide spaghetti stain
in the margin with a tiny scrim of tomato
skin caught in the smear, rubbed in
by the big left thumb of the reader.
Was he so caught up in the poem,
so passion-smeared,
olive oil on his lips,
that he laid aside his fork
to grip the page inscribed
with the poet’s seminal moment?
Did the poem channel his own despair?
His own loss? Was this smear of red
a metaphorical bloodletting,
a grander vision that the poem pointed to,
or was it some thoughtless passing,
like a mailman who has nothing
for the hushed address so passes on?
Read the poetry of Will Reger
Read a profile of Will Reger
JT Milford
|
JT Milford Finds A Personal
|
This Gift
Early morning
A windblown spring
sun sparkles my neighbor's
wild cherry tree silver, gold.
Awed by the unusual light
I pause.
Moments later the tree and the sun
change positions causing the view
to forever disappear
from our time and space.
How fortunate to be given
this gift of transient beauty.
A brief flowering of elegance
beyond my ordinary life.
Read the poetry of JT Milford
Read a profile of JT Milford
Early morning
A windblown spring
sun sparkles my neighbor's
wild cherry tree silver, gold.
Awed by the unusual light
I pause.
Moments later the tree and the sun
change positions causing the view
to forever disappear
from our time and space.
How fortunate to be given
this gift of transient beauty.
A brief flowering of elegance
beyond my ordinary life.
Read the poetry of JT Milford
Read a profile of JT Milford
Michele Riedel
|
Michele Riedel Witnesses
|
The Interview
Shoes, belt coiled
ties laid smooth like runways
-he’s home.
Borrowed folder
leather pockets hold dust
seeping into tightly gripped edges
of rehearsed answers
and sweaty replies.
Finding old polish
rubbing into the pores of
scuffed shoes and skin
until fingers ache
into a hard shine.
Next to overloaded laundry basket,
he stands
mirror shined shoes
jacketed with runway tie
ready.
He spins quarters in his pockets
with a smile like the 1000 rhododendrons
blooming outside
toe tips out
he rocks back on his heels
– Johnny Jump ups
springing toward the May sky.
I watch him leave
like that first driving day
alone
puddled in the window
my shoulders
deflated
while hangers punctuate chairs and
frame jackets.
Read the poetry of Michele Riedel
Read a profile of Michele Riedel
Shoes, belt coiled
ties laid smooth like runways
-he’s home.
Borrowed folder
leather pockets hold dust
seeping into tightly gripped edges
of rehearsed answers
and sweaty replies.
Finding old polish
rubbing into the pores of
scuffed shoes and skin
until fingers ache
into a hard shine.
Next to overloaded laundry basket,
he stands
mirror shined shoes
jacketed with runway tie
ready.
He spins quarters in his pockets
with a smile like the 1000 rhododendrons
blooming outside
toe tips out
he rocks back on his heels
– Johnny Jump ups
springing toward the May sky.
I watch him leave
like that first driving day
alone
puddled in the window
my shoulders
deflated
while hangers punctuate chairs and
frame jackets.
Read the poetry of Michele Riedel
Read a profile of Michele Riedel