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Archive #44
February, 2017


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Kara Knickerbocker

VerseWrights Warmly Welcomes Poet Kara Knickerbocker

French Creek Water Trail

​Sometimes they surge through telephone wires
or drip
from the kitchen faucet my father couldn’t fix.
Memories are always moving--
streaming hot fudge down Dairy Isle sundaes after soccer practice,
sweat and sweet meeting for the first time.

Or the pouring, moments after my mom says, “It’s gonna rain--
look at the cows laying down,”
cruising by a farm past highway 98
in a Chevy that still runs
like the effortless flow of gossip in a one stoplight town,
Population: 997.

They trickle
into my nostrils:
trace of wood chips,
gasoline, the flood
of burnt blackberry pancakes for breakfast.
Sometimes they spill over, tears down cheeks
after a punch from my older brother.

But the swiftest circuit in Saegertown is French Creek,
the blue vein that never runs off course.
The one that separates the school from the Dairy Isle,
the one that George Washington was once on in 1753.

My father told me never to swim there--
his classmate drowned
the Friday after high school graduation
in an inner tube, among friends,
swallowed by a strong undercurrent.
Population: 996.

The boy’s mother still left the porch light on,
every night for thirty years
until she got swept away, too.
That’s why the river is muddied, not blue or forgiving.

It is clouded with the bodies of a twelve-year-old girl
whose canoe buckled in June
and a six-year-old boy, ever curious
that toppled into a whirlpool.
995. 994. 993.

All were carried away
as my mother will be, and my father,
my brother (though he’ll put up one hell of a fight)
and someday, me, even with
grass safe beneath my feet.

Read the poetry of Kara Knickerbocker
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Gary Beck

Gary Beck: The Violent,
Dark Side Of Human Nature

Warriors

I move through the jungle
cautiously, stealthily,
alert for the slightest movement.
Body tense, spear poised,
I sniff the faint breeze
trying to pick up a scent,
sweat, meat, fear,
anything that reveals the foe.
A bush moves where it shouldn’t.
I raise my spear, aim, throw.
 
I move through the jungle,
cautiously, stealthily,
alert for the slightest movement.
Body tense, rifle poised,
I sniff the faint breeze
trying to pick up a scent,
sweat, cigarette, fear,
anything that reveals the foe.
A bush moves where it shouldn’t.
I raise my rifle, aim, fire.
 
My drone moves over the jungle
hopefully unobserved,
camera alert for movement.
Body tense, joystick firm,
I hover at 1500 feet
eager to pick up a trace.
A bush moves where it shouldn’t.
I aim a missile,
push a button, launch.


Read the poetry of Gary Beck
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Archana Kapoor Nagpal

All New Tanka From
Archana ​Kapoor Nagpal

from Selected Tanka

      reading
       a bedtime story
       to my son
       again he asks me

       to spell T.S. Eliot

                ❦

​              conversing

                 through our mobiles
                 across the table …
                 my husband asks me

                 is it raining outside?

                ❦

​      falling
       under its own weight
       a dandelion flower …
       my son runs in all directions

       to fill his basket

Read the poetry of Archana Kapoor Nagpal

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J Matthew Waters

J Matthew Waters Warns
Of The Darkness Within

when the lion awakens
​from with
in

so much dark emotion lives
deep within us
locked away from centuries past
idling by and unafraid
able to unleash itself
most unexpectedly

almost anything can spark
its wickedness
awakening from dormancy
and revealing bloody secrets
only unknown ancestors
ever knew subsisted

like a lion suddenly enraged
instinctively
you rush from out of the bushes
rip apart the innocent lamb
quietly devouring

any remnant of yourself

​Read the poetry of J Matthew Waters
Read a profile of J Matthew Waters

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Kathleen Everett

Kathleen Everett Considers
​The Inevitable

well and rightly

Loss becomes more common
place next to years lived,
well and rightly,
left to grass covered hillocks
and gravestones.

I know now that kith and kin
includes the land as well as the relations
that one inherits in blood
and bone and breath
and love

and life,
the last time I thought about it,
includes losing those
both kith and kin
and I will end
with a small hillock of my own
of green grass and
the breath of wind,

well and rightly.

Read the poetry of Kathleen Everett
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Charlie Brice

Charlie Brice Reaches
​Back, Recalls, Recoils

Mommy

Remember when you beat on his chest,
called him a drunken sot, pushed him
back into his old green chair,
drunk, overstuffed, his eyes crossed,
body limp and breathless?
Ward, you screamed, and
called an ambulance. Afterward
you pulled me into bed,
your hamarm vicegrip
held me against monster breasts.
Later your hamhands palmup
witnessed to the bedroom ceiling:
Please God forgive me!
I’ll never say another nasty word
to him, Lord. I promise.
I was ten years old
and squirmed for release,
but you grabbed my face.
Your father almost died tonight,
you screamed, as if it was I who had
slammed his cross-eyed maybecorpse
into that chair.
 
Inside your carpmouth lipstick deathsmile,
your swirling bedroom purling toiletflush
melting dresser dissolving ChanelNo.5stink
deliquescing turquoise jewelry chrysallised
chemicalpink cheerylava cough medicine
vertiginous vortex of bedroom sucked
into liquefying family crapper soultrap--
not enough of me left in your hamlock,
not even enough of me left to puke.
 
Two days before he died,
you wished him dead.
Had the Lord heard your witness?
Had He felt your hammy palms
cup His ether? Did He
read your deathline there--
how, at ninety-six, you’d take
two days to die, husbandforgot,
sonforgot, and ask, in your deathchild

voice, where has my mommy got to?

Read the poetry of Charlie Brice
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​
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Peter V. Dugan

Peter V. Dugan Has A
Slice-Of-Life Excursion

Central Park Ramble
​
I enter the park at 72nd Street,
where Imagine is written in stone, 
and wander down the drive, across
the old bridge, over the mist
that veils the other shore.
 
I follow the blacktop path, 
to the fork in the road,
marked by a gnarled oak tree
clinging to life, its roots twisted
around a slab of granite.
 
Going to my left,
I see the gray walls of the castle
on the hill rise above the trees,
access to it cut off, isolated
by a cross-traffic canyon.
 
You can’t get there from here.
 
At the comfort station,
a guy in drag and a cowboy
pose outside the men’s room.
 
“Gotta extra smoke?”
“Yeah.” I oblige
“Need a boy-friend?”
“No thanks.”
 
They wait for somebody,
any body to cruise on by.
 
I wander past the out-cropping
of bedrock to the clearing,
a patch-work of shade, shadow,
and sun, spread over the carpet lawn.
 
Couples on blankets, picnicking,
snuggling, men and women, men
and men, women and women, someone
for everyone to move on and out
of the darkness, into the light.
 
I stroll by the boathouse,
across the drive, say good-bye
to Alice, Hans, and Humpty,
watch the sailboats slide
and glide over the reflecting
pool, and I fade on to Fifth Ave.
held down only by the pull of gravity.


Read the poetry of Peter V. Dugan
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R. Gene Turchin

R. Gene Turchin: The Ponderous, The Unruly,
​The Delicious

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Peach Trees

The two small peach trees out back
Are dressed with a thickness sprayed green
And their limbs bountiful weighed with fruit
So they seem to be like weary mothers, overlong for birth
 
Making a path ponderously through the yard,
Waddling in their fat, glorious splendor,
As we, animated dancing fools
Celebrate the coming harvest.
 
So richly blessed with bushels, we laugh
While their overload, sighing, breaks branches.
Limbs worn weary, sigh again,
Will this be done with soon?
 
Properly done, excess fruit should be shorn
Early delight of twelve billion buds overwhelmed us
No farmer’s wisdom nor books of bloom graced our yard
Enthused delusions let them grow.  Unruly child.  With abandon.

          Read the poetry of R. Gene Turchin
          Read a profile of R. Gene Turchin

A Collaboration From Reka Jellema
​And Diana Matisz

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Poem by Reka Jellema / Photo art by Diana Matisz. Click photo to enlarge.
I too have sat vigil at bedsides
watched your sons
and daughters die
I have seen their eyes
settle & go far
felt little hands loosen
under mine.

Acorns pelted from the trees.
The thud of small bodies hitting dirt
at times like these
is small comfort
but the oak grows leaves that seize
at life, the fight,

the clutch, the tough.
​
Enjoy the poetry and art of Reka Jellema [profile]
​Enjoy the poetry and art of Diana Matisz [profile]
​

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Jeffrey Zable

Jeffrey Zable And That Field Across The Street

                 ​Surely

​if I’m writing this I’m still alive and there isn’t much to be done
until after breakfast at which time the noise in the air will be
deafening and the girls from across the street with fangs for teeth
will announce their candidacies for empress of the field in which
pumpkins grow so large you can build your own universe and bear
your children who will become serpents in the grass devouring and 
spitting each other out at such a rate that one may wonder if there
will ever be a safe place again to call one’s own as you hide in the
shadows hoping to survive if only for another day. 


Read the poetry of Jeffrey Zable
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Sharon Brogan

Sharon Brogan Has A
Visit, Pays A Visit

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Artwork by Sharon Brogan. Click photo for larger view.
My Past Came to Visit Today

my past came to visit today 
we sat together in the garden 
both thicker, older, milder

each carries memory of the other 
each carries memory for the other

we stretched out our legs 
rested our shoulders back 
watched the koi drift in the pond

& pulled in our nets of memory 
each, for the other

Read the poetry of Sharon Brogan
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Alyssa Trivett

We Warmly Welcome Poet
​Alyssa Trivett To VerseWright
s

Rejection Letter

Begin with a cordial greeting.
Name the victim, peacefully.
Call it out. Only once.
Yodel across the margins.
 
Ease in the word decline.
Like a broken leg skiing on a broken slope. Suddenly.
Leave it out of the letter.
Simply include it for the Submittable form.
 
Put forth your appreciation for the now, nameless.
Writer. Poet. Thinker. Doer. Submitter.
Keep it to a few sentences. Don’t overthink the obvious.
 
Sum it up briefly.
We appreciate you taking your time.
We wish you success.
Best of luck in placing your work elsewhere.
 
Don't sugarcoat, or over-butter it.
Keep it together. Peacefully end it.
Be generic. Email template.
 
With regards. Wishing you the best.
Drop a name or two if you wish.
Let it flow. Like an endless river.
Then build the dam.


Read the poetry of Alyssa Trivett
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Lynn White

Lynn White: The Fear Of The Ending, The Pleasure
Of  The Pat
h

Blue

Blue skies, blue sea,
a day of sparkling sunshine,
with a shimmering horizon.
And then, out of this blue,
You,
smiling sadly with your lovely blue eyes.

I knew you from the back, you said,
the cut of your hair, your bright blue mac.
I wanted to see your face again,
it’s only fair, you’ve seen mine.
You must have done,
me, being who I am.

I wanted to smell your clean hair smell.
So I took a chance, and here I am.
I wanted to 
abate the sadness.

I nodded. Yes. 
I know it’s true.
It’s all been said 
and we won’t be sad. 
No blue moods
on this bright blue day 
of smiling sunshine.

We’ll go together now, 
for now 
and be glad.
After all, 
one way or another, 
everything will end
in tears, I said,

So let’s take our now time
and chance the rest.


Read the poetry of Lynn White
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Vern Fein

VerseWrights Warmly Welcomes Poet Vern Fein To Its Pages

No One Looks at Old Men

I sit in my coffee shop,
day after day,
moving the spoon to catch the white streak
the overhead light swirls in my cup.
Sit and watch
no watching.

Maybe I could change that?
Light up the gray faces 
on the counter stools.

Next Monday I will wear shoes that don't match,
maybe a tennie and a boot.
Tuesday, a pink polka dot tie, 
with my Purple Heart pinned on, outside my coat.
A large, orange comb in my left over hair, Wednesday.
Thursday, the rainbow bandanna
my only daughter gifted me long ago. 
On the first day of the weekend,
my teeth in a glass on the table.
But that would not be nice to the young waitress
who wears the watermelon uniform. 
She doesn't look at me
when she always smiles,
but she is very careful with my cup,
filling even when it is almost full.

Then, Saturday, my old, rusted service revolver.
Just set it in on the table
in full view.
Would the cook notice
as he does when I sit too long?

I don't come here on Sundays
because it's closed.

Read the poetry of Vern Fein
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​
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Angele Ellis

Angele Ellis And Her ​
​
Au Revoir à L'amour

Valedicition Without Central Metaphor

You were my coup de foudre, my love at first sight.
In French, this means stroke of lightning—electricity
running through my stunned body from crown to sole.
Love, you were blind. From birth, your eye muscles
 
twitched, your deep nearsightedness strained beyond
correction—much less cure--by any surgery or lens.
Congenital vertical nystagmus—life sentence
to magnified text, to voice synth, to print pressed
 
close to your gorgeous face. A petal between pages
I shut to keep blooming somehow. A wing’s shadow.
All the sad songs that make blindness a metaphor
for failure, unperceived fortune, letting me/you go,
 
I must redact, skipping at that phrase—scratched
record, heart’s needle jumping and moving on. Love,
I tried to say goodbye without leaving, but no--
the radiance of your presence receded from my flesh.
 
Once we walked hand in hand, pressure of small
fingers on sinuous palm affectionate and directional.
I cherished everything about you—your monocular
scanning street signs, a steampunk periscope. The cane
 
you hated, albino spider crouched folded by the wall.
Love, oh careless love—the quiver of your mood-ring eyes,
darkening to blue, drew me to your sky, both canopy
and ground for coupling. Shaken by the foreplay of desire.


Read the poetry of Angele Ellis
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​
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Leslie Philibert

Leslie Philibert With Two
​Poems, Six Tercets

Winter Onions
​
My little round sleepers with 
lots of coats on, mud huggers 
​with a tribal bottom 

perfectly lined up at the 
bus stop of spring, soft under 
the cold loam, a miracle 

despite the banality of hidden 
numbers; time to drink tea as 
I wait in a cooling garden


Old

old is the smell of lavender, 
washed faces, the dust brown 
of waxed furniture, bouquets 

of veined hands that hide pearls 
in indian boxes, alongside cameras 
that fled across years, heavy-eyed 

then there is you, the way you change, 
you are half of these years, not just 
the ebb, but a wave never slight

Read the poetry of Leslie Philibert
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​
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Jill Lapin-Zell

Jill Lapin-Zell: Two Worlds
​For Us all

Worlds Within a World

Asleep on the subway steps
With her tattered heart
And broken spirit
Token dish with a few carelessly tossed offerings
Who were you in the other world
Before you crashed and burned in this one?
 
Old man
Remnants of your hippie past
To which you cling so desperately
Tie-dyed dreams
Love bead longings
No longer relevant for anyone
But you
 
Funky chick
Plugged into your music
While the rest of the city
Hurries by
But you don’t care
It’s all about your own beat
 
Conference call chic
Couture concerns
With boardroom blues
Can you pencil in a moment from your
Agenda-filled life
Long enough to notice anyone else?
 
Honky tonk cowboy
With a guitar on your back
The concrete jungle
Seems a long way
From your home-on-the-range life
 
Ivy league wishes
With elitist strides
Textbook case
Of dissertation dilemma
And classroom confusion
 
They are us
And we are them
Each of us living in our own worlds
While trying to get by in this one


Read the poetry of Jill Lapin-Zell
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​
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Matthew Henningsen

​Matthew Henningsen Celebrates The West, And A Legend

Ode to the Outlaw
                  ~ “Where have you gone my…”

Blessed be the outlaw the
Lone man lost, but
Found on mountains too
Wild, too free
To be tamed. This outlaw

This wild man wild
Like winds that blow
Through trees that cannot
Be found… somewhere, lost,
On the sides of distant
Peaks. This

Wanderer, this cowboy
Of plains and places
That cannot be found on
Any maps. Where the
Hawk sits. Where the stream falls
Down from snows that tumble
Down from skies which were dark once,
So long ago. This wanderer, this

Outlaw of songs that whisper
Through pines and that knock
On doors in mountain towns but
Once answered… once answered the

Door opens to aspen songs and
Freedom and winds that crest the
Hills and fall back to words sung once
So long ago… so long
Ago that I think of a man

Straightening a picture once and
Gazing back, gazing back with
Wild eyes of plains and mountains and
Nights spent by open fires beneath open
Stars that smelled of…

Rain of,
Such sublime, sweet,
Freedom?


Read the poetry of matthew Henningsen
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Mikels Skele

Mikels Skele's Warning Of
How, Why It All Ends

Swan Song

How hangs the moon?
Its swells all aglow
contained in essences unguessed,
or unremembered.

How dies the sun?
Its fires all but claimed,
mortgaged to the teeth,
unable further to dim.

The stars still hold their own, it seems.
Orion still hunts the bear,
faithful mutt dogging his footheels,

bow at the ready, at least until
one or another of its strings
explodes across the sky,
uncontrolled, reckless.

If there’s a lesson in it for us,
mudbound, entwined, encoiled
in rumored codes, blind to the stipulations
of our own existence,

it will be told too late,
our gasps of recognition
insufficient to sustain us. 


Read the poetry of Mikels Skele
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​
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Dane Cobain

Dane Cobain Finds All He
​Needs On A Weekend

A Long Weekend

​Sometimes life is overwhelming,
like when you take the day off work
and sit in a car for hours on end
to spend six minutes on stage
reading words from a page
in aid of a fundraiser,
and you stand beneath the cross
and try not swear
or say something contentious,
and you see ethnicity
and try not to worry
about all the little things
that might go wrong.
 
You go on corporate away days
where they make you relax
whether you like it or not,
and then hop on Thomas
and ride Clarabel home
through Drayton Manor Theme Park,
holding hands with your girlfriend –
because I’m pretty sure that’s what she is –
as she’s worried sick
on the Apocalypse.
 
You go shopping
walking through warehouses
and wandering through the market,
and sometimes
you even
go to dinner.
 
Then you drive back home
or fall asleep in the passenger seat
because you’re reading
but your little eyes won’t stay open,
so you watch a season finale
and stand up speaking slowly
at The Rose and Crown.
 
Sometimes a weekend is all you need;
all you need is love,
and love I’m feeling.


Read the poetry of Dane Cobain
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​
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Thomas Canull

All New Haiku From Thomas Canull

from More Selected Haiku

ripples on the pond
echoes of a moment past
darting dragonfly.


               ❦

              the past is not there
                do not try to re-connect
                dreams cannot be hugged.


       ❦

distant mountain range
grasses dancing in the wind
one lone cloud drifts by.


               ❦

              those not forgiving
                burn the bridge of forgiveness
                they must someday cross.


Read the poetry of Thomas Canull
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r soos

Two Poems, Six Tercets
From Minimalist r soos

honest

destiny is good
full deep self isolation
breathes odors deeply

the peeling paint is
beautifully falling from
the walls to the floor

I need contentment
to form a new opinion
of my newest self 


​
accuracy

the only things sure
are constant anger 
and depression
 
my eyes see blurry
my ears hear blurry
my mouth speaks blurry
 
my hands scratch
words on the walls

and the floor

Read the poetry of r soos
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Ken Allan Dronsfield

Ken Allan Dronsfield Delights
In The Domestic Details

​Dérive (Drift)

​
Look there, a gold leaf drifts in the breeze
floating down through the now bare trees
finally alights upon a bleached white skull
that has laid there since last Halloween.
coffee pot makes its melodious growl
the old cats tail thumps keeping time
blueberries sit in a purple stained bowl
I wonder why you haven't gotten the mail.
thoughts, like the leaf, drift in your mind
time passes quicker than it did as a child
your little dog barks chasing some leaves
coffee in tow, another apple log to the fire.
blissful blues waft from the parlor stereo
the cat looks up as the horn section plays
you return from your walk down the drive
the pancakes sound wonderful you know?
Light on the desk flickers in the fall wind
I write another verse to the poem of us
tossing the ink, but it doesn't sound right
breakfast awaits, I dérive to the kitchen.


Read the poetry of Ken Allan Dronsfield
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Jen Stein

Jen Stein Captures A Moment's Passing, A Flight

             Kepler

Passing between Earth and a star,
a slow creeping heralds a body in motion.
 
Possibly a body in no solid-state, or acridly molten,
or maybe the stillness of a body under extreme pressure
 
with surface sculpted by wind,
topiary of inviolate water, suspended in orbit.
 
Could be some far-off moon.
Could be terrestrial. 
 
Passing between Earth and a star,
the transit is precisely numerically captured.
 
As though no sisal twined to nets can catch fish.
As though no palm can cross your arched back,
 
no murmurs or rustling in the darkness.
No crisped edges of butter lace cookies,
 
no wine stain on the edge of the tablecloth.
As though there did not exist the nape of your neck.
 
I measure you by your shape outlined in moonlight
passing between the bed and the doorway.
 
Your transit is etched with photometric precision.
The lens of the Kepler, the mirror of my eye. 


Read the poetry of Jen Stein
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​

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Donal Mahoney

Donal Mahoney: A Poet
​Needs A Critical Reader

Kaleidoscope and
​Harpsichord


As I've told my wife too many times,
the meaning of any poem hides
in the marriage of cadence and sound.

Vowels on a carousel,
consonants on a calliope, 
whistles and bells, 
we need them all
tickling our ears. 
Otherwise, the lines 
are gristle and fat, no meat.

Is it any wonder, then, 
my wife has a problem 
with any poem I give her to read 
for a second opinion, especially 
when the poem has no message 
and I'm simply trying to hear 
what I'm saying and don't care 
if I understand it.

The other night in bed
I gave her another poem to read
and afterward she said this poem 
was no different than the others.
She had hoped I'd improve.

"After all," she said,
"you've been writing for years
but reading a poem like this is
like looking through a kaleidoscope
while listening to a harpsichord."

Point well taken,
point well said.

But then I asked her
what should a man do
if he has careened for years
through the caves of his mind
spelunking for the right
line for a poem 

only to hear his wife say
after reading one of his poems
that it was like 
"looking through a kaleidoscope
while listening to a harpsichord."
What should he do--quit?

"Not a chance," 
she said this morning,
enthroned at the kitchen table,
as regal as ever in her fluttery gown 
and buttering her English muffin
with long, languorous strokes
Van Gogh would envy.

"He should write even more,
all day and all night, if need be. 
After all," she said, "my line 
about the kaleidoscope and harpsichord 
still needs a poem of its own. 

It's all meat, no gristle, no fat."

Read the poetry of Donal Mahoney
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Mark Gordon

Mark Gordon: The Genesis Of Discovery And Respect

Wild Roses

Never since has a scent been as strong
wild roses in front of the cottage
the sea’s salt breath
on the petals
my mother’s complexion
her suntan lotion
           & I without knowing it then
           was opening like a rose
           like mother’s mouth
           when she said good morning
           like the sea when it revealed
           the shadow of a fish
awareness revealing
that there was besides my flesh
another world
that asked me to travel it
with gentleness and caring
           to honour it with my eyes
           then much later
           with words.


Read the poetry of Mark Gordon
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John Grey

John Grey With A Depiction,
And A Condemnation

The Dying Delta

After a Southern dream
of a young woman in a white dress
sprinting across the lawn of an antebellum mansion,
chased by some bearded guy with a gun
waving the flag of the great disorder,
I get down to sadness in a cypress swamp.

Landscapes suffer and who knows a delta's needs,
a blue sky in brown water,
a marshland getting by on luck
and the dutiful splendor of the merest forms of life.
In sweaty khakis and heavy boots,
I trudge through the swill clouds of a lowly heaven
where egrets are angels
and the alligator is god.
Time to pray, I'm thinking. Time to pray.

There are laws of nature
that are not themselves anymore.
Yet their small print holds me up
though knowing it's the likes of me
who made them what they are -
shrinking waters, ghost trees,
decaying mangroves and a vanishing frog.

Your killers once ordered slaves into the fields
to the great whip of heat
and called them songbirds.
That's how they abandon their true history.
Now you are nothing but the lie behind the legend -
an estuary of a once mighty river,
a waif abandoned to the homes and highways,
and we all know what charity that brings.


​Read the poetry of John Grey
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DeMisty D. Bellinger

VerseWrights Warmly Welcomes Poet DeMisty D. Bellinger

Superhero Tendencies

Tending to directives from somewhere else—Meanwhile 
and Suddenly and Next time--
Placing her into a trajectory
She can obediently follow, with thought:
“In a way that is sudden, something acts
suddenly, I react equally
and here is collision, against a collusion, 
for the good. Here: I can be heroic!”

Meanwhile, she sits because this is what she does:
Sit here at work, sit here on bus, here at home.
At times, she is in the path of cleaning, cooking,
Grooming, being. With obeisance, without
Question. She looks up at those directives, hand-lettered

And Nietzscheian. Or anti Nietzsche. She can’t figure it
​     out.


Read the poetry of DeMisty D. Bellinger
Read a profile of DeMisty D. Bellinger

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