Archive #51
September, 2017
Scrap Metal
She keeps a mountain of iron inside her, scraps of life she bends to form the words she bolts together into lines so real, hard like the iron in her spine, her blood, her mouth. The iron is in her poetry: an iron sky, iron muscle sharpened into iron knives. But a glass of red, some Mexican tunes will awaken in her a melancholy purpose, and she becomes not woman or sweater girl, but Mother-Poet, heiress to the Golden Cane, pugilistic sister, vision of the laundry room, rising on wings that lift her as she sings, Por que no quiere a Dios? Como cuando el hierro llora sangra rojo, sangra rojo. Soy un herrero mejor que Dios.* *Why do you not want God? Like when the iron cries bleeds red, bleeds red. I'm a better blacksmith than God. Read the poetry of Will Reger Read a profile of Will Reger
Chapin Beach Blessing
~For Emile Blessings on my big fisherman who currently walks the flats of Chapin Beach. The fog dances teasingly before an intrepid sun intent on piercing it. Early morning turns water into sand, curved carved traces of a night of waves. A stroller on that quiet beach will soon see way out in shallow water, a man thumb-nail sized, gleam and flicker of his line curved like an eyelash above what must be his head. Perhaps that observer, a city girl, will wonder who could be so far out. May silver backs swim lovingly around him knowing and believing this gentle man will make them want to fight for life before he slips their shivering selves with cheerful benediction back to sea. For now he walks with certainty of years, knowing and believing that one dependable thing in life: the tide. Read the poetry of Holly Trahan Read a profile of Holly Trahan
The Nearing Storm
~after Tu Fu The wind whistles through the trees like a piccolo. But when it’s gone, where does it go. I walk through the graveyard, placing fresh flowers on my parents grave. They are at rest in their dreamless beds, and I am sixty. As I dwell on my life, and the time I have left, a storm arrives. What good are regrets? So I hurry home, before I get wet. Read the poetry of George Freek Read a profile of George Freek
Admiring the Stars
To the one once full of promise each day is a protracted insult to the soul. Sunrises have lost their allure, sunsets their luster. Former lovers can only look through you. No longer do your shirts fit properly. The one once full of promise, whose potential was once spoken of with reverence, hushed tones becoming whispered slights, even the busboy disappointed by the lack of progress. Now you’re met with awkward silences. A tragic figure, the gods have abandoned you, a furtive star returned to the restless earth. Read the poetry of Bruce McRae Read a profile of Bruce McRae
Meteor Showers on
my Monitor There are too many. Too many fresh faces, too many fly by night rock stars and movie stars, and athletes living in too many places, and I can't keep up with nano second, filtered paces, the scandals, vamps and vandals and purveyors of public disgraces; Care not I, for sub second celebrities whose names mean naught, nothing, and utter nonsense, because they can't fix my roof, or mend my fence, offer any meaning, and come flickering onto sidebars - at my expense. They're often half naked and more often than not - half baked, their chins and cheeks are full botox and their breasts are always fake. Oh, yea - I see many a false prophet, bad actors and pretty product launchers, modelling snake charmers and fantasy peddlers leaning back on photoshopped haunches. Here and there for no more than 1 minute, and surely gone by 2. garbage, clashing ions in the atmosphere - what's a web user to do? Read the poetry of Jacqueline Czel Read a profile of Jacqueline Czel
Ceres
My only daughter left, spirited away by what it matters not. Ceres my soul mate now. I command neither Spring nor Winter, crops sprouting, crops dying. I can only weep like that goddess and understand why lethal ice and screaming snow were the least she could do to birth revenge. I will wait, Daughter, a visit blossoming, dying on the vine, cycles without end. Read the poetry of Vern Fein Rad a profile of Vern Fein
All across the levees
All across the levees the green that is only spring arrives-- young leaves in the still low light, a color found no other time-- the long grasses wave in the first southern winds, endlessly flowing without destination. Crossing over the river into the city you see so much less than this (like the first man who understood fire thought: we will never see so many stars again). Read the poetry of Bob Carlton Read a profile of Bob Carlton
Miss Carol's Dumplings
Every month or so on a Sunday afternoon I skip the football game and get in my truck and drive out from the city into farm country to visit Miss Carol and get my hands on her plump dumplings. Biggest I've ever seen. Best I've ever had, terrific with her legs and thighs. When she lays out her chicken dinner on that white tablecloth I start drooling before I even get a hand on it. A farm girl, she says she's never met a man like me so nuts am I about her dumplings. Usually, she says, men like breast meat, when it's moist, and I allow how I like that as well but not as much as her plump dumplings on a Sunday afternoon and her pluperfect legs and thighs. Read the poetry of Donal Mahoney Read a profile of Donal Mahoney
Autumn
The roses begin to fade and I consider closing the windows at night but choose blankets instead. I dream that an old friend has taken to drink again, and the pain of it blooms in the dark cavern of my chest, a deep- red lily, a beautiful wound. Berries ripen on the bushes. Uncountable birds. One bright morning I find a kestrel in the dogwood, eyeing the well-fed sparrows. Flowerbeds hum with gold wasps, black wasps, grass- hoppers, a black-and-white cat crouched beneath the clematis. Old friend, how is it that people are at ease with one another? When I return from my walk by the river, a hundred finches fly up from the gate. Read the poetry of Sharon Brogan Read a profile of Sharon Brogan
Ode to an Avocado
dressed with lemon, garlic, olive oil & mustard- a chef's delight but i like you best bare sliced open under rough snake skin velvet ripe & creamy belly drizzled with sugar & cold milk, bowled dessert of indolent summer days plump smooth, slivers of ambrosia your taste is only rivaled by my other childhood memory- cloistered nuns making candied purple yams stirring over & over flaming giant pan until rough fibers turn sin- fully lush as nectar oil decadent food for gods hand-bottled for sale in market - pear-shaped your green womb wraps me tight like seed coconut-shaped pining for tropical sun Read the poetry of Mary Grace Guevara Read a profile of Mary Grace Guevara
Resurrection
~for Hudson Rush I wish I could have kept the exhalation as the soul left his body, the whoosh, that moment of moving on into the mystery of whatever is next. I can’t grab this, there is no place to put my finger. He runs away and I want to follow after. I walk into the synagogue and a man follows my body along the sidewalk. I pretend he is watching my grief. I remember when I learned what a villanelle was. I think I promised I would write one on another someday. Read the poetry of Janette Schafer Read a profile of Janette Schafer |
Prism Honey-thighed surf children chase the ebb, bare feet etching pockmarked sand. Another surge, crashing, scrambling, feardelighted squeals, tumbling water bubbles/babies catching sun beams. Scientists see tides and wind tug at eternity, the vast liquidity of earth. Poets find analogy: cosmic force pursuing, crushing fragile human frames and timid hearts, while sun-kissed fledglings' merriment is incidental, drily pondered – this ecstasy of splashing play. Read the poetry of Sarah Russell Read a profile of Sarah Russell
Bones
Dad, mother found an empty bottle of Royal Canadian under the seat cushion of the brown chair in the room she has refused to enter 20 years after your passing. Suspecting that you are like the corn in September and the psyllid and the cutworm have already torn into you. You used to call out "dead man" then smile as if we kid's knew well that empty meant that the man inside was gone on from the burning hallways. Or was drug from the teetering cliffs, or that Coltrane was there with you in that abstract hell place where old horn players and people who drank so much in dark spaces but hid their secrets in the tonality of the blues or in those many sequences with James Garrison making ugly faces, in that darkened tower where below the damsel is left to howl alone. This just came to me, so I thought I would mention it, that mother is old now and has forgotten how to cook. But shit like this makes her recall you. Read the poetry of Dana Rushin Read a profile of Dana Rushin
In Memory of Robert W. King We all miss his voice of course: The sound of honest sandpaper Or gravel gurgling In a rough, river bed. He could hold you, spellbound, At a poetry reading, Becoming everyone’s Favorite grandpa in verse. Thank the muses we still have his poems. Poems which slide on the mind Like well-washed jeans, Loose and tight in all the right places— Good for pacing the distances Between hope and hopelessness. From now on, when the sages ask: “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” I will always think of you, Bob, And the sound of an Old Man Laughing. [Editor’s Note: Bob King was a joyful contributor to VerseWrights. He also recorded three poems with his distinctive, “honest sandpaper” voice. Old Man Laughing was his first full-length book of poetry.] Read the poetry of Daniel Klawitter Read a profile of Daniel Klawitter
Candelabra
The March trees in the city park look like tarnished candelabra. I need to collapse for a season into the village of poetry. Last night you confessed you adore someone else. My heart burrows like a whiskered fish in sticky clay. Shadows climb my neck. I turn to work—research on climate change—and digress into Wikipedia entries on the Euphorbia Candelabra of the Serengeti and Southern California. The leaves exude a toxic milky latex. Even breathing the fumes burns. “Someday—” I once said “—we’ll be dead,” you interjected driving too fast, cursing. You didn’t love her yet. You were rehearsing. It’s used to kill maggots in the open wounds of cattle. As I worked on my project thinking that loneliness is like being in jail run through a chemical shower machines banging all night, I was completely aware of my privilege—the incarceration metaphor-- and not trudging hours for water through barren scrub or sand nor swept away in flooding. Hurt only by love prickly succulent cultivated in gardens. It is sparsely spined. The trees flesh out and green. My grants get their funding. I don’t salt the damp pillow. Old friend, I’ll bring out and polish my mother’s silver candelabra fitted with beeswax candles, honey-scented as your skin. It changes sex with time. It gets missed for many reasons. Read the poetry of Margaret Diehl Read a profile of Margaret Diehl
Uncle Memory
A basket of fruit on a circlet of plastic lace is scented polymer, false promise of a greengrocer. My nose sniffs out orange, apple, grape, banana-- as if we’re shopping. Someone could break dentures on these. My uncle has teeth, but his mind separates into the soft wax of the past. An orange recalls his childhood Christmases. Grape is the altar wine he sips—sidelined—at concelebrated Mass. Apple, the orchards bordering the final parish he knows. Banana, lost—South American mission beyond signposts of memory. “You brought me this from Guatemala.” The silver bangle dangles on my still-unspotted wrist. He nods politely, like someone hearing a foreign language, as if attention could rename events in the mist. Banana, grape, orange, apple—chopped fruit salad, served in compotes by a woman from Belarus. The illusion of a restaurant preserved because she escorted us to the private dining room with a sympathetic nod. He knows me only because my face retains the shape of an old print. He calls me by my girlhood nickname; he lets me take his hand. I hold it. As the smell of plain soap rises, I find myself grateful for everything-- this clean pleasant revenant of my demented uncle, bland nourishment in a house of ancient priests, normalcy in a bowl of artificial fruit. Read the poetry of Angele Ellis Read a profile of Angele Ellis
Denial
Float down De Nile down the psychoanalytic Lethe Dial back the shame Dial up the shaman Magical reality of a drowned polysemy Forget Nail down the den that ails Who but the inventor of denial could claim that a patient with several feet of gauze left in her nose was hysterically bleeding Or blow smoke rings of no consequences from twenty cigars a day Freud’s psyche was an ameba whose pseudopodia encircled the world There was no other Read the poetry of Charlie Brice Read a profile of Charlie Brice
We were
We were young rebels acting cool hanging out all hours of the night tired of being tame, we went wild letting ourselves loose on the streets dancing under the neon lights and singing our songs to the stars. But we discovered other stars in the pulsing music of cool sounds blowing loud, heavy and light in the steam of a hot summer night, grooving to the beat of the streets, listening to the call of the wild. We were set free and born to be wild, a brand new age of rock and roll stars riding the big wave down the streets. We were young Turks, the kids of cool the banished children of the night living for the dark, cursing the light. But, like suicidal moths drawn to fire-light we pushed our limits and went wild. Out of control we were out all night, boozing and cruising beneath the stars, living and dying in the act of being cool with no escape from stress on the street. Consumed by the heat of the street We burned to break away and light up a joint or guzzle a crisp, cool beer and chase it down with some 'Wild Turkey' sending us off to the stars and our explorations of the night. We were lost souls in an endless night, wandering in the dark with no stars or signs to guide us out on the streets. We craved for just a spark of light to shine down on our world gone wild, chilled by the obsession of being cool. We were the kings and queens of cool nights, the puppet figureheads of the wild streets, eclipsed by the starlight forever out of reach. Read the poetry of Peter V. Dugan Read a profile of Peter V. Dugan
On a Moon Fragrant Night
On a moon fragrant night the ear a cauliflower hearkens to the cries of the impoverished street singer, hearkens to the swish of his modish rags shimmering ‘neath the torn curtain of sky. Parched thieves crouch near the simmering pond, sneak into the poet’s garden, steal lilacs—white, purple, lavender—whose gnarled branches curl & twist block the crooks’ egress, banish them to anguish & the dissonance of unresolved chords. May you never know pain of the chop block, never suffer branding of your skin, never be felled by the moon’s scimitar, deafened by the cymbals’ crash or waste your dandelion years riding camelback through the Hindu Kush. Such trials are not for you, mon petit chou-fleur. Come sit beside me, listen to the song on the far side of the tattered moon. Then we’ll gather the wind-scattered seeds that lie beyond the bleak horizon, allow the stream of regrets to flow past us. Dreams will perch on our window sills, mirages drift past the scrim of sleep, swift as the golden fish who plunge into the bellowing waters. Listen! for the ear, the cauliflower ear will carry you deep into its spherical music. Enjoy this poem the the PoetryAloud area
Read the poetry of Judith Dorian Read a profile of Judith Dorian
Four Stanzas on
Old Things Deep shadows of history fall On pavements trodden well in A white city on bluffs that look Over such quiet hills. Of Signs and patience. The cries Of voices that refuse to be Silenced by feet tapping down Corridors we cannot find. Still, They come and march and Say what was once said as truth, As wisdom beyond censure, beyond Hands that grope, in the dark. So come. So raise fists to dark Skies that hold rain that cannot Fall on songs that are spoken Aloud…. always Together. Read the poetry of Matthew Henningsen Read a profile of Matthew Henningsen |
The Hour
I listen still in the pre-dusk hearing only the specter of your presence in the walls Laughter muted by memory, your footsteps silent echoes on the floor Dinner is ready, a banquet of if-onlys A table for one, longing for your five o’clock shadow Read the poetry of Rita Lange Severino Read a profile of Rite Lange Severino
A Picture of the
Carrer Pescadors A photo of my old street, in the rain; Sandstone grim, the summer's sudden Treachery marked upon it As knuckles dent a cheek. I can feel the weight of that sky Wet treasure, and the trees, pushed by The downpour Over the shining street's mirror Are like wet-haired dancers Exhausted and weeping In the storm's dark. Read the poetry of Gareth Spark Read a profile of Gareth Spark
How We Are Tricked
by Memory My poems come from pith, just below the hide of me, from the circus trance of living the long moment, the split between inspiration and expiration, blue with envy of the sky, such security! We’re doomed, aren’t we, to just missing it all, to the rear view, to always thinking, “So that was it?” Never mind. It orders itself soon enough into personal mythology. You know the stories, how this and that caused something or other, you either played a part or didn’t. Nevertheless, a certain wistfulness, thin as a spider’s wiry grip and as strong, betrays us every time. Read the poetry of Mikels Skele Read a profile of Mikels Skele
An Angular Boy
mucho akimbo, all elbows and knees, sudden as summer rain, white as paper; he falls through doors and windows then, closed like a shop on Sunday; shutter-eyed, still as a nightbrook, a dry wheel under clouds; silent ♢ Golem unholy earth, dark with stein, unformed loam at birth; a worded child of mud; fingernail skinned blacklack eyes peek out of a ball of wet slam, a groundling that waves like a black branch across the sleeping fields; see a shadow under the cold grass, near in sight under a crust of frost. Read the poetry of Leslie Philibert Read a profile of Leslie Philibert
She Wrote Four Letters
~from "The Butcher Boy Series," II On recalling him to mind, she wrote four letters - some twenty years late. The first was accusatory: What the hell had possessed him? Had he lost his senses? To try and formalise their flirtation, calling for her, box of chocolates in hand, she fifteen, he fifty-five. How could he risk reputation for repudiation? She cast the divining dice, "empty of intelligence - thoughts are empty; just as the wind moves through an empty valley. You are becoming too worried and mentally aggravated for such a small purpose." The second letter was more temperate, removing emotion, stating things matter of fact, acknowledging a toxic third party had encouraged the liaison, and may have deceived about her age. The dice read: "Nectar rays of the moon", but still she was unsure, and had now heard news of him: "he sold his business to people he himself had trained. He helps out at Christmas, and jokes that he is the 'Butcher's Boy'. He is a lovely guy." He is a lovely guy, she murmurs, tears of joy in her eyes. The third letter is written with nothing but affection. How he had read her correctly, that she had longed to reciprocate. That he is the one she still thinks of, remembering their kiss. The dice read: "The white conch - one's thoughts become renowned like a pleasing tune." She pauses, speaks to a confidante, an older man, who will listen, gives her freedom to express, who'll accept her, non-judgmentally. Her fourth letter turns into a love song, she sings and releases it. The dice read: "House of Good Tidings." She doesn't need a reply. (Divination quotes taken from "Mo: Tibetan Divination System" by Jamgon Mipham.) Read the poetry of Rowan Raw Read a profile of Rowan Taw
Mercy Me
Kindness is curious - it sits in jars. It mistakes itself for grace - slips through the bars of good will. Kindness sometimes lives on its own mountain - looks at itself in mirrors; it never judges itself -never gets full. Kindness races down the street with its mouth open - words of reassurance following like a shadow. It holds your thoughts like a place setting. Kindness is air-tight and rolls down stairs wrapped in the problems of everyone else; step after step pouting like a lemon. Kindness forces those seeds out - then lines them up at the edge of the sink. You can tell when kindness has swept over you - it leaves the hair curled on your shoulders and weeps the willow out of the branches. It closes in deep when your hand is empty. Kindness doesn't ring the bell it opens the bottom of the window and one foot at a time invades the air between the words. It's the high-top of your sneakers and the down-low of the secrets you keep hidden. If you sought out kindness on a deserted street corner it would be the last vacant glow from the passing cars - it would not spray rain in your face. Kindness holds its nicknames in folded squares of paper - it is the voice as you toss and turn - the sleep that finally takes your hand. Kindness is the best of that love you can only now remember. Read the poetry of Amy Soricelli Read a profile of Amy Soricelli
Shine Shine Shine
Fog on the hillside and running through my lungs The sun spokes through the wings of a sparrow as it beats a bright path across the field spilled open with dew-dappled spiderwebs like a pirate deciding his treasure was ours Shine shine shine Later, a red leaf takes off on a lark and gambols downriver and I am the only one wise to its stumble, its easeful incision into a current peopled by pond skaters saving their best dance for light A fawn pokes its nose through the brush alongside me to look, with alarm and-- curiosity Read the poetry of Sarah Hina Read a profile of Sarah Hina
The Floating Iris
She's like an accordion Frightened smile Broken eyes In need of laughter She gambols in the falling leaves As they silently brush their way through her soft hair Twirling around in her patterned sweater Feeling the wind through her finger tips Tasting the everlasting beauty of the brisk air. Then, as we sing in the garden Gazing at the twilight Teeth filled with everything but sorrow We shout out our fears As we cavort and frolic through our lives Through the falling trees And through the broken and withered leaves We step Read the poetry of Sam Kendall Read a profile of Sam Kendall
Dandelion Seeds This becomes my favorite part of every day- the place where I collect thoughts and write them, to you. Even when there is nothing much to say. Small winged flying things and the halo of ice crystals surrounding the moon weigh equally with promotions and demotions, life, death, and rebirth. My dream is that one day my description of how the sun rose golden pink today, lets you know, simply, that you were part of its rising. That you may find my “I love you” as a message hidden between lines of mundane things, scattered like so many dandelion seeds in the wishes my heart makes to my mind each time I find a few quick words for decorating your day. Read the poetry of Marie Anzalone Read a profile of Marie Anzalone
Chatting with Fellini
Rocked up early for a meeting with a friend at a wood oven pizza place, warm in Winter, on the road to Adelaide. This little man with over his collar grey hair sits in a corner, by a flashy gilded mirror, wearing a fedora hat and black rimmed glasses. There’s Marilyn and Elvis and Charlie. Audrey and Harrison and Clark and Vivian (Leigh), tomorrow is another day, 8½ weeks from Spring. The place near empty. Well-used tables, chairs. Wooden. If they could speak, what stories to tell, but for another time, or maybe after midnight. He flashes a serious smile. We talk. Italian. I once emailed to Barcelona University in Google Spanish, re-translated it was rubbish, so keep my side to ’si’ and ’si’ as he emotes. His name is Federico, seems he’d made a film or four. He knew his stuff. Those earlier spoken of, certainly knew him, though I doubt they’d ever found their marks on his film sets, and certainly not Elvis, pretty sure. The King and Marilyn were busy anyway, as they flirted near my table. Harrison the voyeur, had his whip out and was raiding a lost ark. My friend arrived. M, E, C, A, H, C (Gable) and V, stepped back onto the walls. Gone with the wind. I turned to Federico, but only an empty chair. He’d left the room before I could convey how I had enjoyed his films Satyricon and 8½, all those years ago, when life was simpler. Fellini’s, great cappuccinos, pizzas. Read the poetry of Martin Christmas Read a profile of Martin Christmas |
