Archive 9
March, 2014
Poet Dunstan Carter Shares His Poem, "Second Draft"
 Dunstan Carter
Second Draft Demonstrations, Cars on fire, A battle for power, The shivers of time, Goosebumps And hindsight, Human nature rotating, The cantankerous cackle And the rattling pockets Of the men who made good As streets burned And sons died. The bloodiest day Of a fictional war, Apocalypse With a twist, Lost heroes And the gossip of gunfire, The clatter of half truths Cracking and snapping The playwright’s Drawn mind, And the rippling gripe That the things he hates most Are the most true and humbling, A history crumbling, And he’s never been paid To just lie. Read the poetry of Dunstan Carter Read a profile of Dunstan Carter Juliet Wilson At The Literary Festival
 Juliet Wilson
Influential Poets At the literary festival the academic poet greets like a long lost friend the young poet whose first collection is just out. They talk ‘man to man’ (of course they’re both men) about poetic vision. Around them chat other poets, perhaps not so young or important, less fashionable or lacking confidence. But it is one of the overlooked others who tonight will go home to write the poem that one day will change the life of the woman hiding just now behind the academic trying to pluck up the courage to ask for his autograph. Read the poetry of Juliet Wilson Read a profile of Juliet Wilson From Ana Cabellero, Her Poem "Breakfast Meeting"
 Ana Caballero
Breakfast Meeting As an afterthought I can consider the present Skylines and curved highways Cliffhangings in real time and real Realtime Consumed while I am young I lack nothing and want everything I alone I Alone I Lonely please allow me to please Be Lonely Let me see the city as colosal and ancient Let my nights fall silent and sleepless Into the city’s whole morning call Silent and sleepless swallowed So unimportant that only the breath remains I awake To speak Back To speak This is the only way I know Read the poetry of Ana Caballero Read a profile of Ana Caballero For Eusebeia Philos, "Knee" Is The Operative Word
 Eusebeia Philos
Surgery Sings//They Took My Knee I did not expect Van Morrison to greet me in the surgery. Lying flat on my back in the haze of incense, no damn patchouli, I thought I’d have to genuflect on marble in humble homage. Tupelo Honey plays among blue-masked surgeons - they might have been green. A music countdown begins to remove me from the scene, looking at the dancing doctor lip syncing in his disguise, cradling a power saw. Van sings, I depart the seven middle oceans of the deep blue sea. The room where they cut you is cold, preserve the flesh at all decent costs. Cold and proper, a cold steel saw cuts bone from bone, upper and lower legs, separating what was joined in the womb, worn daily in life. Sensible degrees are dropped in a swap of man-made, God-given, a shotgun marriage, titanium and plastic cemented to bone, polished dead metal inserted through a zipper of flesh and staples. I meant to ask if they played Van through every cut, cry of my leg while I slept under general anaesthesia, the dream of nothing. But pain speaks before any more songs can be sung from a mouth in anguish. Read the poetry of Eusebeia Philos Read a profile of Eusebeia Philos "The Wood Fire," A New Poem From Ann Neuser Lederer
 Ann Neuser Lederer
The Wood Fire Sticks from flung branches scratch the windows like cats. Bones crack on the ice pond beyond these walls. Someone is traveling up a glazed mountain without a coat. This is the journey you once thought you'd be taking. You draw the sweater a little closer around your shoulders. You try not to pry your eyelids open when they fall. The red heart of the fire is deceptive. The outer edges of this room are cold. The sinister waves of heat flee towards the ceiling. You are too tired to climb the stairs to bed Read the poetry of Ann Neuser Lederer Read a profile of Ann Neuser Lederer Shan Ellis' Newest Poem: "Before the End"
 Shan Ellis
Before the End I’ve never been one for goodbyes. They resonate like welling caves in the pit of my stomach, echoing in the hollows of my ribs, clinging in symbiosis to lips, plated tight reticent to let them escape. I’ve much preferred farewell, or adieu past tense, with a soft kiss which leaves with warmth and memory which sparks a smile in dark times. The finality of the word, seven letters two syllables, hook line and bated breath, ripples ceaselessly in a tangible place out of reach. This is goodbye, this earth is too parched to plant a seed, too barren to support life, too wasted to cultivate. Where once, an oasis stood now a dust bowl dance of death. And there is nothing I can take with me apart from the knowledge that I overcame. Read the poetry of Shan Ellis Read a profile of Shan Ellis New Haiku and Tanka From Poet Chen-ou Liu
 Chen-ou Liu
Haiku and Tanka sunset glow behind black-robed nuns a homeless girl she whispered I am in love and love what vanished... my thoughts of her floating in the dark sea of night mother and I under the harvest moon an ocean apart this strange face in the bathroom mirror... she and I just seventeen when we saw our faces in Sun Moon Lake Zen garden... retracing my footsteps to No Exit Read the poetry of Chen-ou Liu Read a profile of Chen-ou Liu Jacqueline Czel Dances With The Stars
 Jacqueline Czel
To Catch a Falling Star They're going to regurgitate glitter LIVE on TV today! They're going to vomit silver, bronze, and gold like bulimics before the war starved world, clinging to life a few jet setting hours away. They'll rehash and totally trash old broads in tired red dresses, right off the rack, spacing out, spacing out at old needles tracks a zero zombie faux pas there amid the other amphetamine induced fashion messes clutching to the shadows of youth and strands of ghost town tumble weave, someone's fake hair truth. They're off to clutter curious minds with vicious assessments of Liberace sequins clinging to plastic boobs, sitting beneath new noses and above and the boniest of surgically made asses, while offering some of their stale insider crumbs to the plump lower classes. They'll pick at carcasses and pull on sinew like hyenas and vultures gorging on a feast of stitched maggots, day old crassness and make Sambo jokes about the accordion monkeys, propped up plastic doll pretty, Barbie pretty industry cyborgs, auto tuned junkies. Applause. Applause. Applause. Read the poetry of Jacqueline Czel Read a profile of Jacqueline Czel Mark Windham Shares His Poem, "Sea Creature"
 J. Matthew Waters
new moon rising we walked between the lake and the rail yards smoking cigarettes and spitting on century old ties wondering if the midnight train would arrive on time it was a year ago tonight marshall died on these very tracks attempting to escape his own restlessness his dream of starting a new life in st louis or kansas city or santa fe seemingly interrupted we made a fire like we always do and sat in a circle our voices as quiet as stones skipping on water our karma just a little off kilter one of us asking rhetorically why there is no moon Read the poetry of J. Matthew Waters Read a profile of J. Matthew Waters "new moon rising" From Poet J. Matthew Waters
 Mark Windham
Sea Creature I find her shoes on the dunes – discarded frivolities fusing with the landscape – then follow her footsteps to the water where the gulls dance around her head – screeching and snapping at the bread she throws – while gravity makes plans in the seabird’s shadows. She sends the remaining crumbs into the waves like an offering, as if she can sense the sea’s need for sacrifice. She has always been a creature of the shore, the taste of salt in her words and a thread of ocean breezes in her breath. Read the poetry of Mark Windham Read a profile of Mark Windham |
Beth Winter's Latest: "my periwinkle shirt"
 Beth Winter
my periwinkle shirt Today, I’ll wear my periwinkle shirt, the one I snagged against a splintered branch, then patched the rip, I couldn’t throw it out because the blue embraced the hope of spring. The rolling hills and river beckon me to come and share the gently waking scene, to loose the dogs and let them run unleashed across the prairie’s green rebirth from brown and down where daffodils spread pastel gold, I’ll peek between the leaves that rise as swords to see if pansies wear their royal gowns and check reflections cast at water’s edge. Untamed, the wind will rearrange my locks while sunlight scolds my cheeks a tulip pink. I’ll shrug off winter’s heavy woolen air refreshed by periwinkle’s purplish hue. Read the poetry of Beth Winter Read a profile of Beth Winter Cheryl Snell's Latest Poem, "Flicker Vertigo"
 Cheryl Snell
Flicker Vertigo
A parable unreels in air made luminous with silver nitrate and dust. Glint struck off a propeller tells a story begun far from here. Contrails corkscrew toward animals cringing in their furs like dowagers in a bad neighborhood. Two old pilots play chess in the park, hearing aids off, cataract eyes unable to track disturbances in the air of newsreel memories. In their wars, charged images flicked past too fast to register. Information received at 15 spins/second condenses thought to pudding, ricochets off the exits and perpetual threat of fire. Under a corrugated sky, wounds still bloom; where there is a pounding in the temple, fistfuls of summer poppies push through the scarred gray crust of winter. Read the poetry of Cheryl Snell Read a profile of Cheryl Snell Sharon Brogan 's Latest Poem, "Measures"
 Sharon Brogan
Measures The weight of a man on a woman is like falling into the river without drowning. —"Two" by Linda Hogan There are things that can’t be measured or weighed. The length of a liar’s tongue. The number of nudges required to push a specific person off a particular ledge. The weight of a man on a woman who loves him compared the weight of the same man on a woman who does not. The number of stones a single heart can hold without drowning. Stars in the universe, feral cats in the woods, fallen sparrows. The speed and trajectory of a kind or hurtful word. The number of molecules in the scent of lust. The location and direction of a particle at once. How many moments it takes to make a life. How many wounds to take one. Read the poetry of Sharon Brogan Read a profile of Sharon Hogan Poet Paul Sands' Latest poem, "rise" (with audio)
 Paul Sands
rise ☊ rise that we distance anything less than the invited silence girl rise through the anonymity of your greasy canvas let the cold extinction of peasants doubting the dead write your loathing of me you are high and I am cover for every petty perception yet not nor ever the mirror you deserve the glass so close many time inflicted kills where the wounds downpour impatient in their obligation forced lengths will burn splintered lungs and hand held photographs yet dusted tributes drum a rumpus along a veined abandon as wounds licked hold off such forced hope no wires can close so puckered a wither of callow tribute We Welcome Poet Bauke Kamstra To VerseWrights
 Bauke Kamstra
My Shirt My Shirt blowing down the road arms waving impulsively. Bound Bone A flute made from the arm of a man chased & bound with silver each note a year of his life played out. ❧ I am not practical enough for ordinary life my feet leave the ground in my gardens are no potatoes only flowers grow. Read the poetry of Bauke Kanstra Read a profile of Bauke Kamstra Three Short Poems From Poet Leslie Philibert
 Leslie Philibert
Elegy So when my profile falls apart and every swing door greets a stranger an old man has kidnapped my soft face. My eyes are full of red lace my wrists alloyed with copper my body fallen into chinoiserie. So let me collect, talis qualis, small sins in a tin box postcards under shoes in a cupboard as the breaking of my shell is the looking at pictures through a window, bits of the past, calls on a dead line, everything gone but not gone. Love Let me be a casement that you open when you look out of a window or a sill full of warm moss to rest your hands upon. Frost Hair of the spider, the old man`s curse; spicules of ice That turn my windows into a French pattern; older than rime Feather frost; white as a virgin`s hair, hard as Winter`s face Read the poetry of Leslie Philibert Read a profile of Leslie Philibert "You're in Good Hands" With Poet EJ Koh
 EJ Koh
You're in Good Hands Just do it. Kill the germs. Play in ours. Apply generously. For fast, fast, fast relief. Obey a few good men. 15 minutes could save you. The best out of crime. I guarantee it. We answer to a higher authority. Anything less would be uncivilized. This is your brain on drugs. Mother approved. Nausea, heartburn, indigestion, upset diarrhea. Doctor recommended. You go cuckoo for a few good men. This is your brain on drugs. Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? Expect more Double your pleasure This is America Choosy mothers choose Everyday lows Because you’re worth it Every kiss begins With Zoom Zoom Nothing else will do Only you can prevent imagination at work. For everything else, we answer to a higher authority. Like a good neighbor. Gimmeabreak, gimmeabreak. Is it in you? To be all you can be. Great Americans of a new generation. I ask you this: what’s in your wallet? You know what I’m thinking? Break me off a piece of that. Just do it. Keep going and going and going. Because you’re worth it. Once you pop Nighttime sniffling, sneezing, coughing, stuffy head This is your brain on drugs Have it your way Silly rabbit! Think strong enough for a man Trix so good they melt in your mouth Not in your hands M’m m’m you know what I think? The best part of waking up. Fast, fast, fast relief. Double your fun. Anything less would be uncivilized. What happens here stays. Good to the last drop. Why wait? Read the poetry of EJ Koh Rad a profile of EJ Koh We Welcome Poet Helena Nelson to VerseWrights
 Helena Nelson
The Mermaid's View Landmaids will mythologize: beauty is overrated. We are not obsessed with size. We are understated. We do not have to wear bras and baldness is rare. Luring sailors onto rocks is, of course, brutal. We do not care, we do it while singing goodbye, goodbye, goodbye because it is in our genes, like bringing certain types of octopi home as pets. We do not have vets. We do not have shops. We have fierce mermen. We try to resist them but it is no use. In the main we choose to lose our maidenhoods. It gets darker, rougher, the wind slaps to and fro and floods our heads with thoughts of getting away but we melt into spray. Read the poetry of Helena Nelson Read a profile of Helena Nelson "A Dream," A New Poem From Stephanie Brennan
 Stephanie Brennan
A Dream I dreamed of but wait, no one cares about another’s dream and the dead no longer dream or do they one day we’ll know but back to my dream that no one cares to hear until their own dreams materialize into conquered love I’ll tell you anyway you are free to listen, or not I dreamed of a future, impossible world where women are not shot up with heroin between their toes while tied to a bed, naked, the hulking weight of a man with a wife and two children, their photo s he proudly displays to other men at the bar grunts above the bound woman who begs to be rescued he pulls up his camouflage trousers, straps on his rifle there’s a war out there someone’s got to fight it he doesn’t look back at the girl on the bed she watches him leave will forever remember his face and all the others, etched, itched I dreamed this girl traveled back in time when she had nothing to remember nothing to forget Read the poetry of Stephanie Brennan Read a profile of Stephanie Brennan Poet Sarah Russell Brings Her Poems To VerseWrights
 Sarah Russell
Dying There’s a slow awakening to death. In youth, it’s a solar eclipse you didn’t expect. You look away. Fear blindness. At midlife you make the cardboard pinhole shield, warding off the glare and the blackness at the core. Finally, when they’re commonplace – after two, then three, then four, you turn and stare them down with your bags packed. Renaissance The robin sings at first light, announcing new life in the old pine. Below, sheltered by scruffs of willow a fox kit blinks at sunrise from his den. The barn cat’s manger nursery has sweet hay. Fields glow nascent green, and orchards burst white promises of harvest. Mortals, blind with logic, claim January starts the year, while Nature shakes her lovely head and smiles, knowing it begins in April. Read the poetry of Sarah Russell Read a profile of Sarah Russell "the listening room," A New Poem From Debbie Strange
 Debbie Strange
the listening room my heart flutters trapped against my hand as I turn the corner I am listening for the rasp of breath listening to the silence that shrouds her room her bed is made (her bed is made and she must lie in it) but not today today she sits serene blue eyes blue as her blue gown what does she see with her mind’s blue eye a small and secret smile brushes her lips like a wing lightly fleetingly for a moment she is all there is all that she has been and all that she might ever be in another time in another place Read the poetry of Debbie Strange Read a profile of Debbie Strange |
Take A Slightly Paranormal Walk With Poet E. Michael Desilets
 E, Michael Desilets
Just Another Stroll Downtown The Trust Company clock, always a few minutes slow, remains at the curb, but the cannon is gone from the common, the drinking fountain defunct. So much is extinct: Arcade Drugs (soda fountain vanilla Cokes) Paul’s Bakery (fig squares and hermits) Unicorn Bookstore (where you couldn’t get Peyton Place) Nipper the Victor dog at Garino’s (with Bing crooning in his guts) Gorman Theater (which opened with The Bride Goes Wild and closed with Putney Swope). The Memorial Building seems the same. Hitler’s Mercedes was on display there once. I paid a quarter to gawk. But now the trash in the gutters speaks a foreign language and I won’t spot my Uncle John X in front of Woolworth’s trying to remember where he parked his Olds unless I’m finally out of luck. I sidestep the sidewalk ghosts who step aside for no one. They gape incredulously, seething with loss, traversing the same few blocks over and over, sometimes hovering, sometimes whooshing past as if there were still somewhere to go. Downtown welcomes the dead. They find it hard to leave, but with eternity just ahead even the dead get discouraged. Read the poetry of E. Michael Desilets Read a profile of E. Michael Desilets Laura Madeline Wiseman's Newest Poem, "Propitiate"
 Laura Madeline Wiseman
Propitiate Household god, namesake, kitten from a stray mother who arrived to give birth to a litter of two-- when I answered the ad, the young woman said she would do a goodbye ceremony before I could come. Five-weeks old, fierce, smaller than a deck of tarot cards, I took you home and taught you to chase paper balls. Sometimes you bring them back. Sometimes you drag up my yoga mat from the basement. You are rumpled, like the clothes of a college co-ed, half-drunk with love in the morning, and intelligent, know your name and will come trotting from anywhere in the house or yard if I call. I do call you, Juno, feed you the fat green bugs that nibble the broccoli, watch you stalk the monarchs and grasshoppers, and accept your offerings, delicate, soft, grey bodies of young doves, necks snapped, blood at the throat. Read the poetry of Laura Madeline Wiseman Read a profile of Laura Madeline Wiseman We Welcome Poet L.L. Barkat To Our Pages
 L.L. Barkat
Return to Sloansville ☊ I close my eyes blot out one hundred and fifty shale driveways pickup trucks, Ford pintos, trailers barely tied to this ground by wires, gas lines cable TV. I can still see dirt road, Queen Anne's Lace, goldenrod blue chicory field mice nesting under leaning timothy and the apple orchard rooted beyond tall firs where a woman in navy sweat pants, red Budweiser t-shirt is just now hanging laundry to drift upon the wind, sing with ghosts of spring white blossoms, honeybees. Two Short Poems From Poet Christina Strigas
 Christina
Strigas
Exit You spin my world my axis is in space at night it calls to me and my fingers are ready to speak to you tap tap tap alas, nothingness. Submitting is not enough surrendering is overrated taking me is hopeless claiming me a dream and so I will see you around Perhaps in my poems or not. Perchance on the streets Fate. In another life Wait That already happened. I wish I could remember you and your essence. The Last You are the last of the Romantics why have you forsaken me? Left me here to swallow other people’s pills I need your silence as much as your words Fly away please do not come back for me pass the laudanum circa 1880 you in a top hat long waist coat my long hair piled high a few loose ringlets you, a latter-day poet and I your muse. Read the poetry of Christina Strigas Read a profile of Christina Strigas A New Work From Poet Simon Kindt: "Fold"
 Simon Kindt
Fold We round an oxbow slowly, the prow holding a line drawn for it by currents we don't yet see. She leans over the edge, brushes fingers through water, lifts her hand and watches pearls form on the ends of fingers, sees them grow, then quiver, then fall back to the source and for a moment there is only the river, the prow pushing through it, the physics of time and this. Our centres folding over in the slow mechanics of how a bend in a river's flow will pinch at the bud, how water will wear through landscape, will grind upstream rocks to powder pressed slow to the bend and excise its own appendix, casting off its own stray, leaving the discarded waters to still their sinking bones, the fish to wonder where time went to, and pressing always on, to a dark and waiting sea. Read the poetry of Simon Kindt Read a profile of Simon Kindt Narendra Kumar Arya Joins The Pages Of VerseWrights
 Narendra Kumar Arya
A Tree-Skeleton I am that night On whose face infinite flows of darkness year after year Like sweat-grains are still wedged. On my half-open lips The smile Has shrunk sour. In my hair-holes Are found nests Of sparrows wriggling with pain My gradual transmutation to a tree-skeleton Is hardly decipherable, though; Even last ruffles have gone. No blood squirts From my immortal wounds Neither does it create any despicable scene. Now there are only relics of pain In my petrified veins Could you make more assaults on me? Would you be able to tolerate fresh stains of blood? On your new draped robes? Read the poetry of Narendra Kumar Arya Read a profile of Narendra Kumar Arya Anne Graue Brings Her Poems To VerseWrights
 Anne Graue
The Armadillos ☊ She didn't see it coming, shouted something unutterable with the shots, then four of the five were dead, left bleeding at the corner of her house. "They're pests," the deputy said, "and they're too far north--these critters come up from Texas and will ruin the foundation of your house, ma'am." She thought he might have brought a trap like she remembered he did for raccoons, skunks, and groundhogs; Armadillo blood splashed unexpected upon the verdant grass. Her daughter took pictures once she'd called the sheriff; these were strange, primordial creatures she'd only seen on TV. They were sinister too, in armor, prehistoric in their gunmetal scales and taupe leather for skin. They were digging for grubs next to the holly bush between the hydrangeas and jonquils, oblivious to the chrome on the car, the man pulling up in the drive, cutting the engine, standing on the porch, drinking iced tea, talking, laughing. VerseWrights Welcomes Poet Eleanor Swanson
 Eleanor Swanson
Walking Colfax Avenue It’s not quite twilight when I step from the bus into a crowd of revelers. The streets are cordoned off with signs and encircled by yellow tape. The buses can’t go east, so I walk and walk on, leaving visions behind me, most disturbingly a joker, and not the dead Heath Ledger, but one of old-- in yellow and red with a belled hat. And a hand beckons me from a dark doorway framed by bare wood, leading into a darker place that more hands-- shadowy hands—wave from, leaving pale vestiges. I hear a song with a repeating verse, the singer’s voice harsh, then harsher. Stop. Please, Finish. But as I walk, the voice drifts away on the wind, into the west. The twilight is deeper now, grey and thick as soup. I will never be alone on this street, the longest in the whole of the United States, in the world. If the universe had streets, well, non finito gifts us with an understanding of infinity. I am going to a tribute for poets whose works were unfinished. Their words unravel and become dénouement multiplied and enveloped in the unyielding darkness. Read the poetry of Eleanor Swanson Read a profile of Eleanor Swanson Paul Mortimer Reads Two New Short Poems
Silence ☊
Snow suffocates the shuffling of nature. No longer can wind worry at autumn’s leafy remnants. All loose ends are tied up, neatly buried in a new world that’s stealthed in under cover of darkness. In this wire taut quiet my hearing is keening at the silence. Just your steady breathing breaching my ears. Visions sent downstream ☊ Speaking words of woods, valleys and moors over the weir, I watch as these images are washed away to some distant ocean. Read the poetry of Paul Mortimer
Read a profile of Paul Mortimer Experience this poem in the PoetryAloud area "Wake," A New Poem From Angie Werren
 Angie Werren
Wake she smokes like a chimney she is brandishing an unfiltered cigarette we cross a bridge the coke-stink of this town hangs between us like a tombstone we pass the tobacco field a green infusion into a rural wasteland textured with steel and mountains stripped of coal there’s always snakes in the tobacco field (she says) I roll down the window the sun ekes through empty branches it breaks onto the slurping river glinting like rows of tires in a junkyard you know I told him to stop (she says) I told him she crushes the cigarette between her fingers I look at houses flying past like abandoned railcars boards on the doors gaping windows sad sagging roofs I really believe her this time I forget about the snakes (shiny black and thick as a tire) yeah (she says) there’s always snakes Read the poetry of Angie Werren Read a profile of Angie Werren "Thunder Snow," A New Poem From Poet Mikels Skele
 Mikels Skele
Thunder Snow The clouds thickened and cracked the planks of heaven Heaved overboard their burden And crushed the green and brown spring in pale dunes Robins puffed to pigeon size Buds disappeared beneath white-laced wings Of earth-shackled trees No one about but Cossack girls With speckled jeans and high boots Pulled along on bright orange leashes Their dogs resolute and patient Sniffing remnants of bygone colleagues And sprinkling messages in the snow Long ago such snow shrouded mysteries What was it I imagined? All of life and death I suppose All of longing all of waiting All smothered ambivalence All new and green erupting from stagnation Read the poetry of Mikels Skele Read a profile of Mikels Skele |