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Marilyn Annucci And The
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Marilyn Annucci
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Arachnida Neurotica Then there’s that spider indoors in a corner of porcelain near the tub acting like there’s no such thing as summer, suspended in a web of little buggers small as Oreo crumbs. All eight legs cringe when I raise my plastic cup his way, planning to carry him outdoors to where it’s really happening. But no go. The Grave's a fine and private place. Same with the one in the wooden corner near the broken stereo. She spreads her limbs like a goalie. Where are the scientists when you need them? Arachnida neurotica, spinning silk for safety, months before winter’s cold. Sometimes I carry one out, tough love, make the critter live a full spider’s life in a patch of green leaves by a fence. Other times I let them spin and spin, whisper Rumpelstiltskin in their invisible ears. Read the poetry of Marilyn Annucci Read a profile of Marilyn Annucci |
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Judith Brice Expresses An
Inexpressible Suffering
Judith Brice
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These three years-- dark days, deceit of meaning month after month-- weeks of winters wrenching their bare, foreboding arms. No chocolates, no sweet potatoes, nor magnolias, daffodils come spring; only the coldest winters of snow. Words too many for doctors to write in tomes of tattered pages-- long since torn, scattered. Days and months-- time and seconds taut, while answers absent, elusive float only in doubt. Waiting rooms broadcast show after show: Wolf the View, the Talk camouflage all agony, all angst. My doctor suggests a walker, ‘exercise equipment,’ he opines-- while I hold my mask, place it with care around my face. More anguish than a soul could know more struggle than a poem can own. Read the poetry of Judith Brice Read a profile of Judith Brice |
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Leslie Philibert Brings Two
Poems Of Aura And Change
Leslie Philibert
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Morendo on Sunday a basin of white chipped enamel tips the wash over the pale streets; lights appear in the random order of secret intent, confused stars in an untidy sky light the northern stone: hours slip behind a rook’s shadow; a rain curtain falls, we sigh with routine: we are waiting for a small, clean death, trapped between the sun and the moon. ♢ A Night in Tenerife the sea the skin of a wet dog, black the beach, a ruined church, the coastal lights a string of lesser ways; we are as empty as a dropped shell pulled across the ebb, a ripple of salt. and as the night gets deeper a dragon breathes like the tide: no mistake, the dark needs its hours. Read the poetry of Leslie Philibert Read a profile of Leslie Philibert |
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Marianne Szlyk: Art And Setting
Marianne Szlyk
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Blue Green and Brown (Rothko 1952) She wonders what is intimate about an enormous canvas hung up on a museum wall. Museums are silent except for garbled conversations, docents’ lectures, spills of sound from someone’s device. Nothing is intimate, not even silence, the pristine space between each person in a public place. She sits at home with the image on her screen, all other lights off. In twilight, blue, green, and brown envelop her, keeping her company in this humidity. Cicadas call each other. Indoor and outdoors blend : buses’ wheeze, the washer’s slosh. She feels the space between her and them dissolve. Read the poetry of Marianne Szlyk Read a profile of Marianne Szlyk |
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John Grey And The
Hardships Of Hardship
John Grey
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My Hard Times I have so much to tell you but let me make myself comfortable first. The fire's been lit and I've never seen a brighter, felt a warmer, flame. And I'm seated on this couch. Let me just say that if these cushions were any softer they'd be breath. My legs can touch the floor if I want them to. Or they can float in mid-air. I'm in robe and slippers and, had I been born a hundred years earlier, I'd no doubt be reaching for my pipe. I pat that soft fur of the spaniel at my feet. Does that count? And here comes my wife with two steaming cups of hot cider that my nose has already succumbed to while my taste buds are licking their lips. She cuddles up beside me and the beat of her heart takes center stage while, in the wings, her head drops gently onto my shoulder. Now...where was I...my hard times... let me begin... Read the poetry of John Grey Read a profile of John Grey |
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E. Michael Desilets:
Attraction And Deterrent
E. Michael Desilets
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Noon Rush Andrea always carried a bag of red-dyed pistachios to the Common and gazed at Officer Burke directing the stalled traffic on Concord Street till half-past one Maurice Slocum–“Slow Moe” to those who bothered with his existence– loved what the nuts did to her nibbled fingertips as she sat and stared and pried on the bench nearest Newberry’s Andrea was Moe’s crimson-fingered enchantress his one gnawing obsession and if it hadn’t been for that cop he might have said hello Read the poetry of E. Michael Desilets Read a profile of E. Michael Desliets |
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Lynn White Imagines
The After, The Voice
Lynn White
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The Breathing Days In the days when I still breathed, the days before living took my breath away, the days before I knew my soul was there. I thought about this time, this time of no light, the forever night time with no breath, no air to breathe. Just dust and darkness. And I pondered. Would there be slow decay or fast. Stillness or movement. Now I know. I know everything about the dust and darkness. But I can't tell you. Not now in these days of no breath, no air to speak. Only my soul can speak. Can you hear me? Read the poetry of Lynn White Read a profile of Lynn White |
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Don Krieger
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Breendonk Generations
1.
Anna and Isaac met in an orphanage
where they were hidden as Catholics.
They married in Antwerp. The house door
was six inches thick. Two great bolts
shot into the frame. The floor safe held half a million.
Their son, Len, drove me to see Breendonk,
Belgium's only camp, a feeder for Dachau,
dorms filled with wood bunks, a museum,
gallows outside.
I felt only faintly what it was to live there
yet I will not visit another.
Len waited for those hours in the car.
2.
An hour after Leah gave birth
her room was filled as they do in Belgium,
eating and laughing.
She lay in exhausted sleep. Bobby was in an ante room
absent fingernails and eyebrows, asleep like his mother,
too small to be held, they felt. Knowing no better,
I was the first, held him with these hands.
I bought a crib, clothes, everything
the next day, as they do in Belgium. That evening
we sat together, new family, full with each other.
Anna, Bobby's grandmother, showed an old picture,
her father and his 5 brothers
murdered when she was a girl.
Bobby is 18 now, his sister, Amy, 10.
Leah and Len are divorced.
We're all on Facebook.
Read the poetry of Don Krieger
Read a profile of Don Krieger
1.
Anna and Isaac met in an orphanage
where they were hidden as Catholics.
They married in Antwerp. The house door
was six inches thick. Two great bolts
shot into the frame. The floor safe held half a million.
Their son, Len, drove me to see Breendonk,
Belgium's only camp, a feeder for Dachau,
dorms filled with wood bunks, a museum,
gallows outside.
I felt only faintly what it was to live there
yet I will not visit another.
Len waited for those hours in the car.
2.
An hour after Leah gave birth
her room was filled as they do in Belgium,
eating and laughing.
She lay in exhausted sleep. Bobby was in an ante room
absent fingernails and eyebrows, asleep like his mother,
too small to be held, they felt. Knowing no better,
I was the first, held him with these hands.
I bought a crib, clothes, everything
the next day, as they do in Belgium. That evening
we sat together, new family, full with each other.
Anna, Bobby's grandmother, showed an old picture,
her father and his 5 brothers
murdered when she was a girl.
Bobby is 18 now, his sister, Amy, 10.
Leah and Len are divorced.
We're all on Facebook.
Read the poetry of Don Krieger
Read a profile of Don Krieger