POEMS of SEVEN POETS
(Winter 2017-18, Volume 5)
(Winter 2017-18, Volume 5)
Helen Wickes
What Sharpens the Teeth The spring of her last year, she wanted to get out and drove full force, slammed the brakes, all skewed and cockamamie into the disabled spot by the genteel used-stuff store, while I’m nattering, Ma, where’s your stupid placard, as she’s lurching, hobbling, laughing, white mane of hair aflame in sunlight, then she’s roaring, So you limp, God damn it, you’re really good at it. The dogwoods quietly unleash their riot of white blossoms, blue sky washed clean and easy, world of silence—no traffic, not a bird. How happy she was, imagining those treasures that summoned her onward. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
Christine Swanberg
One October Morning Past Your Prime* there may come a moment face to face with destiny: the flash of insight that if everything stayed exactly as it is, you would be complete-- the futile wish to keep from changing. Call it gratitude or call it melancholy-- the lightning knowing things are as good as they are going to get. Does the flicker circling the locust’s last golden leaves this October morning feel the same within his wings and bones? Will the solitary dove stay again this winter? Will the old demented fox running sideways to catch a squirrel finally come no more to the russet prairie grasses? Somewhere in the sinews of our used monolith of muscles, you know: you are lucky to come this far and live so well amongst the trees and grasses, leaf fall and chilly breeze. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. *Poem previously appeared in Chiron (Spring 2017). (See Biographical note for more) |
Mark Wagenaar
A Reply to Du Mu from the South* Du Mu looks up from a letter he’s writing to us twelve centuries ago, a letter edged with a description of the four hundred eighty temples of the Southern dynasties-- what they did with their idleness, with a need they couldn’t explain. Old friend, the same wind that lifted the corners of the rice paper around your hand riffles wild white yarrow & black-eyed Susans in the field beyond the burned church. Here, as many empty porches & boarded windows as Southern temples. Tractors rust beneath grass, county roads dissolve to gravel, the walkers on the bridge vanish. Where do they go, the ones who move on without a word, who leave toys in the back yard, utility bills on the front door? Here, a little sunshine & a winedark spill of deer’s blood across the county line, orange sun-spotted pagodas of wild tiger lilies in the ditches off the rain-tamped white dust of Elk Chapel Road, a straight shot to the polestar. So much I can’t explain, so much forgotten or unfinished, if you can tell the two apart. Old friend, I’ll be forgotten. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. *Poem previously appeared in Beliot Poetry Journal (Winter 2015-16). |
Paul Stephenson
The Guest* l’ll never know who he was, the man that just sat there his face pressed into the head rest, his beard a black avalanche. He sat there in the way piles of gravel do, delivered to the beginning of a drive, one ear folded like a landscape Christmas card, one eye a red foil bauble dented from storage. He sat in the glow of the lights and we prodded him with the fire poker, tickled his nose with a strip of gold tinsel. Nothing. In the kitchen, cold meats, pickles. Upstairs, choices to be made. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. *Poem previously published by The Poetry Society (UK) (2014). |
Avgi Meleti
Romel Forks I am this weird lady sitting by the window in black clothes. When I grow up, you will be able to see the feathers around my neck And the shadow that’s strangling me to death every night, in the darkness of my room. It may be the black lake of my spirit, but I cannot be sure. You see, my beloved Romel, the wind is blowing and ravens are coming. Ravens make me feel nervous and excited. I am really excited Romel. I cannot even describe to you why I decided to wear these old shoes. Do you remember my grandmother? The tall lady with the long plait And the sculptures in her breast pockets. She always cooked birds for you and these shoes are hers. You cannot fool me; I know she had given you all her forks. The ones I wanted. And I know where you keep them, but I am not a thief. Don’t call me a liar. When I grow up I will kill you to get the forks back. Look out of the window. Yes, now. Do you see the green valley? Spreading like a velvet leaf, I can hear it whispering to me every evening. The soil talks to me, the grass, the air, the weeds and the rain Even this old wallpaper talks to me, if I sit here with my pheasant. But these black crows scare me a little. It’s a different fear I feel. As if these birds can take my soul away. Grandma had never cooked a crow for you. I am not able to explain everything Romel and you are too dumb to understand my secret breaths, my whistling words and my rolling eyes. Do you want to paint me Romel? Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
Brice Wade Luse
Praise For an Unurned Soul "Who asks for me, the Shelley of my age, Must lay his heart out for my bread and board." — Robert Lowell, Words For Hart Crane They never found his body. He had jumped into the Gulf of Mexico, pale face with downcast eyes, off of the coast of Florida, still drinking, blue, waves rolling to the shore beneath those distant skies. His thoughts, delivered up from his moon-slanted mind, from some white coverlet and pillow, I see now, were his inheritances—delicate, refined-- they fell from off his northern face and broken brow. For all his optimism, his uplifted moods, he really couldn't take it in the end. He left right in the spring, another of those countless dudes for whom this world's so heavy it can not be heft. Across the continent, I cross th' Astoria Bridge over the Columbia, huge, grand, and green. It soars up to the clouds, around up from Marine Drive, like a tower-swept phantasmagoria, and driving there, up to'rd the sky, I cannot help but think of his unkempt and touseled, wrought despair, so heavenly that height, so horrible that hell, so frightening that light, so lofty in that air. O, scatter please these well-meant words, foam from his life, upon those sunlit waves he had no chance to see, his unurned ashes passing through America, while drifting down the eddies of eternity. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
Tom Fielding
O Voyager! (Another cautionary tale inspired by the Voyager 2 space probe’s message to possible intelligent life beyond our solar system.) Drifting out upon the meteoric tide, Credulous Man has cast his dream To divine infinity With a sparkling metallic eye. In blithe ascent toward Heaven’s unknown alien shores He expects grace for his transgressions And whirls far beyond his better vision’s judgment With a heedless myopic confidence-- Drifting To where By chance Might be waiting-- That which curiosity never should have aroused: Something hideous of intent perhaps A greater opportunist Disposed to judge with unforeseen malevolence Or insatiable appetite! The outward course And homeward trajectory Of Mankind’s last hapless attempt To transcend its rightful moral destiny By beggaring Redemption Amid the stars. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |