Two Poems -- Mary Jo Balistreri

Boating on the Yerres

                        after Gustave Caillebotte

Men lift the sky

in a shower of veiled hues, wooden paddles

dipping deep in the liquid silk of the Yerres.

With rippled strokes, they guide their skiffs,

slip silently between rows of poplars.

            A woman watches from the sanatorium, sees

trees shimmy in the skimmed wakes.

The green sheen of reeds sweeps her mind clean

            of all but the light, the men and the charmeuse

skein of river becoming shadows in the sun-drunk air.

Closing her eyes, she drinks the breeze, the stillness

            of this country afternoon, the lap of water on hull

as soothing as a lullaby.

            Shifts of color, luminosity flicker behind her eyelids.

In the cradle of her boat, she is alive to each vibration,

            braided into the melody of river music.

Portrait of Tennessee Walking Horse

I study your large head, your mane silvered

with age. In your warm brown eyes, time

dissolves as I reach back beyond the accident,

and you become breath of sun-scorched hay,

nuzzle against my arm, lick of tongue on my hand.

You lip apple wedges from my palm, and I listen

to the chew and crunch. I meet your steady gaze

on my face like a small thank you between us.

Standing now before you, in silence,

the canter of hooves  across the vast and varied

terrain fills my body with animal energy, the power

you hold within, the gentleness it belies.

Your coat carries the arc and blur of summer,

the scent of clover wafts around you,

and I am returned to earthly abundance

re-learning all that was lost in the fall.   

Tanka --- Karma Tenzing Wangchuk

Untitled Tanka                        by Karma Tenzing Wangchuk

A soft rain

falls on your porch,

the door left open

to let the sound of it

join us for supper.

Not much Spring

in my step these days

except maybe

on the way to her place

and on the way back.

While she's away

I water her houseplants,

bring in her mail

(mostly bills, reminding me

I owe her everything).

She hugs me

so long and tenderly

I'm lost in her,

and for an anchor 

forced to plant a kiss.

Waiting for her

to get out of the shower,

envious

of every drop of water

touching her.

Sometimes the wind

will strip a branch bare

of flowers--

a thought that came just now,

knowing you're leaving soon.

A Facebook friend

tells me her favorite flower

is the dandelion--

I think she must be

a good person, don't you?

Sometimes

everything hinges

on a word--

poets and lovers 

know this.

Two Poems --- Julie A. Dickson

A Feather    [A Mirror Poem]            Julie A. Dickson  

On this, a day of perfect weather,

Against the pale blue sky - a feather

Streak of white as clouds pass by,

Appears as sketched from artist’s eye

After which the canvas clears

When in the noonday sky appears,

Imaginary shapes portray

A moving picture, vast array

As if to entertain and show

The world – a ceaseless, timeless flow

                  ~ ~ ~

The world – a ceaseless, timeless flow

As if to entertain and show

A moving picture, vast array

Imaginary shapes portray

When in the noonday sky appears,

After which the canvas clears

Appears as sketched from artist’s eye

Streak of white as clouds pass by,

Against the pale blue sky - a feather

On this, a day of perfect weather

Known by Many Names                  -- Julie A. Dickson

Gaia speaks as Mother Earth, whispers softly to her child

Child answers Isis, goddess of trees and forests wild

Pachamama swaddles babe and holds him to her breast

Babe at the vast hillside, snuggles Demeter’s ample chest

Nokomis feeds a bounty, daughter of the moon abides

Longs for Earth sustainable, Jord the mother, life provides

Danu nurtures fauna, she walks upon majestic plains

Call we must to Maka, Earth Mother known by many names

Anu hangs her head dismayed, a sadness wells up in her soul

Children cease to honor earth, wilderness since the times of old

Mother Nature, Goddess weeps a flood eternally

Feels the loss of nature, the Earth not what it’s meant to be

George Held -- Four Poems

Four Poems                                                                               George Held

Corrections

Nature gave us names for our flaws,

Like a harelip or buckteeth,

both of which can be corrected,

that is, made correct in the view

of the community at large.

But before surgical or dental

technique made such corrections

commonplace, the hare-lipped

and bucktoothed suffered.

My dad once dismissed my sister’s date

As “pigeon-breasted,” but we knew

Dad’s mulish behavior was a reflex.

He disparaged our mom as birdbrained

But he enjoyed the humor of Judy Canova

Despite her buckteeth and faux birdbrain

And he laughed at Lily Tomlin’s horse laugh.

He’d made a silent self-correction.

Speeding toward Oblivion

Another birthday

And the days speed us

Toward Oblivion.

The older we get,

The faster our expiration

Date zings toward us.

Hang on to the arm rest—

This bus is out of control

On the highway to Oblivion,

Pop. 20,000,000,000

And counting. Can’t keep

That dang sign up to date.

Wave goodbye to the gang

Who saw us off—off

The cliff to Oblivion.

Come Back, Shame

What’s the color of shame?

Envy is green, fear is white,

embarrassment red,

but shame?

Is shame colorless as spit,

translucent as quartz,

invisible as a glass pane?

Can the Too-Big-to-Fail feel

shame for any act

they initiate? Can they feel

shame more than a beet?

Still, when someone

shames himself,

we can smell it.

Inventory 

I watch my step on every step

as I descend the subway stairs

like old Hephaestus on his way

to the hearth, gone in the legs,

scull more scalp than hair,

once-cancerous ear sporting new lobe,

yet I still hear well enough

to tell bad poetry at readings;

my one sighted eye has a plastic lens,

corrected to 20-20,

my yellowed teeth still bite and chew,

though most are capped or filled;

my crooner’s voice is now a croak,

and my beard grizzled;

my lungs and heart still sound

and my weight steady, though

my lower back often aches,

though I stretch daily and hope it cooperates;

my cock still stirs, sex still thrills,

but once a week gives me my fill;

my hands unsteadied by an “essential”

tremor, my skin wears a hundred tags;

my legs, uh, the stiff legs that started me

on this journey: won’t they ever be

limber again? How they would drive

me to the hoop and propel me

down the court and let me leap

for a rebound, but “rebound”

is now a word from the past,

on which I will not dwell,

since each day brings promise

of some new nourishment

or ailment—which brings me to my feet:

may they bear me long as my legs can creep.

Poem ---- Centell Jackson

Purple Hull Peas

Dusty roads and crooked curves led us to this place

Surrounded by many gullies, mountains, and valleys

Crop dusters sprayed water upon these gems

And we healed from them, as we peeled them,

we blended, as we mended our kinship

Mother Louise would get a bushel or two,

from her fields of love that's huge,

or maybe from L.D. Hughes or Auntie Magnolia

She would require them, when she, we, had the desire for them,

for black eyed peas

We would peel until our fingers were purple,

signifying the love and affection between us

We would gather pots and pans, and spots on couches and floors,

I would always sit by the front door

Who could peel the most?

 Almost like fun competition

And I figure Mother Louise was fishing

for unity among brothers and sisters,

when she’d say we got to peel peas tonight,

 echoed from her kitchen

I speculate she’d find the time, and design a session,

 to peel, to reveal stories for laughter

She'd set it up to catch up

She did it for unity, for family

I never thought about it much then

 her craftiness, to capture, and catch us,

this family of 15 and more, between walls of 4, for 1 reason.

Peeling, feeling that oneness, that often escaped us

We would put them all in one big pot, symbolizing the coming together

She would orchestrate it well like Beethoven,

and when she put them on the oven to cook,

mmmmmmm!, you don't know what you're missing!

Her own special seasonings

 her own special reasoning

her own ingredients

She's special to me

I can't wait to peel another mess or two

of them purple hull peas.

Alley S. Greymond --- Three poems

I Am Envious Of The Table

(c) 2005

I am envious of the table; the way it stands, resolute
in the north, the south, the east and west of it.
The table is rarely restless, never inching
toward the back door at sunset, never shuddering
in hesitation, so that the piled books and empty places
never shimmy to the edge and fall. The blameless table.
The ulitarian table. And I am envious of the lamp.
It doesn't seem to mind whether it pours forth light
or is left in it's own darkness. And the bookcases;
they contain all the arguments of the books and the knick-knacks
over priority placement. The paintings don't rage at the chairs
nor ignore the submissive rug covering scars in the floorboards
and bundled dust. The bed too, is satisfied
whether I make it or leave it a mess.
This whole houseful of items, unconcerned about the dimensions
of their existence, about whether they are extensions of me
or are a series of facts standing on their own.

Vicky Carter

(c) 1994

Vicky Carter teaches god and the 3-Rs
to second graders at Jackson Christian School in Tennessee.
Vicky Carter relentlessly raises funds
for the Soldiers' Angel Foundation
signing hundreds of cards each week.
Vicky Carter is a Funeral Director in Bakersfield.
Her dead are buried with dignity.
Vicky Carter wipes the brow of the weary
and prays for the sick.
Vicky Carter tells me that life is not difficult
for those who have no preferences.

Vicky Carter manages the Wilmington Mellon Bank
and still finds time to partner with the YMCA
Black Achiever program. In the photo
Vicky awards the honors, smiling,
and we smile with her.
Vicky Carter is the mother of a star
USC Trojan basketball player.
When I am quiet, I can hear her cheer.
In 1971, Vicky Carter changed her name to Vicky Nguyen.
Some Vicky Carter will always remain inside her.

Vicky Carter transcends race, religion, geography
and time. She is almost always female.
Vicky Carter is a quantum leap in our evolution,
an exponential growtht, an algebraic formula
I struggle to figure out. Vicky--the faster I hurry
the slower I go.

Vicky Carter is a Tissue Establishment Registration Coordinator
for the Human Tissue Staff
at the Rockville office of Blood Research and Review.
Vicky Carter oversees the Keele University Center
for applied Entomoly and Parasitology in the U.K.
I would probably be dead, if it weren't for Vicky Carter.
Some generous quality, some selflessness
motivates her to eradicate our suffering.

I believe there is a little Vicky Carter in each of us.

Vicky Carter is a Florida Real Estate Lawyer
and a Realtor in Joplin.
Vicky Carter crossed America on the wagon train.
Vicky Carter died in Portland in 1898, survived by
two sons and six granddaughters, all carrying Vicky Carter DNA.
Vicky Carter knows all there is to know
about property, about turning a house into a home,
about birth and death and the cycles of it all.

Vicky Carter is a fifteen-year old singer
of love songs in Calgary. Her talent exceeds her years.
Vicky Carter is a relay runner at the San Antonio
Community College. Her body is a temple.
Vicky Carter rides horses on the weekend all summer.
She travels in the winter. To live like Vicky Carter
is neither easy nor difficult.

Vicky Carter asked me
What benefit can be derived from distinctions and separations?
All I need can be found in vicky Carter.
Vicky Carter can be found in me.

Reborn

If we can be reborn, if we can ask the form
let us not ask for this. Let us try something different.
Maybe moss, deep in timberline up the slope of Index
where only the hardiest may see and leave us.
I could be a short-tenured fern beside the pine
upon which you entice in tactile emerald plush. Let us try
something that requires the courage only to survive,
that has only the weather to forgive. Let us try
something that does not require love, as humans know it;
surreptitious negotiations that bind us like a loose button
and a fraying hole. Too rare these moments of comfort
that filigree between sporadic reminders of your affairs;
photographs stuffed under the mattress, glove box condoms,
Hotel soaps. Our hearts navigate a minefield.
If we are required to learn the lesson of love, then let us lumber
back as dogs, loyal for life, whose tails never lie.

Joanna Sit -- two poems

Ephemeral



When Michael Johnson of English

Comp. 150 asked what it meant,

I told him, “something

that doesn’t last long. You know,

like the half-life

of a dream, a bubble

that you pop

inside childhood,

some would say that

another word for it

is ‘fleeting,’ but it’s not

a synonym

‘cause ‘fleeting’ implies

flight, movement, a kind

of elusiveness, and if you

really want to look into it,

‘fleeting’ is a word made

dishonorable by Jason

and all pirates of his kind,

fleet stealing the fleece plus

the killer girl (later he’d be sorry –

but more on that in your Intro.

to Lit class), birth of Aphrodite

and the Trojan War, blood soaked

ships sailing on winds of sacrifice,

sands of Iwo Jima, smell of napalm

on China Beach, the word

is different from that, as you see,

‘cause it has no movement,

no history, no promise

of violence, maybe a trace

of pink in the sea foam

from a dying soldier…

note that it is constant,

but not, it’s there but for a moment,

and the moment depends

on what you think of time -

long enough, not enough,

but it’s enough, as in the relativity

of time, which you can read

about in your advanced physics

class, except you wouldn’t learn

about the mass of loss, how

much that weighs, and the speed

in which it travels in

its own light, or missing

something that was never there,

a word whose noun you can collect

in plural, bid on its history, which

brings me back to

the point that it’s not

like the idea of the temporary

even though neither can be

traced. We, shameless, try to

give it time, or definition,

like jail in place of guilt.

At the end, temporary only implies

coming constancy and promise,

rewards of waiting for another

that’s not and so in this case

there’s hope and in that, a sense

of return, so temporary is the lover

filling in for love (the word made

flesh, the word made mortal), a way

to wait for reincarnation, some

redemption when you keep the moment

for more permanence, like

the cotyledons of ferns,

the coleoptiles of grass,

the true subject of Whitman as opposed

to the true cause of Dai Yue’s Lament

of the Flowers in Dream of the Red

Chamber (also later, when you take World

Lit in your Junior year) would be

the leaves of the cactus pear,

blooms on the cherry tree

and everything you see

and everything you know.


************



Daylight Saving Time


It’s going to get dark

early soon, night barging

in before we have a chance

to eat at the table, even if

by “we” I mean

the rest of the world

outside these windows, even

if by “eat” I mean drink,

even if by “chance” I mean

no choice but

all of this, without

invitation or rejection

a gust of wind raises

the curtain, a leaf having enough

looses itself from the elm

and the end of day.

Poems by John Burgess

***

Palpitations

make my heart

beat irregular

take off

at crazy speed

murmur and stutter

slam against

my breath

beat me

wild drummer

skip and skip and skip

***

Re-entry

Like Apollo's capsule

the angle has to be right

A slant of light thru fogged goggles

exaggerates visionary tendencies

Sun spinning in syringe rituals

& everyone a Security guard 

Not all places signed

are signed correctly

In a circle beneath a streetlight

on the lawn beside the chapel

Epicene

2013.10.27

Our fathers and their fathers

what passes in the veins

brutality a blood bondage

always did look good in heels

to get at something common

dig around the root

indifference is symptomatic

Mr. Reed is dead

velvet can cause arousal

epic only comes in metal

***

 TEXT. THERMAL/CLARITY.

Always stand waiting vigilant at the edge. Patrol the border where light of conflagration and reason no longer reaches. Set camp at darkness. Look homeward for the durable unmet pattern of night. Say nothing. Cradle him. Circle his halo. Remember that meaning is in things you carry in your back pocket. Anticipate the full force of his open hand against your body. Be there when stumbling and mud-stomped the angelic makes his way toward light.

***

TEXT. B.

What once signaled the end of buffoonery has become a ritual of black wearing. Can emotions be provoked by a noun? Tripping dazed down confused hallways and expanding sidewalks. You remind me of her. The good moon that wanes fatigued. Her white-linen face blushed with deciduous imagination. You slouch. Once the recorder of lost incidents you can't name which morning sun you're remembering. You're a faker. And this is fiction.

TEXT. MEETING THE LIGHT.

You will come to love this land as much as I do. How hard it can be! Tolerance can't be taught. It's not about me, it never was. Subterranean isn't a state of mind here. It’s as big as myth or as real as any street name. It hardens thru repeated administrations like stacking stones or laying bricks. It's the reason for 12-packs and carryout. I see it in your face. There will be stories written someday.

***

TEXT. CLAMSHIELD.

The way she exhales as if growling or beating a cymbal. Using the leverage capabilities associated with screwdrivers to get at things. There is an opening and closing to each scene. Level 20 is required and its weight of 20 comes with 32 defense points. You are thinking about something practical not decorative. It's not sentimentality that makes me keep the cut-glass decanter on display. I will flatten my memories to the thickness of paper. Pleasure comes from seeing context for determining scale, you say. A dog sniffing for explosives at the Post. A biscuit.