POEMS of SIX POETS
(Fall 2014, Volume 2)
(Fall 2014, Volume 2)
|
Pedro Marrero
In Terrible French It wasn't the persistent tic of the clock On the nightstand next to me That made me think of death. It wasn't the spider quietly spinning Her delicate web in the corner of the ceiling, Nor the dying ember's orange glow On a cigarette about to meet its end As it hangs between life and death Between my fingertips. It was an unfinished poem I found today, Hidden away among old notes. Lines to a girl living In some small unknown town in France. A note that read like love, like love Written in terrible French. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
|
Tulip Chowdhury
The Last Songs Tonight there is silence. The cicadas that sang through days and nights of past warm days are gone, leaving me to wonder, if all had found their mates with summer songs or a few had died lonely deaths, no love found this season. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
|
Sarah Brown Weitzman
THEY WHO ONCE They who once rivaled the clouds in meanings of many smokes and brought down buffalo are now reserved on a granted ground where in the town his wife, Laughing Eyes, is called Maria and he is just a Johnny. Here they drag themselves like broken ponies to force a poor soil that sucks the color from their lives and yields finally this pale stuff. Here they’ve become old but not elders. Here their sons drink in new tradition. Here their daughters lie with pay-day men from the factories where the mocking smoke of the white man’s waste rises up and roams free mindless and mute to massacre the earth. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
|
Jonathan R.K. Stroud
Legacy “It’s not the earth the meek inherit; it’s the dirt.” - Camelot Splashing up the dirtroad, Teakettle-pitched squeals Not every Friday, but most, thirty-six years strong. And then—I never understood-- She held that balled fist in hers As frost pushed in on windows Waiting on the ambulance, howling retreat, settling duskness left a wake she gave too much. Our dirtfloor cellar-- She swings there, rope singing, Creak-croak, creak-croak Chicken feathers stuck to a dangling shoe’s sole. My chores are done, she’d thought. My kingdom is gone, she’d written. Blank lines followed the half-empty book. She gave too much. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
|
Emily Strauss
Words Are Just Symbols Words are just symbols: not pictures of trees not trees the ocean’s smell has no sound lupine speak no language but you have speech you can make words you can tell me anything if you desire this old pier is mute except for lapping waves and birds speak in unknown tongues but you can talk if you choose paint me the colors of your heart explain low-flying clouds the sway of grasses swallows flocking under the bridge your words could be strong enough to call me back from the full moon hung over the crystal edge of far hills you could say our names to the double-ribboned star band before dawn and those words would not be stars or pictures of night but night itself symbols of blind hope and fullness of expression lying under the black canopy. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
|
Dave Iasevoli
Arrowhead Before the Iroquois, the Algonquin, before them a nameless species, godless. They worshiped nothing and followed only their hunger with points such as this: thin isosceles tooth, exactly one inch tall, stained green where trod upon in grass for more than two millennia. Sharp still, as a shard of broken bottle, sharp enough to tear through hide and stop at other bones. A people leave behind no trace of gods, only weapons, still intact, still good as tool. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |