POEMS of EIGHT POETS
(Summer 2014, Volume 2)
(Summer 2014, Volume 2)
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Emily Strauss
Swimming in You Let me swim in you, sea coiled in tresses across my shoulders down my naked back cool water shivering me I break for the surface forehead to the hot sun momentarily then sink again you chilling thick abundance azure turquoise depths dropping to black, I emerge into you as a fairy into night mingling in some middle zone winding through my hair. Let me swim deeply-- you will enfold me flowing in your currents I drift content without thoughts watching colored fishes graze knowing you surround my open arms your blue-green rays shining the way to my rest, I will linger in you Ocean forever. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
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Des Clark-Walker
The Rainbow Serpent’s secret From the Arafura sea, birthplace of cyclones, the northwest monsoon brings cumulonimbus rising over the Arnhemland escarpment where colliding clouds incite chaotic lightning as thunder threatens to shatter the cliffs awash with torrential rain. After the storm, respite comes from clearing showers as the Rainbow Serpent arcs its merging colours against a dark sky. Among indigenous people the Serpent has countless names intermingled with myths and legends, traditional mantles for their being. Its perfect arc and colours cannot be denied but tetrachromats with four visual pigments can see ultraviolet beneath the violet, an invisible hue for us, impossible to imagine. [Note: "tetrachromats" are organisms that have "four independent channels for conveying color information, or possessing four different types of cone cells in the eye"--Wikipedia] [Note: Poem has also appeared in Balliol College's Annual Record, 2014] Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
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Nabin Kumar Chhetri
HIDE AND SEEK Surendra, you used to give me boiled eggs with grinded black salt, cupped on your palm. And pieces of honeycomb drooling with honey. And we played hide and seek in the maize bush at the back of our hostel. I would always find you out crouching behind a row of trembling leaves or up on the branch of a Neem tree. Your breath taut behind your closed lips. In the end, our teacher used to call us back. Now, I heard that you have gone hiding again It's almost winter now. The clouds will soon turn into snow and fall over the hills and lakes. I am beginning to worry I give up buddy, now show up. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
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James G. Piatt
The Last Train In cold spherical winds Of earth bound absurdities, My fading breath carries That which is hidden Inside caches laden with Darkened secrets: This Reality slowly flows from the rusted rails of the Last train as it vanishes Bit by bit into the dark unforgiving spaces, of unbending veracity. It is then that I know. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
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Ray DiZazzo
VOYAGER 1 (The most distant man-made object… launched in 1977… traveling at nearly 40 thousand miles per hour and now, finally, leaving our solar system… entering interstellar space.) How far ahead? How many centuries along the arc a thing with mass enough to bend your flight? Is the night you cross wormed with howls? Light itself hurling upward off the trampolines of time? Is never slowing down your catapult across the interstellar bow-shock to the pull of radiant holes a form of answer? Will you end at something? Anything? Or tumble wingless calling back calling back calling back across the long forgotten arc of our existence. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
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Roy Blokker
THE WAIT The wait excruciates. The wait is life Between those brief seconds Of pain and joy, Terror and elation. The wait is tea Too hot to drink, Friends too far away To see. The wait is your teenager Out past curfew In the family car; The flowers clutched like Precious escaping air In your trembling hands Two hours before Your date; The conversation before The kiss; The long nights of anticipation Before the Guest arrives. The wait is an un-ringing Telephone, Doctor on the other end Waiting. The wait is that Long stretch of highway With no vista points asking “Are we there yet?” The wait is paint drying, Grass growing, the twelfth hole, The pre-game show And then the commercials, Q. E. D.; The fish to bite, the war to come, Winter. The wait is calm seas, Dark skies, Stars fixed in space Imperceptibly dancing, A symphony of largos, Orchestra on break. The wait is an unmarked grave In a French courtyard, Truck engines running Near the Kremlin Wall, A short, last kiss Blown to the boys As they lined up, Wait over. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
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Tulip Chowdhury
I’m Quiet Today I'm silent today who do I talk to? The wind is not blowing not whistling or singing the songs and lullabies so who do I talk to? The rain is not falling no thunders crashing no raindrops pattering on window panes to knock and awake me, and so who do I talk to? Tree by my window stands silent no birds or wind to share untold tales, it seems to say sorry for not having any company, and so who do I talk to? There are people all around they chatter like birds shout like raging storms but they don't listen, really listen you know to what I say. And so whom do I talk to? I'm quiet today. Biographical information, favorite public domain poem. |
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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. |