contemporary poetry

Molten Thoughts

POSTED IN contemporary poetry December 6, 2013

Walkabout

POSTED IN contemporary poetry December 6, 2013

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Walkabout

I went walkabout
and you died.

I was on the other side of the world.

I cried my tears into the ocean.
Ached with grief
as I swam in crystal-blue water
and marvelled at the beauty
of the Barrier Reef.

I set a place for you
at the table that evening,
and talked to you
as if you were there with me.

You were there with me.

You rediscovered your wings
and rode on the wind
to join me
in that red and gold land
of songlines and spirits.

Your soul-self
lighter than a feather.

Our mother-daughter differences
effaced in the blink of an eye.

As I walked in the
footprints of the ancestors,
you followed me.

Whispered in my ear
as I sat saddened on the beach.

Your freedom was my consolation.

I went walkabout
and you died.

You and I planned it that way,
I guess.

 

 

Copyright © 2010 Annette Gartland

Saint Louis Lesson

POSTED IN contemporary poetry December 6, 2013

Saint Louis Lesson

Yesterday the puddle pooled its chilly molecules.
I watched it grow as former snow flowed
below the lawn to where mud offered cupped embrace
then rendered reformed crystals a softer, more reflective glaze.

By today the tiny pond projected tall pines,
invited fat robins and frisky squirrels to drink and bathe;
their stone bath and hung feeders shrugged in tired ice.
I thought I saw a spring thing happen here.

But I am from where tropics mumble nature’s metaphors,
grumble from space edge clouds and lurking swamps,
where warm and warmer dull distinction.
By afternoon another snow ended the lesson.

 

 

 

 

 

Rick Eyerdam

Without Words

POSTED IN contemporary poetry December 5, 2013

Gringo

POSTED IN contemporary poetry December 1, 2013

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gringo

Wetback. Fence-jumper. My father’s heart fists
with its yearly dying as he recalls his hired hand—
a Hispanic—burying
our tractor to its axle in a soup of snowmelt
to men who, every morning,
sit half-mooned around the greasy spoon’s table,
lifting Styrofoam cups to sunburnt lips:
hardscrabble farmers—chassis grease
gloving their hands, prove rumors
of neighbors’ gone
belly-up, face down, neighbors fenced-in
by stars. And I’m ten years old, impossibly here,
spit and image of men I’m warned to call sir,
men who’ve bottle-fed
my younger sister as tenderly as their own
daughters and they’re cursing, cursing.
It’s goddamn the weather, goddamn the busted baler,
goddamn the combine’s clutch chewed to shit
then one of the men says I would have shot
the little beaner right where he stood.
Everyone laughs.
I laugh too, although I don’t
know what spick means, beaner,
only that my father is coughing, which means
one more year, two if he’s golden,
which is nothing
to cemetery soil, the patience of the open grave.
The others stay, careless in conversation,
as if their voices were enough
to keep their small, Sunday god
from deafness. Years later, I’d land summer work
at Iowa Beef Packers pressure washing
gore from stalls, as undocumented men worked
blades, quick as flies, on the bloodletting line.
When I ask Eduardo how, lace-deep in rarefied blood,
he could open the soft machines
of bulls with a razor knife, cut away flesh
easy as a winter jacket, he presses his thumb
and index finger together like locust wings
and rubs, which means money,
which means everything.
Not surprising when Eduardo
says his younger sister, unable to speak a lick
of English, would show me her naked chest
for twenty dollars after work,
says she’d already lifted her skirt
for half the slaughterhouse
gringos. She, dressed like a Salvation
Army mannequin, led me behind the dumpsters,
unsnapped a dozen iridescent buttons,
and it was done—that fast.
Afterwards only the graceless,
shopworn cups eclipsed her breasts
that, just moments before, I’d admired
as slow fire, as her necessity’s waning gift.
She’ll never know how I once opened a book
of poems over my father’s headstone
in the blue hour and began to read the words
which sounded more like a prayer
than any prayer, as soil’s sickening
labor turned his body
deftly as erratic stone, his blood greening
blades of cemetery fescue.

 

 

 

 

 

Brandon Courtney

It all adds up

POSTED IN contemporary poetry November 30, 2013

It all adds up

I am the sum of the past
a past that never went
its momentum travels fast
freighting each precious
moment of this life
like lightening flashes
sometimes a brief glimpse
other times more intense.
A Venezuelan storm
that continuously sheds
unexpected illumination
refracting on the scene
I am the lightning
and the landscape, I am
all the colours of this life .

 

from PoetryZoo Abigael

 

 

Gael Bage

Pass the Blackout

POSTED IN contemporary poetry November 30, 2013

Pass the Blackout

You should know, sweet sailor,
    that every time the boatswain blows
sleepy taps into the misery pipe,
    a corsage of sea salt
blossoms on the wrists of standby wives
    sequestered in cap sleeves
and hot copper headaches.
    You should know the storm flag
is saluted when thunderclap
    erases the strategy in our smiles
and braids our breath into aiguillettes.
    Fieldstrip the stars like
the cherry of a cigarette,
    watch them fall windward as
gravity warps our chest medals into lifeboats,
    our dress whites into
hospital gowns.
    Goodnight nurse, ghost of Joan,
Before your dreams run aground
    know sweet sailor:
There’s a red phone at the
    bottom of every ocean
there’s a seabag full of sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

Brandon Courtney

Power Grid

POSTED IN contemporary poetry November 29, 2013

Power Grid

Come down from there.
I can imagine
More clearly your
Wistfulness as sculpture.

I made a painting
Of nothing. It’s
In my hallway. I
Know it’s a tree,

Or rather the soul
Of a tree. The
Wind in it gets caught
In the yellow

Branches. Somewhere deep
In its wood the
Dotted lines of a
Rainstorm. It’s just I’m

Too far away now.
I remember six
Actors in a
Split level white house.

The shower’s turned
On. The shower’s turned
Off. What might I chip
Away? I remember

Distinctly. My middle
Name’s not a name!
A noose dangled from
A rafter in the garage.

I know I was fifteen
Cutting up “death threats”
I’d written at twelve.
One was to Jonny Quest.

Something or nothing,
The sky pours off
Of that canvas.
If the grass spider

Keeps living through
Winter. He tells me
A story. His web
Bubbles up out of

An unused drain.
Paint for the blind,
Tulips. They burn
Until there is no frame.

 

 

 

 

 

David Dodd Lee

The Architect’s Widow

POSTED IN contemporary poetry November 29, 2013

The Architect’s Widow

Now, you only notice city windows
when thin light warms behind them,

shadows gathering in white pleats
of curtains, foggy as tracing paper,

their billows breaking the rigid frame.
This is what he meant by negative

space: not the domes of the cathedral,
but the places you stand to see

their familiar swell. Still, to watch you
startle at your reflection in the blisters

of his windows, your shoulders sloped
— gentle curve of a wingback chair —

the city’s wind snared between girders,
facades of red brick, the body’s tilt

in a warp of glass, is to know something
of the way light distorts the thing it touches.

Once, he told you that each bend in every
building has as many names as Rochester’s

phonebook: fanlight, oculus, loggia — yet,
no single word for the way rain darkens

the shingles of the steeple or how the roof’s
fixed line dovetails a blurred sky.

 

Brandon Courtney

First love

POSTED IN contemporary poetry November 29, 2013

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