Stains wash out easily
29 years after these
infant sweaters saw use.
Wool dries while Covid’s fog
thickens, and my thoughts fly,
land in London, June 1940.
There bombers would soon
sully the sky, hammer
panic onto death and grief
while young women, aglow
behind blackout curtains,
stripped stains from tiny clothes.
Under masks, we too fold hope —
my daughter-in-law and I —
between the knitted rows.
What is left when there is no love? – John Cronin
You might as well be an insect,
trapped between screen and glass;
eyes full of blue expanse,
air currents ruffling your wings;
traversing every inch of hot mesh,
desperate to find even the smallest opening
to squeeze through and be lifted up again
into the rushing radiance.
I
poem-stuffed to the gills
summer’s humid air sweats fat
time to cut the carbs
II
poems breed, multiply
conquer but do not divide
we are unified
III
poet peers three cheers
open doors open minds why
can’t we change the world
IV
the rosary beads
metered circles strung as one
exercise fingers
V
family ties broken
circle of word spinners strong
new web is woven
VI
filled with thanks and angst
the end of the beginning
nearer to the far
VII
The party’s over
social poets meet & greet
goodbyes sad to say
Goodbye to all of you-even to the poets whose works I didn’t read or read and didn’t comment. I feel like my family is splitting up all over again. I wish we could do something like this-but not this-but an online blog where we could post poems to actually workshop and comment on, or not, or just post and remove or keep and keep for KY or open to the world-and then we would all be published and never have to submit again-LOL-I hate the word, the concept of submit and submission. And now I must click submit-again-I never get used to it-
the sails snapped with each small gust
as we tacked Lady in hopes
of finding the wind
we kept dead reckoning by day;
in the night we searched
for the distant stars–
those brothers of the sun
that push him aside,
replacing his glory
with dim semblance–
their warmth always out of reach
the brothers,
indignant that their pale blue light
gives the captain use
for his rusty sextant,
hide themselves behind
purple clouds,
flashing with unheard lightning,
those dark billows following
every night since we crossed the horn–
since we lost the coast to the thin line
that connects sea and sky
the captain often stands amidships,
his cigar chewed to a nub,
his hat drenched in salt and sweat,
yelling something at one of us or another
before turning his back
to make the climb to the helm
me, at the boom,
and Squeaky Pete going aloft
young Davy, his hands blistering on the halyard
the wind, like the very breath of God–
it evades us day and night
teasing the sails
before turning away
spinning above our heads
like fingers drawing in the sand
provisions are low
the crew plays it calm,
but we see if in the captain’s eye
inevitability–
his dearest friend
Corona has unsettled our household.
You suck up coffee too hot to sip,
mimic baby sounds
with each drink from a water bottle,
munch on potato chips.
While I’m in the basement relaxing,
you clomp from room to room
above my head.
I crunch crusty bread,
gulp when I swallow,
chomp on nuts,
hoover pistachios from their shells
with a smacking sound.
My constant throat-clearing leads
to suggestions of hydration.
You snore at night.
I grind my teeth and wake you.
The floor creaks
Doors that need WD-40
squeak open and closed.
I hear my own slippered feet shuffle
shuffle shuffle
like an old person.
And when you’re sitting on the porch
and I hear no sound at all,
I come looking.
This is a story about a trailer set on fire and pushed over a hill. About a girl and her sister that grew up in that trailer. About the Holy Ghost and His power to claim victory over a nation. Over a people, over a family, over Stella in particular. Because Mamaw said so. This and this and this is the way her life would turn out. This is about Squires Ridge. Both the trash side and the fine folk side. On the rough side, they were little and soft until they weren’t, a transformation at nine for girls and fourteen for boys. Then the softness of a baby face fell away into flat and hard, perpetually squinting at the noon day sun. This story, told sincerely and with great dignity, features babies rolling around with syrup in their hair and hugging people they didn’t even know when Mamaw told them to. “Tell her you love her, now” Mamaw might say and they’d chatter back, “I love you.” Until one day a lady from school who dropped off some papers was so disgusted she let Mamaw have it on the back porch. “Why, they don’t even know who I am!”
Appearing in someone else’s dream sequence—
here time grows
an evil garden of delights:
clockwork sundials
nightshade tiger
lily steampunk
chessboard primus,
tertia, secundus
flower-bed coffins
wrapped in newborn
narratives that all start
with time tea and thimbles.
Everything was a mural
in madness, playing Hide-N-Seek
with the Harlequins and the Beast.
less –
opposite of more
Less allows backward movement
as well as forward movement.
Like –mouse.
Move one space to the left.
Move one space to the right.
Move one word to the left.
Move one word to the right.
Move to the beginning.
Move to the end.
Like cycles in the reverse direction.
You may define your own.
It is possible
to be considered normal.
Less can also be
permanently in COMPATIBILITY WITH MORE
The normal behavior option is unavailable in this mode.
The LESS is ignored, the MORE
is used in its place.
—
Found poem (erasure) from the Linux Man Pages
Complete text at:
https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/less.1.html
AUTHOR Mark Nudelman
I don’t know what my last sight
Of you will be, it may swing either way.
Most likely I’ll be the one going out the door
But until the bond of synapse is broken
There’s one memory I’ll always have of you:
Bending over in the rhubarb bed
Strangely detached and remote from the house
Where I stand watching out the kitchen window
You’re like a visitor marveling at a stranger’s garden
Taking inventory of the shadowy furrows
I turn, stooped and slow as if freshly aware
Of the heaviness of my body, and from the back
of my head I see you’re already a bird
Winging your way downhill
To the wild blackberries
Suddenly I am a bandit, speeding downtown
I find a place to pull over.
There is no bathroom,
But there is a parking lot with some grass,
And a boy with a small bladder,
