Saturday, July 26, 2014

JAZZ

artwork: ralph murre

JAZZ
by Jackie Langetieg

I don’t want to go to Chet Baker’s house

Let him come to me, lean his back against
the scene of ancient Chinese mountains in my living room
Let me serve him Metaxa brandy in a water glass

Don’t let the smoke leave the room––nothing should fly out
on the wings of notes coming from his horn, his voice his hands
words left hanging on black clefs of minor chords

I’m loose on the sofa, Robe slightly open hoping he’ll notice
baby grand ready for his touch
like the counting of my ribs, each finger placed surely
on the steps of my spine.

I feel his concentration on the music
I’m just a body temporarily in his way for tonight
The old serrated trees on the panel behind me sway
and fantasy fills my head. The music trails off and he joins me

We speak little, lie to each other, talk of insignificances
Soon dawn is opening the curtains of night and he drives off
leaving me lost in the smoky night music still at play in the room.


~ first published in Norbert Blei’s Poetry Dispatch

Monday, July 21, 2014

In This Recession

detail, public sculpture, buenos aires - photo: ralph murre


In This Recession
by Megan Webster

I’m sorry I feel such delight
when your dad’s just passed away—

I’ve been there, aving Haknow the pain
& scold myself for letting

joy flare up my world
while yours shrouds with gray.

Yet . . . I cannot deny
that your morning call—

requesting my new address
to overnight the five grand

you owe me—has lifted
my heart to delirious heights.                                                                                  


 ~  first published in The San Diego Poetry Annual

Friday, July 18, 2014

A Compendium of Daydreams

artwork: ralph murre


A Compendium of Daydreams
by Don Schaeffer

I forget where I
left the car, and forget
where I live.
I run crazy through the streets
while time slides away on greased rails.
Those who miss me
wait.

A party forces my choices.
I grin for some of them
and leave the rest in the cold.
They wait for me, not present to see,
not knowing I am gone.

We emerge from the battle,
my friends
seeping away into the ground.
I am joyous
even while they
say farewell to the grass.


~ first published in Loch Raven Review

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

THE NEW ROMANS LEARN . . .

artwork: ralph murre, after sculpture by june la combe


THE NEW ROMANS LEARN DOUBLESPEAK 
       [On the destruction of the Baghdad Museum]
by Arlene Zide 

War is peace and
peace is tyranny
A robot
mouthing words he's been rehearsed to.
Whatever questions
he is asked
he answers in the currency
of plastic
platitudes
flag, freedom, democracy
peace.
Security -- war is peace
peace is war
war is security
security is war
we will destroy
this village/city/nation/child
to save it.

We will bribe the barbarians
burn the Library, let them pillage
7,000 years of history,
enrich the greed
y to save freedom, peace . The nation
will sacrifice the young
for our glorious future,
silence the speakers
to save liberty,
tax the poor,
kiss the oily feet of the wealthy
to free the dogs of war
trailing
napalm, biting
at their open sores.



~ first appeared in The Pedestal

Sunday, July 13, 2014

Lists, Early July

photo: sharon auberle


Lists, Early July
by Jeanie Tomasko 

1. Four-something in the morning and the cardinal is at it again.
2. I want to walk, don’t want to wake you.
3. I want to hear the wood thrush sing.
4. From some sound sleep, you’re up, don’t want me to walk alone
because of my new medicine.
5. Six crows are, well, singing.
6. Peewee, chickadee, song sparrow.
7. Yarrow, wild roses, the early white of baptisia on the prairie.
8. Twenty-eight catbirds imitating the thrush.
9. Hardware aisle, yesterday, kitchen knobs by the thousands:
smooth, silver, tarnished, porcelain, rubbed, studded ...
10. In my pocket, the one I needed to match.
11. The wood thrush flies from Guatemala, every spring, exactly
to this dead oak to sing summer.
12. The sun is up now, mist rising from the creek.
13. What I mean is,
14. Can you sometimes know, exactly

~ first published in The Midwest Quarterly   

Friday, July 11, 2014

She's a Lady

photoart: ralph murre


She’s a Lady
by Phil Hansotia
                                               
Just a bit  past twilight
standing on the shores of Europe Bay,
I saw her slip behind a thin veil.
Her face glistening and the silver of her eyes
dancing on Michigan’s rippling waters.
The moon is a lady.

Driving home on hump of Door’s peninsula
I saw a large, yellow melon,
rise in slow harvest off horizon’s edge,
a train of golden glow, trailing like
 a hesitant bride dragging her feet.
The moon is a lady.

Stretched on Newport’s unlit beach
I saw her full plump face
shrouded in a downy halo
gliding slowly across a clear ocean
of dark, like a lofty liner,
smug, aloof, brightly lit, self-absorbed,
Lady Lunar was on her way.

She may be a trifling satellite
on astronomer’s charts
strapped to a small dance floor,
whirling to her own Dervish chant.
In her world she is timeless beauty,
riveting our caressing gaze.
Yes, the moon is a lady.



~ first published in the Peninsula Pulse

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

They are tap dancing . . .

artwork: ralph murre


They are tap dancing to Vivaldi

in Albany, New York tonight
according to the Community                      
Message Board heard three times
daily on your commercial classical
music station.  All four seasons are
going to be represented.  How?
It is difficult to imagine exactly
how.  You will have to travel to
Albany in order to find out if these
tap dancers will be a new kind
of Rockettes Revue, low-steppers
instead of high kickers, eschewing
Country and Western line dancing
routines for fancy dancing, no, not
step dancing, mind you, or show
tune dancing but something more
refined, something applicable to each
of our four seasons. This is Vivaldi
after all, not Lloyd-Webber or have
The Seasons been changed, abridged,
up tempoed, truncated or tarted up
for a mass audience appeal?  You
will have to travel to Albany to find
out.  Some of us will remain at home,
listening to the original, awaiting your
critical reports of just what these tap
dancing people thought they were doing
to Vivaldi on a Friday Night in Albany.

~ Alan Catlin

* previously published in The Art of Survival
(Kings Estate Press)

Monday, July 7, 2014

Old Love

photo: ralph murre


Old Love
by Joan Wiese Johannes

In lust, we called it love on summer nights
when young, wild heartbeats mimicked feelings true.
We lit like sparklers, danced like flecks of light,
then flashed and burned as firecrackers do.
In daylight we were blackened ash, cold wire,
and paper bits like shreds of Valentine.
The air was toxic, fueled by hot desire;
canaries died when lowered in our mine.
But now, beside the river under trees
just saplings during that summer long ago,
we’re sunset, crickets, loons, a gentle breeze;
and over the smooth stones fresh water flows.
So, come into the home of my wise heart
so grateful for long decades spent apart.


~ first published in the Peninsula Pulse

Saturday, July 5, 2014

Legacy



Legacy
by Stephen Anderson

No easy task this
Cleanup of basement workbench
Full of multifarious clutter,
Dusty mementos of hand-me-downs.

The real chore is in tossing the
Handmade tools my father
Crafted as a machinist under
The final shadows of WW II
And the scraped-up pale-blue tackle box
Full of Lazy Ikes, Bombers, Jitterbugs,
River Runt Spooks, and
Hula Poppers.

A simple matter on the surface
But what’s not seen is
The slippery thought of
Letting go of steel craft and memories,
Lovingly bequeathed as if

They were brothers whose being
I’m now releasing like unwanted
Fish, letting them drop from my hands
To the trash bin below, letting them go

While I suppress a traitor’s smile,
Great Judas at the workbench, a son
Not much more than an ingrate
Who will probably keep only the tackle box
In the end.


~ originally appeared in Fox Cry Review                                        

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Bean Fields

artwork: ralph murre


Bean Fields
by Margaret Hasse

They labor along the straight lines
of parallel rows, the farm boy, the town girl
earning an hourly wage for her college fund,
weeding, staying even with each other,
loving like crazy each other’s smell.

He has the slight acrid burn of green leaves.
She, catmint––residue of shampoo––
her hair streaked shades of brown
like foxtail grasses in the sun.
His Tom body yowls in the backyard

of his brain that he wants that minty weed.                                   
She longs for the end of the row                                          
when they will sit in the bed of a dirty truck
against warm rubber tires and drink
lemonade with tongues so keen

you could map the exact spot where
the sugar of desire does its dream business,
where the lemon pulp—call it
her education plan, his religious training—
persists in its tart denial.

A bean in its ripe casing hangs on a stem,      
three fuzzy lumps in its throat. One for the boy,
one for the girl, and one for how the hinge
of what might happen to them swings slightly,
opening here, closing there.



~ first published in The Talking of Hands (New Rivers Press)