Whitman's Voice

photo: ralph murre

Whitman’s Voice

by Susan M. Firer

He does not sing the poem like Yeats

reciting “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”;  he

simply continent speaks each word, & in between

each bump on the wax cylinder recording

Thomas Edison made of Whitman in 1890,

you hear another Whitman.

You hear Whitman

            interviewing P.T. Barnum,

            with Tom Thumb & the orangutan,

            Mlle. Jane, in the background.

You hear all the gaslight

            drenched operas he attended

            & even smell the peculiar

            l9th century perfumes.

You hear Whitman’s

            body kicks & swim splash & cold water scrubs

            at Gray’s Swimming Bath at the bottom

            of Fulton Street, and

You hear him

            at the corner of Fulton & Cranberry Streets

            in the Rome brothers’ print shop

            setting the type for the first

            LEAVES OF GRASS.

You hear all

            the Nor’easters he sat outside through

            under his tree in the healing country

            under his gray wool blanket

            recovering from a stroke, and

You can even hear the Civil War

            hospital kisses he soft lip-pressed on the often

            never-shaved cheeks of the dying

            soldiers he nursed.

You hear him ask them: “Stamps?

            Licorice?

            Can I write a letter home for you?”

And in his American-formed voice inflected with canaries,

            locomotives, and turkeys,

            you hear electricity & his wild throat

            muscles.  Each syllable is a tableau:

Six year old Walter in the arms of Lafayette,

young teacher Walter playing baseball with his students,

Whitman at Poe’s reburial in Baltimore

            (the only literary figure to attend),

            Walter in Brooklyn purchasing his first

            silver watch, gold pencil, frock coat,

            & loud singing on top an omni-

            bus in New York.

You see Whitman in the Astor Library

            blowy from the ferry, a copy of CONSUELO

            in his hands, a bit of George Sand’s

            cigar smoke about his ears & beard.

            You see coffee & beefsteak eating Walt &

            l857 hard pressed for money Walt

            watching his Talbot painting and his

            few other belongings taken by lawyers

& carried out & through the streets –

            all for a $200 debt.

You see Walt visiting

            with brown velvet-suited Oscar

            Wilde, with Longfellow, with Thoreau,

            &, of course, with Emerson.

There’s Walt swimming & loping at Coney Island

            & writing: “The polka increases in popularity,”

            & even (I am not making this up) walking

            & loving walking the streets of Milwaukee!

You see nude sun-bathed, mud-bathed lame Walt

            at Timber Creek wrestling with saplings

            trying to strengthen his stroke-weakened

            arms & legs.

You even see old white-bearded Whitman

            napping in his wheelchair

            in front of his Mickle Street Camden window,

            like a “great old Angora Tom,”

            like a snowy owl.

And in each syllable, you hear transformation.

            You hear his dream

breath, his sighs

as he studies the night

            sky patterns, hieroglyphics,

            phrenology, & lexicology.

You hear him call through the centuries

            to all his young apprentices:  “Hen,

            oh, why, Hen.”

And if you are very still when listening,

            you can hear him rubbing lilacs

            in his beautiful, white beard, & I swear,

            you can hear him swallow a strawberry.

Here, on my CD made from Edison’s wax cylinders

is sapling planting Walt,

America’s great slang coloratura

word hero, plainly speaking; venerable Walt

saying his hymn of vowels & consonants.

And really his voice is much like the Long Island

pond and spring water he wrote about:

“The water itself has a character of its own,”

said Whitman, “It is deliciously sweet

--it almost has a flavor.”

~ previously published in Milwaukee Does Strange Things To People

ON THE TREACHEROUS NIGHT SEA

artwork: william marr

ON THE TREACHEROUS NIGHT SEA

by William Marr

a broken refugee boat appears

like a ghost

on the tired sleepless eyelids

jolting and rolling

toward the ever-narrowing harbor

of humanity

toward the shore

where lights die out

one after another

~ previously published in Between Heaven and Earth

  (PublishAmerica)

How the Kiss Begins

digital art: ralph murre

How the Kiss Begins

by Cristina M.R. Norcross

It starts with the intoxicating drawing in of breath

as you lean forward,

becoming joined to your lover’s aura.

It is a melting and melding –

richer than the last dollop of butter in the pan.

The best kisses linger.

Before work,

the early morning, honeyed goodbye kiss

holds within each, soft brush of lip

the promise of more kisses

and simply – more.

You close your eyes,

just as the scent of summer skin

becomes your guide.

Your heart is a samba beat in your chest.

Next, the smallest gliding of lips finds a cheek,

allowing your mouth to wander to the fullest kiss.

Lips to lips, you stay there –

breathing in love like a thirsty climber,

until your lungs are about to burst for oxygen.

You hold the kiss just a touch longer

and fall into the embrace that knows

this will be a fleeting goodbye,

until the next kiss

brings waves of running horses to your door.

~ first published in The Lava Storyteller (Red Mare Press)

The Arrows That Choose Us

photo: ralph murre, glass artist: unknown

The Arrows That Choose Us

by Marilyn Annucci

the ones who hover above us, pressing us

to live or love or be eaten by death

are smaller than ferns, taller than goats,

redder than blood, cold as snow inside snow

inside caves of rock or shadows or

a garden’s hell. They exist in mud, in a sky

beyond sky, in a mind that won’t stop,

in the white light of another realm where

duty calls, where tunnels are wrought,

where strange creatures move forward

bearing black bones, talons, words, the prick

of desire, whatever is needed to tear us awake

~ previously published in Waiting Room (Hill-Stead)

The Sky is Full of Bluebirds

artwork: ralph murre

The Sky is Full of Bluebirds

but not everyone can see them

so they think it’s just a blue sky,

and at night, when it’s all crows  –

well, you know.

And early and late

come the cardinals and tanagers,

but don’t try to explain that

to just anyone.

There are gray birds, too.

~ Ralph Murre

first published in Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar

Tangled

artwork: ralph murre

Tangled

by Susan Tepper

Scrape my face— find

vines and what I want

leave tangled—

there were countries

cut in sections

viable yet invisible

but for leanings— a shoulder

against a train window

raindrops blinding trees

beyond the reach of

what was cold

You clutched a coat

promised again to be sorry.

~ first published in Poetry Salzburg Review

Abbey Road

by Michael Kriesel                                          

Apperception. Knowledge tattooed on my

brain. Like knowing my left hand’s there, or time’s

contemporaneous. Everything

demanding God’s attention all at once.

Every bill falls due now. No credit

for the lord of time who floats above the

grooves of linear experience. Old

hippies remember Abbey Road, side 2.

In grooves we live, forced forward. In dreams we

jump the vinyl wall, travel astrally.

Kept in line by time. The only way we

learn down here. The perfect training tool. Time

merely measuring matter in motion.

No matter, no time. Just eternity’s

ocean, and consciousness, attaining to

pure light’s height, looking down on its record,

cued to every note at once. A burst.

Release. We become lighthouses on a

shore with no sand or water, one at a

time. A light for others to steer towards,

until we’re all light. Eternity’s not

very long. A winter walk. A movie

where you’re frozen between frames, like slides. You

exit, enter doorways in the air, as

you balance on emptiness, between fields,

zippers jingling a second, stepping through. 

~ first published in The Writer

remember cousins

artwork: ralph murre

remember cousins

by Barb Cranford

remember how they tumbled

suddenly into your backyard

where you were playing

with your best friend

older, boisterous boys

they smashed the sandcastle

scattered the buckets

and broke your hi-li paddle

after dinner they went away

with their parents

to wherever they came from

three who lived in Seattle

existed only as blurry faces

in the front row in snapshots

that arrived every year

 with your aunt’s Christmas card

one much-loved cousin, gone now

sent her poems to you

from a nursing home

you held onto her life line

as long as you could

some day when you are old

and living in the country

one you’ve never met

will drive into your yard

and walk slowly up the path

with sunlight behind him

amazed you will recognize

the image of your father

come clear across the country

to meet you

  

~ first appeared  in The Oak

Not Bringing Souvenirs

photoart: ralph murre

Not Bringing Souvenirs

by Don Schaeffer

Although she remains

as a small changing wavelet

through which the particles pass,

everything around her

flows away, all the

material nuggets.

I can't bring

tokens of a home

she can't connect again.

Even the molecules of

her lifetime

scatter.

~ first published in Loch Raven Review

Trilliums

photo: ralph murre

Trilliums

by Peggy Trojan

When snow melts

in the deepest shadows

of our Wisconsin woods,

white of wild trilliums

takes its place.

Though my father understood

the state has claimed them

as their own

and threatens fines

for anyone who argues,

he dared every May

to walk the south forty,

surprising

his sweetheart

with a large bouquet

of spring

offered in his wide

calloused hand.

~ first published in Rav'n

Park Eden . . .

by CX Dillhunt

Park Eden, El Valle de Antón, 

Panamá

Yes, that's a toucan,

yet I wrote this piece about

those white pelicans

~ first published in Hummingbird:

   Magazine of the Small Poem

AT MIRROR LAKE

photo: ralph murre

AT MIRROR LAKE 

 by Bruce Taylor       

The sun rises from its depth

to set the world on fire,

water overflows with clouds

thirsting for rain.

Tops of trees shimmer still

following the current light

rootless in the shallows

where the sky edges the shore.

Two lone boats doze and float

the morning, misty as it settles,

the same old man, the same dog,

another day the world allows.

~ from The Longest You've Lived Anywhere:

             Poems New & Selected 

At the Blood Bank

obviously and deviously derived from Beatles album cover photo

At the Blood Bank

by Pat Tompkins

Clench, pierce, pump:

out flows a hot, dark pint.

Before I make a deposit,

the nurse checks pressure, heat, iron,

questions drugs, sex, travel.

How little a no or yes tells.

A plastic vein transfers saturated memory,

richer than my medical history:

remembrance of every song the Beatles sang

craving for ice cream and chocolate bittersweet

preference for Graham Greene and Edgar Allan Poe

delight in snapdragons and swimming

abhorrence of foie gras and caviar

fondness for spaniels and basset hounds

experience with Iowa winters and West Coast earthquakes

Every few months, I gain unknown relatives

eating dessert, petting dogs, singing of love, looking for clues.

Mingling talismans, blood sisters/brothers,

somewhere out there, my secret sharers.

~ first published in flashquake

Sneaking Up . . .

photart: ralph murre

Sneaking Up On You Bastard Poem You

by James Botsford

I came out to this old getaway

With only in mind to write

There were some maintenance repairs

Which took awhile

But a couple days later

I was nearly caught up

Til the storms hit

Requiring some clean up

And as it turned out

A few more repairs

And a couple days after that

And numerous old movies and

What bits of titillation I could find here for free

Which was interrupted by a conference call

I was under the weather

Cooking down a chicken carcass for soup

Haven’t made it past the mailbox

At the end of the lane

And after a fresh new heavy snow

Had to plow the lane again

So the recycling truck could get in

It’s been more than a week now but I’m

Sneaking up on you bastard poem you

~ previously published in Them Apples (Sandyhouse Press)

Crystal

artwork: ralph murre

Crystal

by James Reiss

A man wets his forefinger with his tongue and holds

up a perfect water glass, empty and glistening.

He is sitting at a table in a large

hall with other men in identical blue

blazers with eagle medallions over their breast pockets.

Now the first man fingers the glass

rim, tentatively, as if it were jagged-edged.

And now he strokes it clockwise, slowly, stopping

to wet his finger again and again, like an old

man paging through a book—until the glass

comes to life with a thin, high whine like nothing

he has ever heard, and the others look up in amazement, catching

on, holding up their glasses, too, wetting and stroking

them clockwise like ice skaters in unison.

All the glasses are coming to life now; their throats are

slowly catching fire, glistening with a thinner,

higher whine than any bird. It is like a pitch

pipe with wings. It is something like the music each

man heard when he stepped outside at night

for the first time alone as a boy. Then

there was nothing in the sky but stars and music.

And the sky was like glass.

~ first published in The New Yorker

Will

artwork: ralph murre

Will

by Bruce Dethlefsen

these are yours

the sun   the moon   the stars

the bike   the ball glove

okay   the boots

but you can’t have

the wars   the pain

and dread you can’t have that

oh yeah the rain

the rain I keep

sorry

~ previously published ( this morning! )

   in small talk (Little Eagle Press)

Well Hidden

artwork: ralph murre

Well Hidden

by M.J.Iuppa

Snooping under ivy, curly

and thick, we disturb

a sparrow’s nest, no bigger

than a measuringcup

full of fidget.

Tiny gray heads tilt

upward with eyes shut

tight– tongues fluttering

like monks in ecstatic

prayer, offering their hearts                                                                                     

to this day that has begun

with us eavesdropping

on their cloistered life–

their sole contemplation.

~ first published in The Victorian Violet Press Journal