Poetry
The BeaconA problem’s answer for to glean To acquire some clarity in my head, I evoked the grand Muse Nicotine— Tried sucking insight from a red. But as I stood upon my deck, In the cold and somewhat rainy night A tree’s branch drip fell on the neck Of my flame rod—and killed its light. So I gazed into the murky sky Until I found a single star And called it with a forlorn sigh To seek advice from flame afar. Star light, star bright Thou art alone as I tonight Petition I thy steady light For guidance on my sea of plight. I felt the answer in my jaw; And nearly gripped it with my mind The lonesome, steady star I saw Had reached for me—I felt its bind. But alas, my beacon failed It moved, and moving, wrenched my brain. It was not I alone who sailed; The star I wished on was a plane. —harold rain No SongThe less he thinks he knows her the more she’s gone; she collects bits of paper, calls them flower petals and lets him down, leaves him with the feeling of a lily standing in a flooded field, not a flake of moon on the water. She’s tethered tight to a sparrow’s tail her two faces smiling, her hair in the wind; he seeks himself in the stars; there’s no flavor in the things he says; he knows this. They’re growing, vines entwine around his legs but he has no song for it, no real pensive hour. —jacinta a. meyers A Footbridge in ChildhoodFrom here on the footbridge dry leaves race out of sight poised and curled on the shiny water which streams underneath. This flow wrenches light in grooved streaks, it breaks into a froth as the buoyant leaves dodge and swoop. We are only children here in the afternoon. The day is roaring forward through time at an angle of light as the calm planet turns. For this is a childhood game of dropping dry leaves by their stiff pips into the stream below. We watch them race out of sight in the slow distances. My leaf, your leaf, arriving. Our cheers of glee and victory break the quiet air like ice in this forest of fracturing light. —paul white SaltThe young wife waits in the kitchen for her husband’s sister who has arrived to tell her what he would not— about the other woman, the child, his life apart from her in Maryland. The last time he was home, his skin tasted of salt. She laughed as they lay in bed, teased him, saying the ocean was his mistress. Then, she only floated on the surface of truth. Now she plunges, the weight of his sister’s words filling her empty pockets like rocks, pulling her to the bottom. Weeks from now, he will return with sapphires and a flood of promises. And she will take him back, remembering how he tasted of salt. —elizabeth dickhut |
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