Poet's Ink Review

August 2009

If you are interested in submitting your work, check out our submission guidelines.

Letter to Bretey After He Returned From Iraq

Dear Paul: CNN ran a slice of news on those helicopters
you flew over there. They’re bigger than I thought they
would be. They followed two pilots - one a young woman,
the other a guy close to your age. I thought about how much
like a civilian and yourself you looked when we took you

to dinner at Mr. C’s after you came home for a visit. But
watching the young people, listening to them talk about
the danger they faced every day, going up with them to see
how far down the earth looked from their perspective
and imagining what it would be like to have shots being

fired at me while being a perfect target in the air, gave me
a chill. It reminded me of how much I worried about you
the whole time you were there. I looked forward to each
E-mail, each photograph, each piece of news because each
one told me you were alive. I thought about how the sweet

blond boy who wrote his paper in religion class on God’s
Permission of Evil was now caught up in one of the worst
kinds - the kind that make us kill one another in the name
of justice, honor and need. Watching you enjoy your meal
and the ambiance that is Mr. C’s, it was hard to believe you

had killed people and survived to look life in the eye, laugh
at what you couldn’t fix or change and toast all the rest.
I couldn’t help but compare you to King David of old who
was forced to do so many scary things by life and yet never
lost his ability to celebrate the fact that he was able to be.

Fredrick Zydek

Frederick taught creative writing and theology at UNO and later at the College of Saint Mary. He now raises soybeans and corn to supplement his income. He has eight collections of poetry out; his third, Ending the Fast, included a quartet titled “Songs from the Quinault Valley” which was awarded the Sarah Foley O’Loughlen Literary Award by the editors of America. His work has appeared in The Antioch Review, Cimmaron Review, The Hollins Critic, New England Review, Nimrod, among others, and has over 800 publications. His collection, T’Kopachuk: The Buckley Poems, is forthcoming from Winthrop Press, and a chapbook, Hooked On Fish, will be released from the Holmes House Chapbooks Series this September.

Donal Mahoney

This poem was published by Happiness Holding Tank Magazine.

Donal, a native of Chicago, lives in St. Louis, MO. He has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press and Washington University in St. Louis. He has had poems published in or accepted by The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Commonweal, and other publications.


Being Ernest

Fall in Paris ,
the trees along Rue du Lemoine
desperately hold on
to their ruby leaves,
resisting winter’s embrace.

Long morning walks along the river Seine ,
young men blowing smoke in corner cafés,
old men fishing
bent on cobbled banks.

Afternoons spent stretched with wine,
bread and pungent cheese,
a little lost in Luco,
children playing Le cat and Le mouse
while women sleep under the cloudless
umbrella shade.

Twilight standing still
along the painted halls of the Louvre,
in the middle of hushed lilies,
surrounded by yellow and blue dementia
high in starry swirls,
quiet under native palms
and behind brown nudes,
gently resting in lowly ochre fields.

Very late,
in a clean and well lighted place,
a pretty coquette with short
crow black hair
patiently sits alone.

Earnestly I watch her delicate hands
press the wrinkles from her dress,
but my eyes quickly dart
down to her shapely leg
and the small stocking split,
slowly revealing
her fair and lovely
naked
bony knee.

Kenneth W. Anderson, Jr.

Kenneth is a writer and poet living in Oregon. He has penned articles for the Statesman Journal and the Willamette Weekly, Oregon newspapers; Oregon Screen Monthly and Blues Review magazines; and has had poems published in CC&D poetry magazine and in Northwest Passages, a Western Oregon University literary journal.


In New Zealand

A lone Kakariki parakeet
Blazing green with yellow crown
Just swooped in and snatched
The Scottish vacationer’s passport
Then flew off deep into the bush

Bill Cooper

Bill Cooper serves as Distinguished University Professor and President Emeritus at the University of Richmond. Recent works include novels Flashpoint China, Wisdom of the Grottoes, and Buchanan’s Reach.

At Windfall

Windfall and rainfall,
and storm into evening,
sweep over the canvassed firelog bier.
Covers and pillows,
touch lovers’ soft skin--
See in the window their candle's gold flame.
Earthborn and earthbound
they lie in the dark,
list’ning to rain, conjuring dreams.
Giving at midnight,
they sleep into dawn.
Now, at windfall
their cabin lies still.
Lovers arise and follow the sun’s path.

John Hitchner

John’s work has appeared in The Aurorean, Tar Wolf Review, and Lunch Hour Stories. He lives and teaches in Keene, New Hampshire.

BLUEBIRDS

Bluebirds in muted hiemal garb,
Lustrous steel blue felted up,
The matte finish of gray January,
Breast burnt sienna, rusting:
They scrap and fuss for small,
Cold bites at the feeder:
Don’t look very happy to me.

Robert Demaree

Robert is the author of three collections of poems, including Fathers and Teachers, published April 2007 by Beech River Books. The winner of the 2007 Conway, N.H., Library Poetry Award, he is a retired school administrator with ties to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. He has had 375 poems published or accepted by 100 periodicals. For further information see http://www.demareepoetry.blogspot.com.

These Four Walls

It’s my house but I don’t like it.
The window panes, dim with dread, morose with mourning.
Even the sun can’t burn through them.
My walls are charred with
secrets, lies, denial- rough truths I can’t scrub away,
they blacken with their solute.

My basement is packed tightly
to the ceiling with resentment
I can’t even begin to sort through it.
The kitchen unused, wanting for attention
falls to disrepair: broken wares, crumbling
chairs, and ancient appliances.

My bed is caked with insecurity,
thick, stubborn, and rank
But the worst is the attic.
Stuffed into corners are my keepsakes,
hopes, and memories.
All the forgotten treasures
which dictate
I would never
end up here.

Anne Rucchetto

Anne is a student entering her first year of university this September. She has been writing poetry for the last two years.

Symbolism
Painting has no Air --- Gertrude Stein

... Air is everywhere, air is in a painting.
It is not spotted out like a house on a hill.
We should learn by symbols the things we can not see.

There, a seascape with thatched huts overlooking
The sunset in the distance, and swaying palm trees
depicting the presence of air in the painting.

In this, an autumn noon untouched by rain, sunny,
A swallow outspread against a blue turquoise sky.
We should learn by symbols the things we can not see.

Look, the painting of the stream, ripples caused by wind
Or breeze, thin slants of rain that bend the back of leaves,
And gyres of dust represent air in this painting.

Here, dark brooding mass of fast moving clouds, fishes
leaping from water like fireworks, gulp the air in.
We should learn by symbols the things we can not see.

Why, tell me why, there is no air in a Painting?
Even your painted form, mirrors air: life breathing.
... Air is everywhere, air is in a painting.
We should learn by symbols the things we can not see.

Oritsegbemi Emmanuel Jakpa

Oritsegbemi lives in Ireland, and is presently doing a research study at Waterford Institute of Technology in Creative Writing. His poetry has been published in a number of online and print journals including the African American Review and An Echoing Years: an Anthology of Poetry from Canada and Ireland. He is a Yeats' Pierce Loughran Scholar.