New Writer's Showcase at Poet's Ink

Poet's Ink Review

July 2008

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

The Texture of Stone

I’ve sculpted your body, each little detail,
painted our struggle
and fired the clay. I wrote your life story,
your sins and your glories, but never once
mentioned the view from your room.

I’ve kept all your secrets to make
you look human, kept every seashell
we found on these shores. I’m trying to listen
without being sorry, with all of my senses
I’m trying to explore.

You’ve no need to worry,
it’s not that I am faithless,
I won’t be knocking on your tambourine.
I’m waiting for someone to draw me an island
where everyone’s guilty, where nothing’s a sin.

Sergio Ortiz

Sergio grew up in Chicago, studied English literature at Inter-American University in San German, Puerto Rico, philosophy at World University, Culinary Art at The Restaurant School in Philadelphia. His work has been published in POUI The Cave and Origami Condom. He is pending publication in Flutter, Ascent Aspirations, Children, Churches and Daddies, Cause & Effect, and Vagabondage Press.

Apartment on the Third Floor

This apartment, top, third floor
one among hawks who build
nests
has sun. This

room gets afternoon light;
morning, too, streams
in creating simplicity.

The hawks sit in the
trees, communing.
The world goes on, in steel
complexity.

Warm, here just roof above,
and
among the trees in
company of hawks

who nest. One hawk
sits
on a branch, lit by engaging
moments of
sun; spring newness amid
the gray manmade
world that impedes yet connects
the eternal life.

Thank you morning through
daylight to night,
bright stars for a promise
of goodness.
God.

Witnessing the light.
I remark to you of
divine moments.

We enter mansions heavenly, just flesh
and spirit.
Ascending.

Peter Menkin

Peter is an Oblate in the Episcopal Church. His work has been featured in a number of publications, including The Shepherd, Ruah, Ceremony, and Westward Quarterly.

Blackbirds: July 2005

For Priscilla, who taught me that there is much to be learned from birds

Gray stain on the cottage by the pond,
Shoulders with the wear of three score years and eight
Stretch toward the peak;
Joints can be heard to crackle and move about.
My wife fills the bird feeders and
Turns to admire my work,
Her vision dimmed.
I clap my hands to roust a throng of large black birds
Who flap away with a flash
Of red and orange that tells us
They are not grackles after all.
It comes to me that blackbirds cannot help it
If, like the guys from Beirut
Who own the Yankee Diner in town,
They look like someone else:
What we want to see, what we should see,
What we can see
Converging
At a point below the horizon.

Robert Demaree

"Blackbirds" appeared in Conte in April 2006.

Socks

I often wonder, as I fold my socks
into bundles—like white, warm loaves
fresh from the dryer—what it’s like
for a sock to lose its partner.

The journey of discovering one’s true love:
books weave the yearning with words.
Movies knit the process with images,
and songs string the lament with notes
and scales—but socks,

socks are always paired
with their significant other, their partner.

So while we’re desperately searching
for our other half, socks are desperate
to hold onto their soul mate.

The fate of socks is never certain.
What is worse?

To lose your partner inside that lint-filled abyss
within the ever-hungry dryer,
to teeter off the edge of the hamper
and plummet to the ground, forgotten, or,
to notice a tiny hole in your loved one’s heel
and pretend you can’t see it grow bigger every day, or,
to be paired with someone else and must remember
what your partner’s touch feels like--who is now pushed
all the way to the back of the drawer.

Perhaps this is why my socks cling together now
in a way that has nothing to do with static.

Mary McCall

Mary is an up-coming senior at Fairfield University, majoring in
English with a concentration in creative writing. She helped to
establish The Cream Filling Literary Magazine on campus of which she is
co-editor. Her work has appeared in Teen Ink and will be appearing
in the up-coming August issue of Chantarelle's Notebook.

Waiting for the Vessel / A mythical tale

Here grows the shadowed tree,
an olive branch now blooms.
Oh bring in the morning
with white lilies on their tombs-
a figure weaves through genesis,
drifts in gentle greens
she’s haloed from the moonlit night,
ageless, in-between.
And where is her fisherman,
mooring near the shore-
must she wade in meadowlands
alone forevermore?
Someone tell her, angels
never weep in front of Kings.
She is just a starry fish
searching for her wings.
And where is the fisherman-
now rowing to the sea?
Crown her with an emerald wreath
then chop the shadowed tree.

Carol Lynn Grellas

Carol is a Northern California-based writer, where she attended Santa Clara University as an English major. She is the author of two Chapbooks: Litany of Finger Prayers soon to be released from Pudding House Press and Object of Desire accepted for publication by Finishing Line Press and will be forthcoming sometime within the year. She has been widely published in magazines and online journals, including most recently, MSU Great Falls Literary Guild: Writings from the River, The Storyteller Magazine, Chanterelle's Notebook, The Hiss Quarterly and Flutter. She has published one full length collection of poems titled I'm Packing Things for Heaven. Carol Lynn lives with her husband, Jim, five children and a blind dog named Ginger, who inspire much of her poetry.

Shadow of a Child

I hid you under the monkey bars
when the ice cream truck came.
You were scared of tasting cold.

I ran to the swings and said I will
be back for you. I wanted to ask God
a question and needed to be in the sky.
You were afraid of the school bell--
that I wouldn’t have enough time.

I’m sorry I left you at the playground.
It wasn’t your fault, He answered.
You were too young to breathe
summer, and I wasn't sure
if I liked you or not.

You held my broken promise
tight within your fists--cried for me
when I disappeared in the dark
I forgot you were just a child.

Lisa Cronkhite

Lisa's work has appeared in Combat Magazine, Clark Street Review, Scrap and Stamp Arts Magazine, The Shepherd, and Fighting Chance Magazine. She is currently taking a writer's course at the Institute of Children's Literature. Lisa suffers from Bipolar and Schizophrenic disorders and writes as a coping skill in the hopes for better understanding.

Please visit April's poetry page here.