Poet's Ink Review

June 2009

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

Bedford 1957

Come to me
my brother, my bride
and let us lie down together
under a fort made of
army blankets and grandma’s
old crochet shawls
missing stitches
making loops
the ketchup from the
french fries we had for lunch
still lines your lips
and soon will cover my teeth
like blood.

Elizabeth Swados

Elizabeth is a Tony nominated, Obie award winning theater artist, Guggenheim and Ford Foundation recipient, as well as a recipient of a Pen/Faulkner citation. She has published three prose books, At Play – Teaching Teenagers Theater, My Depression, and The Animal Rescue Store, and a poetry collection, The One and Only Human Galaxy. Her theatrical credits span from Broadway, to off-Broadway, to around the world, including Runaways, Missionaries, and Jabu. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals.


Nutmeat

My dear, tell me again so I know
how it would have been
had you married the man

you dream of all day, tell me again
as I lie next to you now,
your nutmeat sweet in my mouth.

Tell me again so I know
how to feel for fathering five
on you fast, five in six years,

five who will never be quiet again
in our lives, five who will leave
in the night when they are of age

while up in our room I nibble
on nutmeat, proud to have traded
an oak for these acorns.

Donal Mahoney

Donal, a native of Chicago, lives in St. Louis, Missouri. 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, Commonweal, and Orbis (U.K.), and other publications.


On My Father

Do not fear, I firmly say to my heart;
the surgeon’s hands are sure, his helpers skilled —
yet still they rise like silent fishes
through murky water, my fears within me.

Murray Alfredson

Murray is a retired librarian and lecturer, and a former Buddhist Associate to the Multi-faith Chaplaincy at Flinders University. He graduated in German and history from the University of Melbourne and holds a research masters degree from the University of Wales. He began to write poetry in undergraduate days. He resumed in retirement. He has published poems and essays on Buddhism, spirituality and inter-faith matters in journals in Australia and the UK.

Death and Love

years, I will look back at this
with the passionless objectivity of the grunt laborer
excavating Pompeii, the lab tech filing slides
filled with cancer and the cure for smallpox
I will be able to step back from this present
dissect the memories, catalogue,
alphabetize, nod knowingly and cluck,
“so that’s where we went wrong.”

Holly Day

Holly is a travel writing instructor living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her husband and two children. Her newest book is Walking Twin Cities.

To Our Son-in-Law Returning from Iraq: April 2003

That you were a writer and not a soldier
Made you no less brave,
Your war short, hard to defend,
But no less noble.
You went to report on things Homer had seen,
In a land older than Hector.
We found you on a map of unknown places,
Read your dispatches and heard you on TV:
We tasted sand and young men’s fear.
We did not attend rallies of protest or support
But went instead with your sons
To soccer games and preschool plays.
I do not pray much but prayed for you.
We read your coming-home piece
And thought of Odysseus.
We tracked your journey— Kuwait , London .
That night I went back downstairs after midnight
And turned on the computer again,
To be sure that your plane had touched down.

Robert H. Demaree Jr.

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, where he lives five months of the year. He has had over 375 poems published or accepted by 100 periodicals. For further information see http://www.demareeepoetry.blogspot.com.

Old Warrior of North Beach

He walks the streets of North Beach
Looking like an old man
With eyes empty as a broken parking meter
Unemployable weighed down by the years
His mind heavy as an anchor dragging the
Bottom of the ocean floor
Forgotten rebel playing old ballads
In the shipwreck of his heart
His mind destroyed by shock treatments
And one too many police batons
At night he dreams
He’s riding with Geronimo
Has imaginary conversations with Charlie Parker
Rides the ferry with Miles Davis
Getting off at Bourbon Street
To down a drink with Kerouac

He shares a cigarette with Charlie Chaplin
At the old Bijou theater
Walks the battlefields with Walt Whitman
Rides the plains with Red Cloud
In search of the last buffalo
Walking the streets of North Beach
In search of the elusive ginger fish smell
Death a sightless chauffeur
Waiting like a concubine facing another
Apocalyptic day

A.D. Winans

This poem was published by Presa Press in The Other Side Of Broadway: Selected Poems 1965-2005.

A. D. Winans is a native San Francisco poet and writer. His work has appeared world-wide and has been translated into eight languages. He is the former editor and publisher of Second Coming Press. In 2005 a song poem of his was performed at Tully Hall, NYC. In 2006 he was awarded a PEN National Josephine Miles Award for excellence in literature. In 2007 Presa Press published a book of his Selected Poems The Other Side Of Broadway: Selected Poems 1965-2005.

Fontana Dam

Thousands of ripples cut
across Fontana Lake glittering
like aluminum at wake of day,
sailboats merge with distant
mountains painted every tint and tone.

Skeletons of the past emerge
during the water’s draw down,
ruins of the 40’s surface—
roadbeds of mining towns covered
by a million yards of concrete.

Pieces of railroad pierce
the cracking mud, broken
plates from a farmhouse litter
fat river rocks, foundations
strong as when laid remain.

Churches and schools were leveled,
home places burned, eroded farms seized,
and Proctor’s thousand residents moved,
as the TVA bulldozed the land
bringing light to the mountains.

Brenda Kay Ledford

Brenda is a member of NC Writers' Network and NC Poetry Society. Her work has appeared in Asheville Poetry Review, Pembroke Magazine, Appalachian Heritage and other journals. She's published three poetry chapbooks. Two books, Patchwork Memories, and Shew Bird Mountain received the Paul Green Award. Ledford is listed with A Directory of American Poets and Fiction Writers.