Poet's Ink Review

May 2008

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Our Love II

Remember when our love
- for years now a parted
bowl and spoon -
so closely resembled bits of the bedroom
in that Yellow House?
Like the time when our
butter words, were as untroubled and as rich
as the shadowless and yellow bed itself. And
like the time when we, too,
existed in a world of startling colour
splashes, and with our very own green shutters.
And like the times when
- just like the corners of that bedroom's front wall -
we'd mathematically
blend together so effortlessly ;
me obtuse,
you probably more acute.
And remember when
- unlike that bedroom -
it all began to change?

Colin Baker

Colin is 45 years 'young'. He was born, and still lives in South Wales, UK along with his wife of twenty-three years and their three daughters. In a paid capacity, he currently works as a professional driver. In 2006, Colin graduated as a Bachelor of Science (Hons) with the Open University. He writes chiefly for pleasure.

Matthew Byrne

Matthew received an MFA in poetry from the University of Montana, where he served as the head poetry editor of CutBank for one year. He now works at an insurance agency in Chicago. His poetry has appeared in The Best American Poetry 2007, The Antioch Review, Poet Lore, POOL, and other journals.

Normal,
What does it mean?
Belting base hits for Dad
In a Little League skirmish
Snickering at the sissy
Who sketched a fly so real
You could watch its wings soar
Who carved a seal with blue black eyes
Whispering of starfish and sea foam
Beckoning beyond the harbor

Normal,
What does it mean?
Sucking a girl's nipple
Stroking with sweaty palms
Telling the guys in the dorm
You scored again last night
Howling for the home team
In the NFL Play Off
Declaring ballet
An endangered species

Normal,
What does it mean?
Hoarding hugs and kisses
For Mom and Sister Sue
Reserving a handshake for Dad
Mounting a fake moosehead on the mantle
Instead of Renoir or Raphael
Polishing tarnished boxing trophies
Trading pink dust ruffles
For a black and white spread

Normal,
What does it mean?
Assigning girls to the boysenberry pie
And brownie shift
Bringing Budweiser and bourbon to the cook out
Is normal John Wayne,
Or W. H. Auden?
Gertrude Stein,
Or Marilyn Monroe?
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, or Adrienne Rich?

If normal's straight,
Is gay crooked?
A lopsided detour or premature dead end
On a road map run amuck
A con man on the lam
A stick some half blind whittler bungled

Is gay a trickle of thin hormones
Flowing in the wrong stream
A planet spinning out of orbit
A dwarfed dad cowering in the shadow
Of Good Ol' Dominant Mom
Is gay love locked in silence?
Or is normal the warm hand of a friend
Clasped in the Gay Freedom Day Parade?

Suzanne Richardson Harvey

Suzanne has a doctorate in Elizabethan poetry. For almost two decades she lectured in the English Department at Stanford University in California. She is now retired. Her poetry has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Concho River Review, Ascent Aspirations Magazine, SpeedPoets, Current Accounts, Poetic Hours, and Nth Position, among other venues.

She would describe for us
The undiscovered tumor
Grown to the size of a football
The surgeon’s sullen detachment
After the failed surgery
The flight attendant’s brains
Seeping from her battered skull
The child crying in the desolation
After visiting hours
Saying goodbye to the sun
A litany of eyes ears tongues hands
Hearts minds snuffed out forever
How some swore they would not
Die and amidst their tears and rage
Died
How some left as dreamers
In silhouette before the night light
Casting off beneath the hushed voices
A quiet boat on death’s stream
Or the one who remained conscious
Till his look of stunned surprise
Told them that once again this journey
Would remain unspeakable
Attentive children
We ate our lunch in quiet and
Hoped for a last minute reprieve
The provolone sat on the blue
Tablecloth like an overripe moon
Between the golden halos of Italian bread
While the last summer day
Filled with dust and yellow light
I would ask Will he die?
And always she would answer Eventually.

Yes
The birds sang outside as always
And still later the stars would rise
And the television offer images
From the undreamt of exotic places
But for now
The faded green linoleum
The white cabinets with rusted
Hinges and the new yellow paint
Over the aging walls
Only confirmed that each
Thing waited its turn
Even if it departed only
One atom at a time

Michael Christenson

My father claims to have captured fifty cicadas in glass jars.
He also claims to have freed them.
“I can’t kill anything,” he says.

My father claims he can tell when it is going to rain.
His sisters tell how as a child he pretended
to be the wind and the storm cloud.
His stories have taken me to the North Pole on a snowflake
and riding on a lonesome train with a weary traveler.

My father claims he is fine.
He slaps his knee and laughs and sings songs in gibberish to me.
“What’s your name little girl?” he says.

Sandi Kivkovich

The Guitar in the Corner

What will become of it, the guitar in the corner?

It was out of bounds when I was small,
and even when I longed to run my hand over the smooth shiny wood
when no one was looking, I didn’t dare.

Sometimes Father would let me pluck the strings
while he fingered the notes with his calloused fingertips,
or gently polished the mahogany body with an old soft cloth,
following his direction, waiting for the nod of approval.
Leaning against his knee, I floated into the fantasy of his songs
until it became quiet and he would ceremoniously lean the guitar in its resting place.

I glance furtively toward the corner.
Dust glitters down the neck of the guitar and the silent strings sparkle in the sunlight.
Someone should polish it.
There are cobwebs around the bottom, forming intricate patterns
which attach it to the wall. A dead fly hangs from the gossamer threads.
It has been standing way too long.
Someone should tune it.
Someone should take care of it.

I turn to the window and pull down the shade. The sun is so bright.

I don’t look toward the corner again.

Sandi Kivkovich

Sandi lives in Cincinnati, OH, where she works as a medical secretary and helps to care for her father who has Alzheimer's Disease.

Love Letters

In a box I once thought sealed for good:
Our letters, postmark 1960,
Now naïve, of course,
Florid declarations back and forth
Between college dorms and Army posts,
Embraced by a faint musty dampness
And decaying rubber bands.

Packed away for years,
A hedge against the reach of time,
They have arrived again at a crossroad:
Whether to stay,
Unable the salve the grief they know will come,
Alone, except for the silverfish,
Another forty years,
To entertain our grandsons’ wives;
Or, as we conclude, evidence not needed,
And so to join the accretion of phone bill stubs
And invitations to unremembered showers,
Black bags, in the rain, in the curbside archive.

Robert Demaree

Robert retired in 2001 after 42 years as a school teacher and administrator. His poems have been published in a number of literary journals, including Cold Mountain Review, Millers Pond, Red River Review, and Red Wheelbarrow. This poem was published in Poet's Touchstone in Spring 2007.

see the girls in blue
shucking corn behind the barn,
pale arms cutting the thin air
of a cloudless day in July.

white bandanas knotted on their heads,
could be eighteen or forty-three.
corn silk has made their skin soft
faces warm and open
while softly touching fingers to throats
waiting for their sweet starch.

they do not touch the metal,
the oil or the smoke
of the tiller, the tedder or the combine—
no, they are the careful hands
that fan the ears to look like beckoning palms.
never too lean, never too worried
by the problems of the season
a winding thread caught in their blonde hair.

oh, sisters of turned loam
kind takers of limp money
girls that faintly slur their words
under the noonday sun,
skin of peaches
warm hearts of mothers
young women whose eyes are yellow and green,
talk with me an hour,
tell me all the secrets of your days.
I bring gifts of tulips and daisies,
all the poems of summer I’ve made for you.

David Waite

David is a graduate of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program from Goddard College. David has recently published in the journals Small Brushes and Bellowing Ark, and also received the 2002 College of Saint Rose Women's Writing Award.

Earthen pine tree,
shields the raw
roar
of the beast;

also,
friendly awesome
leviathon at play.
Dangerous. This May
dance goes on. Bloom
Spring.

I live as a man.
My eyes are blue,
my teeth white, sharp,
a hand drawn on forehead,
palm open;
this mask of May
knows cosmic eternity
as promise everlasting.

Speak night.
I hear.
God draws me.