Poet's Ink Review

May 2009

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Looking Back

Remembering that long hot summer
When the truth hit home
Like the brick that struck you
On the side of the head
At the anti-war rally

They have boarded the windows
Of the home we once shared
Standing abandoned like us
Waiting for the calendar
To stop its perpetual spinning
Recalling the clenched fist salutes
The all day marches
The women carrying their babies
On their backs
The silent rage in the young
Men's eyes
Now nothing more than severed
Nightmares
A bad dream dressed in disguise
Lost visions running like
Bad watercolors off a cheap canvass
Our words old photographs
Fading with time
No longer the warrior
No longer the samurai swinging
His blade into the
Flesh of night

A. D. Winans

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.


The Herd

They huddled together whenever he blew into
town, five little victims with backs to the north
wind, shivering as the storm broke over them,
covering their ears as the thunder roared.

They never knew why he kept coming home…
but they knew it wasn’t for them.

They huddled together in the hospital room, five
young adults, waiting for him to weather his final
storm, watching his ravaged body rise from its bed,
fall back, fight for each ragged breath.

The storm blew itself out at 10:00 p.m. The nurse
said so, wrote it down in the records. The doctor
said so, put away his stethoscope, said we’ll leave
you alone now with your loved one.

They huddled around the bedside, looking down
at the debris left by the storm, started gathering up
their things, said they had better go now and call
Mama, tell her he was gone.

But they should have known better, should have
guessed more winds would blow, should have
guessed he would die as he had lived, should
have known his heart would beat again.

“Never saw anything like it,” the doctor said later,
“a heart beating for twelve minutes like that with
no breath in the body! A testimony, really, to the
man’s strong will.”

They huddled together one last time, faces turned
to the bitter wind, finding no buffer against this storm,
defenseless against this final punishment, knowing
why his heart beat, knowing it beat for them.

Joan Steffens

Although Joan has been writing poetry, essays, and short stories for 65 years, this is the first time she has submitted any of her work.


from a clear sky

rain drops shone a blistering blue,
and fell on braided hair
as the sidewalk sizzled…

Korliss Sewer


OUTDOOR CAFÉ

She eats every drop of the brief rains
which darken the sidewalk
and reinforce the remnants
of sadness which linger from the matinee
“ A Daddy for Melissa”.

She breathes in a dusk both vivid and calming
like Valium,
soothing inconvenient memories
ignited by Zachary the waiter
with his story of Seattle
and his Chinese tattoo.

She smiles an inviting yet vacuous smile
as the fifth glass of wine numbs first her lips
then her empathy for snatches of chatter
clinking like stoneware from tabletops
once occupied by vignettes
then abandoned like small houses.

She is the watcher,
the wraith that untangles,
legs crossed and auburn head nodding
at patrons passing on parade
through her night.

William S. Slusser

William has two poems which have been accepted by Westward Quarterly in 2009.

The Sea

Walking down the street,
I empty my pockets
of the sea I was looking
after for you. Mussels
come tumbling first,
cracking open their castanet
shells on the pavement.
Acres of seaweed and oysters.
Taking a deep breath,
I pour saltwater into the middle
of the road. Islands of people
and cars bob in the newly created sea.
Somewhere amongst this
is an old trawler. You are inside,
sending signals back to a lighthouse
forgotten in a trouser pocket.

Christian Ward

This poem was previously published in the Ballard Street Poetry Journal.


The Atoll

The boat approaches the atoll,
a line of broken finger bones
aged and veined like a crone.

There are things
we are supposed to measure:

the density of ancient turtles,
and null manta rays, serene
as ocean liners on a painted sea.

We are cartographers measuring
in numbers meaningless
to anybody but me and god.

And then, when we finally
arrive, the atoll decides to sleep,
an emperor slumbering third eye
blind.

All gods need sacrifices
to be appeased.

Christian Ward

This poem was previously published in strangeroad.com.

Christian is currently working as writer in London, UK. His work has previously appeared in Diagram, Denver Syntax, and elsewhere.


FALL'S WARMING TREND

The tree's done talking,
now it quietly combs its hair,
loses a head full in the act.
So many leaves scattered across the roads,
they look like trails.
And the nights come quicker
though the cows nibble just as slow.
Shadows are no longer the prodigal coolants
but giant erasers, blanking lake
and frilly notepad alike.

Joe's walking with Theresa
and they're so new to each other,
the season can barely get a look in.
They tread on crackling leaves
but not enough to drown their voices.
The chill in the air can't budge their senses.
And it won't be dark until their
hands no longer touch.

It's fall and the weather's trying
to convince the souls out in it
that the dying off has begun.
This is the struggle.
This is the harshness.
These are the hard times getting harder.
But what to do about Theresa's smile
and Joe's strut.
On and on and they walk, oblivious.
The next leaf won't fall.
It will have to abdicate.

John Grey


CHICAGO-LAND, ILLINOIS

Returned for my mother’s last two days—
we spoke for the first time in years.

We did not care that Death stood in the room,
patiently waited, check his watch and jotted notes.

We threw insults Death’s way and laughed.
We speculated that all the religions got heaven wrong.

My mother wanted some resolution between us,
so I lied some and stretched the truth out of shape.

She was ready to go, tired of being cold and hungry
and not being physically able to contribute.

I was ready for her to be gone—half my weight
vanished at five-twenty-seven a. m.

I heard no flapping of wings, no chorus of angels,
no dream-time vision of reconciliation.

A city moves on as if nothing is lost to the scheme of things,
or that nothing lost is not instantly replaced.

Businesses built around our sorrow called repeatedly,
expressed their condolences, collected our money.

Fifty years of Girl Scouts presented their tears at the funeral.
Oh, to have one dollar for each tear, each sob, each

hug in the greeting line where small voices bent to my ear
expressed a hole in the heart, a weight upon shoulders.

Kenneth P. Gurney


TYING LINES

Delphi knows she’s named after a holy place
not a one-ninth aspect of sibylla,
not sister or cousin to Pessinos,
but she reads the tarot anyway.

Reads the stars for the trust-crossed,
for a fee that, sometimes, is money,
others deeds, others love. It matters not—
she controls little of her sight.

Delphi does not feel the roots of the earth,
through the darkness of caves,
the long, black veins delving deep,
the postulate unproved.

Her mother owned no name—immortal nymph.
Fae creature out of place upon a Parnassus slope.
Or was it Gaia herself and the line drawn: Themis
through Phoebe to now—sweet bird tell me a story.

Delphi speaks not of her past, but in the voices
of sparrows, of wrens, of meadowlarks,
envisions again the Mabinogion, Rhiannon’s trial,
the advent of horses—the birth of care.

Kenneth P. Gurney

Kenneth P. Gurney lives in Albuquerque, NM. His work appears mostly on the web as he spends reading fee & SASE money of flowers for his lover. His book Greeting Card and Other Poems is available through amazon. For more information about Kenneth, visit http://www.kpgurney.me.


Swift, fragile filly,
Race eternal cloud, wispy wind
Shed girth, biting steel.

Dianne Heffner

Since recently retiring, Dianne has taken Creative Writing courses through distance education program. She found a love of poetry she never realized before.


A SHARED LAMENT

with fingers spread
over piano keys

her erratic voice
wrapped in music

in sadness and escape
until the sounds

drift from her
into my skin

her grief sings me
into passion

and I cry sorrows
not my own

Joanna M. Weston

Joanna has had poetry, reviews, and short stories published in anthologies and journals for twenty years. Has two middle-readers published, The Willow-Tree Girl, Those Blue Shoes, and poetry, A Summer Father, published by Frontenac House of Calgary.


Sonnet to the Gods

If the gods would ‘twain my heart,
And cauterize, lest my soul should seep,
And split forever into two these parts-
One for my love, one mine to keep.
My love would keep hers in a locket,
So against hers, mine may ever burn.
I would keep mine in my pocket,
To give to my love upon my return.
For if my heart remains with me alone,
A river of tears it will surely make
And wander an ever empty throne;
Until it faults and fails for its own sake.
Give at least half my heart to my love,
If there be any sympathetic gods above.

William Wright Harris

William is currently an English Literature major at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. He is 26, and has been writing for most of those years. His work focuses on experimenting with different forms and structures, while using subject matter taken from his own life.


Conceit

It should have changed my life. I watched him
Hunched over the ground, hours spent
Imparting tiny grains of colored sand with intricate thoughts
On the ground, drawing blue flowers, red flowers
One giant flower covering the ground. It was so beautiful
I would have given anything to roll the whole thing up
And take it home with me.

But the wind took it minutes
After it was done, smearing great swaths of color against itself until
It was nothing but disfigured, slightly grayer smudge against the blondness of the desert sand.
The little man stood up, smiled at me, and walked slowly away.
It should have changed my life. I should have taken it away with me
His lack of artistic conceit, his willingness to just
Let his day disappear in the pursuit of beauty, but just the beauty of the moment.
Be here now, and only now. Be here now here now here now here now.

I fully intended to go home and erase everything I had ever written
That day, that week, Siberian year, in my life, because filled as I was
With the artist’s apparent satisfaction at the act of creation
And only in the act of creation, I figured that taking pleasure in just writing
Should be enough for me, too. I sat
At my desk for hours, staring at page after page of hastily-scribbled poems,
Notes , stories, books almost started and those almost finished

And couldn’t do it. I failed. I wanted to. I want to be free
Of these suitcases of loose paper, immolate my dreams
Dissolve the part of me that was saved in those notes
But I haven’t the strength to let go.

Holly Day

Troll Bride

a woman that falls in with a troll
is dragged to its cave by her hair
and forced into slavery, trapped forever
in its small, dark den
forced to cook the bones of children down into paste
for the troll to spread over toast
and eat with coffee

worse, the troll might make her his wife

after months of abuse, of pinching and tugging,
merciless berating,
full-body force-massages of stinging ointments
and strange potions, she begins to lose
her human features. her skin grows coarse and dull,
her hair mats into greasy clumps, her voice shrinks
into an unintelligible grunt.

she will never again feel sunlight
or know what it’s like to be loved by another human being.
eventually, she will forget
what it was like to be human
and dismiss all memories of her previous life as nothing but dreams
full of too much color.

Holly Day

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


Mowing the Lawn

As
I
mow

I
see
the
sun
in
a
wildflower

and
the
sweet
fragrance
is
the
moon

as
the
earth
is
a
vase
of
roots
and
rich
soil

delicate
as
glass.

Danny P. Barbare

Danny’s poetry has won the Jim Gitting's Award at Greenville Technical College. His poems have recently appeared in Cherrypicked Hands, Canopic Jar,and Arbor Vitae.