Poet's Ink Review

September 2009

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Hypotheticals

The sturdy iron pipes supporting our city
will rust. The immutable blast of lilacs
now pummeling our senses
will evaporate into Autumn.
The blood on Achilles’ sword
has long since crusted brown,
cracked, flaked into nonexistence.
Even the sword itself
has regressed to written word.
We are left to imagine its luster.

Day’s sonorous whine, already night.
At night, we mortar the bricks
of impermanence. What if history
gorged more on truth than myth
and our glass-framed bodies
would never crush beneath pestle
to a gentle whiff of bone?
What if our eyes and hearts
spoke the language of shared morning
and for one morning we agreed on an answer?
I’m left to savor him here, amongst inane hypotheticals-
my child left unborn.

John Sibley Williams

John has an MA in Writing and resides in Portland, OR, where he frequently performs his poetry and studies Book Publishing at Portland State University. He is presently compiling manuscripts composed from the last two years of traveling and living abroad. Some of his over sixty previous or upcoming publications include: The Evansville Review, Flint Hills Review, Cadillac Cicatrix, Juked, and The Journal, among others.

The solitude,
The hours I sit on the cold metal chair
Beside your hospital bed.

Or your blue eyes,
Staring toward me, unblinking and cold as two fish,
No recognition.

Or the confident nurses
Who inform me the reach of your hand for mine
Is only an involuntary spasm of muscle.

Or the smell,
The odd, sour sweet fragrance I can’t name,
Permeating your gown, your linens, and your blond hair.

Or the sound of your breath escaping,
White phlegm and vapor spitting from your lips,
The bell ringing the requiem I don’t want to hear.

Deborah Collins

Deborah is a freelance writer living in Indianapolis, IN.

Anywhere In The Rain

A drive on a rainy summer afternoon
where the smell of sweet crude permeates everything.
The workers snake up sky blue silos on twisting
metal ladders, single file, in worn steel-toed boots.
I wave to them as I pass by
on my way to nowhere.

Korliss Sewer

This poem was previously published by Barbaric Yawp in January 2009.

Korliss is a married mother of two. Beneath the Pages is her first collection of poetry, with another soon to be published. Selected poems have appeared in The Sheltered Poet, The Orange Room Review, Poets Haven, and BlazeVOX, among other venues. She is an English Literature graduate from the University of Washington. Her website can be found at www.elusivedragonfly.com.

Oyster Stew

When Jill spies an oyster
She summons
The taste of her grandmother’s
Sugar cookies
Warm with egg yoke centers

To sweeten another scene
She cannot hold back
Recalling the night her dad
Brought home first oysters

Jill was too young
To sense the glory of oysters
She was mildly curious
With dad and mom so ecstatic

Until the moment grandma
Coughed. Grandma’s dentures
Plopped into the creamy broth
Mingling with the oysters
Like visiting pearls
Jill froze, then dashed for peanut butter

Bill Cooper

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

Rain and Iron

On thundered nights
a child knows fear,
yet comfort finds:
snuggled warmly
he hears the large drops
strike and din
against his father’s roof.

I also knew
that lullaby
of rain and iron;
and later found
I was myself
grown strong to be a roof.

Murray Alfredson

The Round

Aeons are vast
so vast indeed
— the Buddha said —
a granite mountain
leagues high, leagues wide,
lightly brushed
by floating silk
one stroke each hundred years,
would sooner wear away.

Past collapse
and birth of countless
worlds and stars,
past births and deaths
of galaxies —
countless aeons
long we tumble
through samsâra.

Murray Alfredson

"The Round" was published in Murray’s collection, Nectar and Light by Wakefield Press and Friendly Street Poets, 2007.

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.