New Writer's Showcase at Poet's Ink

Poet's Ink Review

September 2007

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Peg’s Poem

She calls to tell me
she’s lost it.

I feel conflicted;
shocked. Relieved?

“Lost what?” I lie.
“You know what,”
she says, crying.

I tell myself
“It’s ok”
and
“It’s not yours”,
but my stomach
is reeling
and I feel
I think
my world
is crumbling.

She’s crying
and I’m crying
and drinking
and listening
and waiting
for the
moment when
she’ll need
my words
and I wonder
what her
husband said.

Will I say the same thing?

How embarrassing would that be?

She’s crying,
I’m crying,
and the
conversation turns.
“It’s over,” she says,
“I can’t do this anymore.”

“What?” I say
but there’s
only crying
and silence
and a dial tone.

Peg lost her baby.

How narcissistic is it
that this poem
is about me?

David Martinez

David lives and writes in Denver, Colorado.

Natural

Staring into the eyes of nature
I see your image
dark in the shadowland of night
as you move toward me
over a bed of leaves,
your touch
sends sparkles across my flesh.

June Wilson

June has been publishing poetry since 1986. Her grown daughters have been publishing poetry since their teens, and her nine-year-old granddaughter has had two poems published.

A Glimmer of Light is in Your Eye

A glimmer of light is in your eye:
Its flickering beauty seems to me
The gauzy wing of a dragonfly.

Your hour of happiness must be nigh –
Or is it a daydream that you see?
A glimmer of light is in your eye.

The light is subtler than a sigh –
The chirp of the cricket, the dance of the bee –
The gauzy wing of a dragonfly.

You might be about to laugh, or cry,
The light in you could be grief or glee:
A glimmer of light is in your eye.

And nothing in life could pass you by
When in your eye, there flutters free
The gauzy wing of a dragonfly.

The light lives on in you, not I,
But still, I view, with jealousy:
A glimmer of light is in your eye –
The gauzy wing of a dragonfly.

Julia Pilowsky

Julie is 17-years-old and has been writing poetry since age six. She often wakes up from a dream with a poem burning in her brain, which is how most of her works come to be.

Inevitably

with my sullen eyes rooted, love
for another bounces
blindly as an abandoned
bamboo pole harangues me,
hard against concrete. This

bamboo pole refuses
to break, refuses
even to bend or shake as it
winds up slowly
pinned against my feet. But then

this love for another, rudely
awakened, simply rolls in the end
down the road not taken,
solid as the sullen eyes
blinded as an architect’s

rooted
in concrete.

James Keane

This poem was originally published in the October 2006 issue of Unfettered Verse.

Heart-shaped Drowning

Hands pressed together, vertically inclined
My palms form an almost perfect heart-shaped reservoir.
I watch as jets of water droplets steadily pour; collecting,
Filling my palms within a matter of timeless seconds,
And they laugh as they drown the only heart left in me.

Amy Marie Hess

Amy Marie is a fairly new, but promising poet.