Bolts of Silk

After Dusk by Chris Crittenden

2009-08-28T08:21:00.002Z

mauve has gone down
the long rollercoaster sprint
of a firefly's throat.
we are offered a fabric
without spectrum or prism,
dark curtains
drawn on a lavish stage.

nothing left
except hints of lost embers.
glints and glows like magic tips
of an Etch a Sketch
that never paints.

we must do the work ourselves,
filling in the canvas,
guided only by a rare
meteor scar.

what we see, all our dreams,
merely a whimsy of stardust,
clouds of fleshed glitter
kicked up by the hobos in our heads.

that's night's secret,
as if we didn't know-
we wear ourselves,
feel our own secrets,
when we button on the dark.

Chris Crittenden, Maine, USA

Summer Night by Karen S. Nowviskie

2009-08-23T12:22:00.002Z

Taken by an evening chill,
I leave my sun-soaked seat,

Forsaking hummingbirds
That trouble trumpet vines

And bumblebees that startle
At their sudden rise and fall.

Conceding feeders to
The scrabbling squirrels

And serviceberries to
The reign of mockingbirds,

I force my trembling self
To pause as life,

Unshaken by the coming
Of the night,

Grows dark against
The purple evening sky.

Karen Nowviskie, West Virginia, USA

Sunset Song by Chris Crittenden

2009-08-19T11:06:00.000Z

tea-leaf sky,
crushed calendulas and smeared mallows.
the sun flees this garden
like Romeo growing redder,
exiled by his blush.

we want to spread this marmalade,
like toddlers brazen and quick,
swirl with our raised finger
painting fingers,
and loose a giggle as we splatter forth
a dragon's yellow tail.

we want to bubble with laughter
that fizzes in our throats,
bloom bouquets on bright breaths,
and float with them, giddy
as dandelion puffs.

the gorgets of once-seen hawks,
embers fleeting and rare,
tint our bottomless eyes.
sunset has given us answers,
more certain than the dark.
never again these reaches to be known
as empty.

Chris Crittenden, Maine, USA

And So I Forgot Water, Too, Has Breath by Michael H Brownstein

2009-08-17T13:02:00.002Z

And so I forgot water, too, has breath
and purple weeds can lift their eyes from the mud first light.
I have forgotten, too, their pattern of speech,
their bright fingers tearing the sky apart.
There is much to forget and much to remember.
and in time I will forget this also: the great Missouri
breaking the boundary, its belly pregnant,
its strength a pulse, a spread of hands--
rising, rising, rising--its fingers stretching from fist
into mud and design, debris and satisfaction.

Michael H Brownstein, Chicago, USA

Fox On Mitcham Common by Matthew Friday

2009-08-14T08:07:00.000Z

Posing in his orange-brown fur,
erect ears, staring into the foreground
forked by tall iron pylons tearing
the sky open over the tiny patch of Common.

Matthew Friday, UK

Good Authority by James Brush

2009-08-07T12:45:00.000Z

I always thought
they’d like death metal,
but I’ve got it on good authority
vultures prefer smooth jazz.

Ambulance rides can be rough;
vultures know this and relax.
Watching the highway, they know
everyone gets his turn.

Turkey Vultures can smell a corpse
from hundreds of feet up. Outflying
Cessnas they arrive first on the scene.

Black Vultures follow, pushing
the solitary Turkeys to the rotting edges.

The Black Vultures brag that by traveling
together they’ve learned to attack
and kill small animals: calves and possums.
Straightening their ties, they discuss
elaborate plans to go public. Someday, they claim,
they will become hawks or eagles.

The Turkey Vulture listens to this talk,
wondering if he too will evolve.

James Brush, Texas, USA

Open Letter by Janann Dawkins

2009-08-04T17:20:00.002Z

John, I hope the Jersey sun
shines on your hands. Here,
clouds stretch into oceans
of clouds, and birds melt into liquid
flight. From the east rain approaches
like a paw, snaring the weekend.

Last night, I spied your gibbous eye.

A crow as dark as my father
dropped from high, blood
blackened by a virus
from a mosquito's dirty needle.
All last week I stayed inside.

I sleep with hands horizontal.
God dresses in your voice, and it buttons
me in dreams.

Janann Dawkins, Michigan, USA

Terrene Explorer by S. P. Flannery

2009-07-31T12:56:00.001Z

Slugs climb from hostas to
stick to windows, basement
portals that these viscous individuals
use to ascend from the ground
of moss and mould, debris where mushrooms
protrude to toxicate terrestrial fauna.
Trails cling and refract sunlight
unobstructed by clouds or night,
this armada races to the edge
where the sea of glass becomes replaced
with aluminum siding, white, abrasive
to a gelatinous epidermal coat.
These invertebrates freefall back,
moist loam soil greets them home
from the xeric realm of outer space.

S. P. Flannery, Madison, USA

Being Young and Green by Isaiah Vianese

2009-07-27T06:41:00.001Z

after Edna St. Vincent Millay

Summer and the baby ferns
dry to a crisp—sun bleeding them.
The wind takes what is left.
Young, green, hopeful,
they stand along the road,
reaching for the sun,
loving it nonetheless.

Isaiah Vianese, Missouri, USA

Culling by Taylor Graham

2009-07-23T11:23:00.001Z

I was going to write a poem. Instead, all morning
I’ve been pulling out periwinkle by the roots.
I love periwinkle, its blossoms of a blue shade
I can’t describe except by its own name. But
periwinkle has overgrown my tiny island between
dingy lawn and pebble deck, twining all over
the red-clay Mexican tree-of-life atop a boulder,
which I meant to be a focus – more than that,
a symbol – of the garden. What I’ve torn out,
I’ll stick in the ground on that bare slope above
the field, and hope it grows there. It’s hardy as
human language. It just doesn’t belong where it is,
not so much of it. Let’s say, it’s too much herbage.
What does this have to do with writing a poem?

Taylor Graham, California, USA

it was a spider by Charles Clifford Brooks III

2009-07-20T14:42:00.002Z

burgundy flora is placed
and eight legs race
from it
across the oak table.

a snow-white spider
the second in three days
she replaces the first one
i killed.

number two is hiding
in a bundle of cockscomb.
one little crystal spinner
at buddha’s feet.

i am a reed
a puff of air
humbled as she weeps
for the first.

Charles Clifford Brookes III

untitled by Regina C J Green

2009-07-16T13:15:00.001Z

peace
enters
another
child's
ear

through long-winding roads
once the path worn round
the old broken elm
and standing there
contemplating the lapsed sturdiness
of it all

you became the roaming spider and
the hungry locust
the tall valiant grass and
the happy cattail
and every mirrored child
knew his way
from home to there
and back again

Regina C J Green, Florida, USA

July by Aiko Harman

2009-07-14T12:29:00.001Z

Out on the back porch
watching the dogs catch June bugs
praying for peace.

Red Solo cups clutter the lawn,
saran wrap hugs the leftover
hamburgers until tomorrow.

After dusk, mosquitoes make
blue sparks in the hanging zapper.
Crickets tune on the lawn.

Grandfathers sleep in Lazyboys
in the living room, holding cups
of melting ice on their bellies.

Girls in sundresses catch lightning
bugs along the still lake in mason jars
— nature’s night-lights.

My mother, her sister, sit in the kitchen,
remembering, their staccato voices echo
from the window like two canaries.

I am home. I sleep to the hum
of the fan left on overnight, dry heat,
and summer.

Aiko Harman, Scotland

The Adirondack Chair by Robert Demaree

2009-07-09T11:35:00.000Z

Between the screened porch and the tool shed,
Back from the pond,
Sat my mother’s white Adirondack chair,
Where she would shell peas
Of a light New Hampshire afternoon 40 Julys ago.
You might call it a yard,
Except for grass there were ferns, maple seedlings, and
Sprouting amid the pine needles
A score of things I could not name.
In time the chair fell apart, began to rot,
Returning to the rocky soil whence it had come.
I could not let the space sit empty.
I got a white Adirondack chair of molded plastic
At the Walmart on the highway,
Near where the farm stand had been.

Robert Demaree, NC, USA

Inheriting a Garden by Taylor Graham

2009-07-02T21:16:00.003Z

Heavenly bamboo outside my window
amber/tender-green and saffron – never trust
a garden planted by a former owner.
What did she mean? Firethorn and holly,
every bush bears birds and hunger-berries.

Could a garden’s keeper die of roses?

Still, heavenly bamboo draws me into
cantilevered daylight through a lace of oaks.
A place to gather stars, their blossoming
already light-years gone. Who planned
their gardens? Down here, bees weave
silken carpets of rosemary, lavender, and air.

Taylor Graham, California, USA

Lichen by Chris Crittenden

2009-06-28T13:11:00.000Z

the judge
who consigns my soul
will have the same pale eyes
and stare just as long,
perusing the tome of my seasons;

yet to me it will seem
we have no time together;
that i barely notice
a jade sphinx
before she is gone.

only shadows call the lichen love,
taking time to savor every lobe-
and only on certain days
when the light wanes sweet.

she never sulks,
even when dew makes her cry,
basking in pure air
like the portrait of a nude.
one brushstroke a year.

Chris Crittenden, Maine, USA

A Letter from Carnegiea gigantea by Gary Wong

2009-06-23T13:33:00.003Z

My Dear Rain,

Tomorrow is the eighty-second day
I've been apart from you—my dear, my rain.
The Arizona heat can kill a stray,
but waiting here, I braved the desert flames.

To bring you back, I grew a ruby flower
at night, in secret, using water saved
from last you gave me kisses from the clouds.
I grew the stone with rain—your rain—and faith.

Caressed my nettles, licked my waxy flesh—
I know, deep down, you felt these feelings too.
Come back to me. My roots are shallow, fresh
are your storms, and I have a life to lose.

Gone. Gone away. I kissed the Flicker's beak.
He drank the you from me: the life of me.

Gary Wong, California, USA

My Tourist Yard by James Brush

2009-06-19T12:38:00.001Z

They show up in April with the cowbirds
and the red wings, all the icterids returning.

By June they’re hoarding the feeders,
the birdbaths and the lawn, clucking

in the trees and teaching their young.
By August they’ve returned to the parking lot

at the grocery store, handing the keys to the yard
back to the chickadees and titmice who,

more deferential, somehow seem a little
sweeter than their noisy cousins who only

summer here, throw their cash around and
leave without learning the culture or our ways.

James Brush, Texas, USA

Newly Weds at the Grocery Store by Mather Schneider

2009-06-14T08:56:00.000Z

He can’t believe she doesn’t like radishes.
He loves them,
they make you burp.
His father loved them too.
“I love my burpers,”
his father used to say.

She is perturbed about the burpers.
They remind her of her aunt Penelope.
To her they are just depraved little apples
that make you cry.
She ripely repudiates their presence.

Is the problem of the burpers
ungovernable?
The decibels by the vegetable bin
impel us to hyperbole.

We’d hate to see them go their separate ways
over a spat in produce—
he soap-boxing the burper,
she purpling
in apoplectic loathing of it.

Whatever happens I hope they remember:
culpability
does not bed with the burper.

The burper is just a tiny tuber.

Mather Schneider, Arizona, USA

got laid off on Monday by Sarah Ruth Farnsworth

2009-06-10T16:44:00.002Z

catch the standupsit
down train while you bustle
up against/your headphones breathing
nonsense, secret nonsense and you
let it/how can contact lose its meaning after two joints
and an hour/palindromes of
people we've touched but never met/and i
want to know what matters/will i
find the sun if i stretch
far enough, or are we ghosts holding
picket signs at some protest for
death/today i soak up all
the rain and shake my beggar's cup
for years until i
overflow with ashes of the past/what can
i do but wonder why we waste
our lives on trains/i sleep-walk
into passersby and yes, we've met before.

Sarah Ruth Farnsworth, San Francisco, California, USA

Accidental Dancer by Dorla Moorehouse

2009-06-06T08:19:00.000Z

You imagine him dancing
the way Duncan did-
ecstatic, the way Graham did-
disjointed,

wrapped in his own soul.

Despite knowing the beat passes
through his head without
reaching his limbs-
despite knowing he's been too feral
too long to be trained
you want to set a work for him,
and his freely awkward
frame because you love
the effortless clumsiness
and the confidence of each
second he performs, and the
yearning shyness on his
face the moment he is finished.

You hope to find a composition
in which each note sounds
only of joy, and you want
to give him your steps and
your style and have him
translate and deconstruct
each idea into his
ecstatic body.

Dorla Moorehouse, Texas, USA

Fragile by Mather Schneider

2009-06-03T18:29:00.000Z

The woman takes down the pictures of her family
and tucks them in a box.
They all look shocked
staring through their little windows
stiff as the sweater people
in the Sears newspaper insert
lining the bottom.

She crumples up
the headlines, stuffs them between
their sharp-elbowed frames
and wraps the whole thing
thoroughly as a headwound.

She tries to protect them
with the magic wand
of her black marker
but she knows too well the way

things shift, and crack;
and the way water always seeps in
like amnesia.

Mather Schneider, Arizona, USA

Spring Breezes by Mary Belardi Erickson

2009-05-31T12:41:00.001Z

My son flies his kite in the pasture
while I jump from bog hump to hump
chasing the tail of the flying paper shape.
Wind the string in; reel it out--
releasing the triangular bird
into layers of breeze.
I show him about playing the wind--
dancing our feet, fingering a lofty tug
from the upwardly dashing kite.

There's no cutting the line
when a child flies a kite--
no letting go.
He has me help in the chase.
I run back with the stay,
preventing the kite's dive down to earth.
I show my son how the working of line,
the playing with draft
is a fine use of higher spaces.

Mary Belardi Erickson, Minnesota, USA

Denis in Space by Tom Rendell

2009-05-29T13:38:00.001Z

Denis, has gone for a year out, in Space.
Skating skywards purple boots, heels click kicking high,
A celestial shout heckles the planets, white teeth dazzle stardust,
Parents – dentists, oh so proud of their satellite son.
It’s party time in the galaxy, crystal phantoms chatter by,
Mine sweep green goblets of Beetle Juice, and off,
Soul screaming, wild – eyed,
To run rings around Saturn.

Tom Rendell, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

A Hole in the Sky by William Doreski

2009-05-24T12:43:00.002Z

A hole in the sky where gravity
doesn’t apply. Small objects
flick into the ether beyond.

Outdoors at the Japanese restaurant
by the falls we notice plastic
tableware and dishes of sauce

rise and disappear. The waiter,
when we ask where the objects go,
prefers to speak no English.

Metal tableware and our plates
remain but look uneasy,
and your hair stands up like a ruff.

Still, the squat red candles blaze,
the sushi arrives and remains here
long enough for us to eat it.

We enjoy the sizzle of water
over the falls, play of floodlights
on the flecks of vegetable foam and twigs

breaking their backs
on the rocks below. The waiter
glances up at that hole and smiles.

Some of the other diners move
indoors, unhappy with the tug
of the heavens. Despite the fluff

of your hairdo, we’re inclined
to sit all night and hope the hole
gathers strength enough to grab us.

We don’t know how far we’d rise,
but none of the ascended objects has fallen,
and we’d like to share

a close-up of planets rolling
like great ball bearings, starlight
warm against our awkward smiles.

William Doreski, NH, USA