The boys’ stories of the tobacco— splotched and yellow “toad” squirting blood from eyes and licking red ants don’t prepare you for a patch of the field rising and rushing blurry, then stopping, fitting earth tightly, the last puzzle piece. Nor do you know how you’re guided to it, and though they’ve told you…
Be it so we were among them. Veins in the fingers that remember, will. Every vacant gaze an arc. Drawn against impassible night. The sky trapezes a decade, one letter hurls after another. Huddles nameless on the grid. Where did the child bright swerve among inky knees. The animals press dumbly forward in a crowd…
For many, gifted writer and giving teacher Jean Valentine has always resided under the radar. Poet/meisterblogger Ron Silliman writes in 2007: "In over a quarter century of visiting New York, where she’s made her home, for readings, talks, conferences, I’ve never—not once—heard a New York poet ever mention her name. For her sense of ‘presence’…
Where will you go? Will there be a nail brush, face cream, a cotton-pressed comb? Will there be toothpicks? Dove soap? A small towel? Will there be a shoe horn? Will you sleep? Will there be others? Will there be a quiet room, a firm bed? Will you lie prone with your hands on…
My mother was a Cinderella and a Cinderella never rescued by a godmother’s spell: part sophisticated lady; part hoary headed char-woman of bitter Texas winters whose ax could free the water frozen beneath the stock trough ice. In all kinds of weather, my brunette sister was a lonely, zaftig sweetheart. When first told one of…
She’s been warned not to sleep with moonlight on her face or she will be taken from her house. She wears eel-skin to protect herself. She tilts her face to the night sky when no one is looking. During the eclipse, eels bubble in their dark and secret caves. Toads frenzy in pastures…
"Here’s why I write. Because Poetry begins there where death had not the final word." —Odysseus Elytis I sent out a call to some poets: friends, acquaintances, and some only known to me by their poems. Inevitably I forgot some, and also I am ignorant of many; forgive me. I asked for submissions…
Of nearness to her sundered Things* A coral necklace, white, with a gold clasp. We had always thought coral was pink, but no, this coral is the color of egg shells. The beads are round, like pearls, and in size grow from the size of a pea to twice that where they must have hung…
The middle of the river closed The main channel of navigation From mouth all the way to the island there You see the light between Fishing boats we call the channel the real thing We’re deciding It’s a point of commerce and pride to be Nobody argued with respect to the…
No products in the cart.