Eric Blanchard
Publish Me
Wrap me in your critic's arms.
Edit me only slightly.
Roll me into full-color glossy.
Treat me newspaper cheap.
Spread my tender lines.
Taste my imagery.
I am an easy poem.
Publish me.
April Michelle Bratten
Kaleidoscope
Age has creeped over me like a lazy stretch.
I am now old and open,
a bad throat
that coughs up generous portions
of history.
From my mouth,
like a smattering of rain,
all the places I have been
spit a spinning map.
I put my head inside that kaleidoscope
and let it breech me
like a swirling parade
of pint sized hammers.
And the lines of
all the states
start bleeding their colors,
and the blending
is a sweet confusion
of names,
of faces,
of homes,
of my life.
I can taste their ache
as they become the great splash
that stains my skin.
Clay Carpenter (2 poems)
Joe Lewis Says
you got to make something, he says, wraps
his blue bandanna around his head. I done
made these sidewalks 34 years, since my baby
girl wasn’t even big enough to walk on one
I used to hate it but now I can make a section in
20 minutes it’ll last 30 years and not a single
crack. it’s the mix and the way you put it in and
a little bit of luck too, Joe Lewis says and wipes
gray muck from his thumb onto his shirt. you think
about how many people walk on this, it makes it seem
more important. if they want one at the White
House that’s fine with me, I’ll do it and it’ll be
the best walk at the White House, I guarantee
but you got to make something. don’t matter what.
something ’sides a paycheck. a paycheck and
something else, I tell people. you make a paycheck
and you make something, you’re happy. that’s it.
my baby girl was making herself a future,
you know, she was in college at HCC,
going to be a teacher, but then she got married
and had my grandbabies and now she’s making
a home for them, and I tell her, that’s good,
baby, just as long as you’re making something
Meditation on Hedges
Whatever happened to hedges? You hardly
ever see them in new plantings anymore
those dignified sturdy vinyl-leaved privets
bridging nature and what people made. Now
it’s all spindly flowering plants lining the
house, a buffet table missing the meat
Used to be when you planted hedges you showed
you made it, you commanded respect. Now
we’ve gone all soft, just a pretty face made up
to flirt without fortitude or conviction, someone
who, asked for some thoughts on NAFTA
or
When I see a house with carved hedges I think:
This guy has it together, Ligustrum surrounding
his castle like walls, keeping raiders
at bay. I think: This is someone you can trust. His
bills are paid, his handshake is firm, he’s
well-insured and his kids are well-adjusted
Bill Christophersen
Old Bunch of Keys
Heft the tarnished ring:
One by one, the rooms reappear, flaunting
gimcrack lures, bubblegum totems.
A cedar chest's aroma stops you cold.
A three-dimensional postcard extradites you.
Select a room and examine it further.
It is a glass globe, two inches in diameter.
Shake it: it snows. You set it on your bureau.
No telling what's back there for the taking:
your bottle-spinning 13-year-old sweetheart;
the parakeet you traded for a penknife. . . .
You whirl around and yank on a door:
An old galoot disappears back down the staircase.
Soon there are enough of these globes to fill a suitcase.
You get yourself a sleeping bag and take to spending days inside.
The neighbors spread the word that you are senile.
Janann Dawkins
Transference
The snug chocolate will soon melt
but she takes that chance, smuggling it
in her dark jeans pocket. Her svelte
form will balloon in two weeks or sooner,
but that thought is shoved further
than the milkfat and cocoa. Her stash
will join cookies and chips of all kinds,
all stuffed or zippered or funneled
into sleeves. None of this is rash:
all is the product of her mastermind,
ideas of sweets stuck in tunnels
of socks, desserts folded into drawers.
What will go where and when will
be eaten, every point plotted and graphed
against the risk, finding nooks
where no other eyes might ever look.
Better this than what she would rather:
the nuzzle of liquid as it flowers
on her tongue, the warmth a liner
from her throat to her gut
like the plastic on a windowsill,
dirt-white and soil-soft.
Carol Lynn Grellas
A Letter on Beauty
Once I walked down spiral stairs
in a slinky dress with hair that brushed
my shoulders gentle, as a conga rose
while I held the attention of all below.
Now I walk beside the walker observing
the thrill that stems from crane legs
that never end, mesmerized by her
golden skin, sweet as pancakes, warm
and fluffy scented with vanilla and eggs.
I used to ride the ocean like a horse,
galloping one wave at a time
holding the seaweed for reigns,
sodden sand would splatter between
my breasts, roll down my naked belly,
blending flesh with salt until I tasted
delicious. A water goddess with bubbles a
floating off fingers, falling on sloped
bones that covered secrets kept.
But beautiful was the way my mother
looked in her lace nightgown the day
I bathed her with lilac soap and smoothed
her pale hands with opium lotion,
as she waited for her newborn body
to guide her through the ceiling. I saw
her vanish through the chandelier
when all the bulbs ignited, sending
fireworks from here to Heaven.