Links of Ladder Higher than a hired man’s head, a chain bubbles from the tree’s heart and falling thirteen links, dares a boy’s reaching, his pretending— its original purpose unknown. It is not a hanging tree or surveyor’s witness, but a yard-oak to dream under. The chain was left there in a fork by heart attack or by forgotten convenience, has provoked the grain to snarl and restless, has rubbed a triangle, an arrow, in the gray bark. He sees the ladder he must climb to know how chance and choice can be useful. … Continue reading Links of Ladder by Frederick Wilbur→
The Paperboy Sees No Wonder in It— the Snow Giving off the Only Light at 6 AM The boy could have lived forever sliding down a hill, after watching cartoons. Now the only cartoon is himself falling through drifts to the corner, where he’s one bundle binding himself to others by snapping open their plastic straps and sitting among the papers. He rolls them into funnels, slips them into plastic sheaths, while the first house tugs at him, and he gets up, his steps a kind of wandering from house to house, each one … Continue reading The Paperboy Sees No Wonder in It… by Rodney Torreson→
losing the word what is prayer but our limbic words offered to an uncertain trajectory, the cave images given language from our dark cities. i remember your prayer outside memphis whispered just beyond my hearing, lips moving beneath that crumbling billboard the veil between us never thin enough to reach a hand through your words, their white dust prophecy dying muffled against my palm 12 steps in california he is wary though the treatment center is close enough there is a lost coast inside of him, the jagged reach where his brain … Continue reading losing the word by Sharon Ackerman→
By Ross Taylor STEADY WORK Our drummer stopped too soon but we kept on– like walking off a cliff across the air. I played for her and him and others gone, the wasted dancers hopped a little more. I must repeat this till I get it right: at last she feared my nightly transformations. Her tears for me have cooled to silver bullets. And this: the hospital clocked his final minute then old deserted new as per tradition– all the newborns wailed under the lights. Dance without drums, love only rhyme, bury the … Continue reading Part of the Past→
We Always Called Him Fletcher Never by his first name Albert, or Mr. Fletcher. He was tall as a sugar pine, skin the color of freckled walnuts, walked our whole neighborhood hauling an extension ladder from job to job, his back gospel-straight. I knew nothing beyond his easy manner, and that one summer morning when I rode with my dad to snag him from the Shell Station where out back he managed to unfold from a lean-to, tools in tow. There were easy lies about Fletcher. His thank-you-mam gratitude for a bologna sandwich served … Continue reading We Always Called Him Fletcher by Barbara Conrad→
The Sheets Pulled Over When one thinks in love about love, he’s doing what he shouldn’t. He will get it wrong. What if everything were revealed? The apples and milk on your mind when we lay down in Washington Park in the busy green city, if those were left on the bus in Flatbush, had tumbled to the gummed up floor since, and were what occupied you as we rushed back to your bedroom, gripped with heat. When we come to love we come expecting to get some part of it exactly right. What … Continue reading The Sheets Pulled Over by Tanner Pruitt→
Sharon Leiter August 12, 1942—January 15, 2016 “The poet lights the light and fades away. But the light goes on and on.” ― Emily Dickinson It’s with much heartache that we announce the passing of our poetry editor and dear friend, Sharon Leiter. After a two-year battle with cancer, she slipped away on Saturday, surrounded by her loved ones. Sharon was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a family of Russian-Jewish immigrants. She studied literature at Brandeis University, where she met her late husband, Darryl, an astrophysicist. Together, they raised their daughter in Virginia, where Sharon taught … Continue reading In Memoriam: Sharon Leiter→
Street of My Life Street of my life, I have left you and I have returned, wandering nights in your renovated future, The deed has passed into my keeping, and the dead, ever gracious, have agreed, to pretend they have never left. Short, unexceptional street, lined on both sides with two-story brick houses, Each with its painted stoop, pouring bruised-legged children down the stone steps, With its flower pots, its wooden bench and iron-fenced “garden,” large enough for a single flowering tree a row of crunchy-leafed bushes, And the last house with its Florsheim … Continue reading Honey and Six Poems by Sharon Leiter→
Smoke —translated from Theophile Gautier’s Emaux et Cemées, 1852-1872 Down there, under sheltering trees: A hunchbacked hovel of the poor— Walls crumbling; roof down on its knees. Moss blots the threshold of the door. The window’s shutter is its mouth. But like a tepid winter breath Exhaled from some living mouth, This hovel shows it’s far from death. It stands there shabby, closed-in, shut. But smoke is spiralling. A corkscrew’s Thin blue thread curls from that hut: Its soul, which carries God the news. Fumée Original French Là-bas, sous les arbres s’abrite … Continue reading Smoke by Len Krisak→
3rd place winner of the Streetlight 2015 Poetry Contest. Flowers in a Crystal Vase – Manet, 1882 At the members only showing of flower paintings, we old folks dress for comfort. Women in flats and boutique slacks, light sweaters, conservative colors, but still striving for a sense of style. We men—not so much. A leather jacket seems to be the best we can do. As if somewhere in the back of our memory, a whisper tells us this makes us debonair, perhaps a little dangerous, walking among still-life flower arrangements. The young guards herd … Continue reading Flowers in a Crystal Vase by Les Bares→
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