a picture & a poem: mark sanders

The Cranes, Texas January - by Mark Sanders
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I call my wife outdoors to have her listen,

to turn her ears upward, beyond the cloud-veiled

sky where the moon dances thin light,

to tell her, “Don’t hear the cars on the freeway—

it’s not the truck-rumble. It is and is not

the sirens.” She stands there, on deck

a rocking boat, wanting to please the captain

who would have her hear the inaudible.

Her eyes, so blue the day sky is envious,

fix blackly on me, her mouth poised on question

like a stone. But, she hears, after all.

                                                           January on the Gulf,

warm wind washing over us,

we stand chilled in the winter of those voices.

source

a picture & a poem: carlo betocchi

Summer by Carlo Betocchi
-----------------------

And it grows, the vain

summer,

even for us with our

bright green sins:

behold the dry guest,

the wind,

as it stirs up quarrels

among magnolia boughs

and plays its serene

tune on

the prows of all the leaves—

and then is gone,

leaving the leaves

still there,

the tree still green, but breaking

the heart of the air.

poem source

a picture & a poem: shane koyczan

6:59 AM by Shane Koyczan

------------------

I’ve been told
that people in the army
do more by 7:00 am
than I do
in an entire day but if I wake
at 6:59 am
and turn to you
to trace the outline of your lips
with mine
I will have done enough
and killed no one
in the process.

poem source

a picture & a poem: alice fulton

the wreckage entrepreneur by alice fulton
----------------------------------------------------------

It takes faith—this tripping through the mixed blessings

of debris with eyes peeled for the toxic

toothpaste green of copper keystones.

On good days Carborundum-bladed saws free sublime

objective blossoms; stained glass

hangs rescued and suspended

like frozen scarves on lines

behind indigents at barrel fires;

granite cherubs wearing crowbar marks

lie abandoned at her door.

After the wrecking ball

she loads her truck with crushed iotas

because cast marble dust's more durable than solid cuts.

Only occasionally, gargoyles blur

under the pressure of her gaze

as if vision were itself corrosive.

Then deco mirrors hold her

as they catacomb the warehouse walls,

and clinging at the empty

gilding of a door, she wants

a shower and lather of pumice

to melt the gritty casing of her

nakedness. How small she looks

beside what she has saved.

poem source

a picture & a poem: billy collins!

Silence by Billy Collins
----------------------- 
There is the sudden silence of the crowd

above a player not moving on the field,

and the silence of the orchid.

The silence of the falling vase

before it strikes the floor,

the silence of the belt when it is not striking the child.

The stillness of the cup and the water in it,

the silence of the moon

and the quiet of the day far from the roar of the sun.

The silence when I hold you to my chest,

the silence of the window above us,

and the silence when you rise and turn away.

And there is the silence of this morning

which I have broken with my pen,

a silence that had piled up all night

like snow falling in the darkness of the house—

the silence before I wrote a word

and the poorer silence now.

(poem source)

a picture & a poem: carl sandburg!

At a Window by Carl Sandburg
-------------

Give me hunger,

O you gods that sit and give

The world its orders.

Give me hunger, pain and want,

Shut me out with shame and failure

From your doors of gold and fame,

Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger!

But leave me a little love,

A voice to speak to me in the day end,

A hand to touch me in the dark room

Breaking the long loneliness.

In the dusk of day-shapes

Blurring the sunset,

One little wandering, western star

Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow.

Let me go to the window,

Watch there the day-shapes of dusk

And wait and know the coming

Of a little love. 

(source)

a picture & a poem: charles ghigna

Autumn's Way - Charles Ghigna
---------------

In their yellow-most goings,

leaves of maple

ride breezes to the ground.

You can hear their sound

each autumn afternoon

as the crisp air cuts

through the trees

and hurries us along

the golden sidewalks

home.

(poem source)

a picture & a poem: vachel lindsay

The Spider and the Ghost of the Fly - Vachel Lindsay
--------------

Once I loved a spider

When I was born a fly,

A velvet-footed spider

With a gown of rainbow-dye.

She ate my wings and gloated.

She bound me with a hair.

She drove me to her parlor

Above her winding stair.

To educate young spiders

She took me all apart.

My ghost came back to haunt her.

I saw her eat my heart.

(poem source)

a picture & a poem: caroline caddy!

Editing the Moon by Caroline Caddy
---------------

Be precise

authority is magic.

When you think you've got it straight

wax wane declination

feel the movement under your hand

one summer morning

as you observe it set

then rise that night.

Always use a well-sharpened pencil

followed by a good eraser.

Watch the white emerge.

(poem source)

a picture & a poem: dana gioia!

Reunion by Dana Gioia

----------------------

This is my past where no one knows me.

These are my friends whom I can’t name—

Here in a field where no one chose me,

The faces older, the voices the same.

Why does this stranger rise to greet me?

What is the joke that makes him smile,

As he calls the children together to meet me,

Bringing them forward in single file?

I nod pretending to recognize them,

Not knowing exactly what I should say.

Why does my presence seem to surprise them?

Who is the woman who turns away?

Is this my home or an illusion?

The bread on the table smells achingly real.

Must I at last solve my confusion,

Or is confusion all I can feel?

(poem source)

a picture & a poem: todd boss

We Tend to Sleep Better When the Clock is Wound by Todd Boss
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than we do

when it’s all

wound down.

I don’t know

why we settle

to the sound.

Somehow

the regular

click and chime

of passing time,

like water, turns

a water wheel

that turns a gear

that turns a stone

that turns upon

another stone

and fine

and finer in between

our dreams like grain

are ground.

(poem source)

a picture & a poem: nicky beer!

Prairie Octopus, Awake by Nicky Beer
-----------------

The night’s turned everything to junipers   

shagged & spooked with cerulean chalk-fruit,   

weird berries whiffing of Martians in rut.   

I forget this isn’t my universe   

sometimes. Sometimes I think I was falling   

most of my life to land here, a lone skirl   

in the immaculate hush. In my world   

I waltzed with my ink-self, my black shantung.   

Owls swallow vowels in stilled trees. It’s not   

sleeplessness, it’s fear of what the dark will   

do if I don’t keep a close eye on it.   

Blue minutes leak from the pricked stars’ prisms,   

seep into the earth unchecked. Just as well—   

I’ve hardly enough arms to gather them.

(poem source)

a picture & a poem: solitude

At a Standstill by Samuel Menashe
----------------

The statue, that cast

Of my solitude

Has found its niche

In this kitchen

Where I do not eat

Where the bathtub stands

Upon cat feet—

I did not advance

I cannot retreat

(poem source) 

a picture & a poem: birds

Dawn Chorus by Sasha Dugdale

----------

March 29, 2010

Every morning since the time changed

I have woken to the dawn chorus

And even before it sounded, I dreamed of it

Loud, unbelievably loud, shameless, raucous

And once I rose and twitched the curtains apart

Expecting the birds to be pressing in fright

Against the pane like passengers

But the garden was empty and it was night

Not a slither of light at the horizon

Still the birds were bawling through the mists

Terrible, invisible

A million small evangelists

How they sing: as if each had pecked up a smoldering coal

Their throats singed and swollen with song

In dissonance as befits the dark world

Where only travelers and the sleepless belong

(poem source)

a picture & a poem: happy 4th!

learning to love america by shirley geok-lin lim
------------------------------------

because it has no pure products

because the Pacific Ocean sweeps along the coastline

because the water of the ocean is cold

and because land is better than ocean

because I say we rather than they

because I live in California

I have eaten fresh artichokes

and jacaranda bloom in April and May

because my senses have caught up with my body

my breath with the air it swallows

my hunger with my mouth

because I walk barefoot in my house

because I have nursed my son at my breast

because he is a strong American boy

because I have seen his eyes redden when he is asked who he is

because he answers I don’t know

because to have a son is to have a country

because my son will bury me here

because countries are in our blood and we bleed them

because it is late and too late to change my mind

because it is time.

(poem source)

a picture & a poem: kazim ali

autobiography by kazim ali
-----------------

we didn’t really speak

my summer wants to answer

the architecture doesn’t matter

this is not my real life

when I am here I want to know

why do I believe what I was taught

a storm is on the way

close all the windows

begin at the earliest hour

is there a self

(poem source)

a picture & a poem: sandra beasley!

The Piano Speaks by Sandra Beasley 
--------------
For an hour I forgot my fat self,
my neurotic innards, my addiction to alignment.

For an hour I forgot my fear of rain.

For an hour I was a salamander
shimmying through the kelp in search of shore,
and under his fingers the notes slid loose
from my belly in a long jellyrope of eggs
that took root in the mud. And what

would hatch, I did not know—
a lie. A waltz. An apostle of glass.

For an hour I stood on two legs
and ran. For an hour I panted and galloped.

For an hour I was a maple tree,
and under the summer of his fingers
the notes seeded and winged away

in the clutch of small, elegant helicopters.

(poem source)

a picture & a poem: dancing!

Nostalgia by Billy Collins

----------------

Remember the 1340s? We were doing a dance called the Catapult.

You always wore brown, the color craze of the decade,

and I was draped in one of those capes that were popular,

the ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework.

Everyone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon,

and at night we would play a game called “Find the Cow.”

Everything was hand-lettered then, not like today.

Where has the summer of 1572 gone? Brocade and sonnet

marathons were the rage. We used to dress up in the flags

of rival baronies and conquer one another in cold rooms of stone.

Out on the dance floor we were all doing the Struggle

while your sister practiced the Daphne all alone in her room.

We borrowed the jargon of farriers for our slang.

These days language seems transparent, a badly broken code.

The 1790s will never come again. Childhood was big.

People would take walks to the very tops of hills

and write down what they saw in their journals without speaking.

Our collars were high and our hats were extremely soft.

We would surprise each other with alphabets made of twigs.

It was a wonderful time to be alive, or even dead.

I am very fond of the period between 1815 and 1821.

Europe trembled while we sat still for our portraits.

And I would love to return to 1901 if only for a moment,

time enough to wind up a music box and do a few dance steps,

or shoot me back to 1922 or 1941, or at least let me

recapture the serenity of last month when we picked

berries and glided through afternoons in a canoe.

Even this morning would be an improvement over the present.

I was in the garden then, surrounded by the hum of bees

and the Latin names of flowers, watching the early light

flash off the slanted windows of the greenhouse

and silver the limbs on the rows of dark hemlocks.

As usual, I was thinking about the moments of the past,

letting my memory rush over them like water

rushing over the stones on the bottom of a stream.

I was even thinking a little about the future, that place

where people are doing a dance we cannot imagine,

a dance whose name we can only guess.

(poem source)

a picture & a poem: matthew rohrer

Childhood Stories by Matthew Rohrer

-------------

They learned to turn off the gravity in an auditorium

and we all rose into the air,

the same room where they demonstrated

pow-wows and prestidigitation.

But not everyone believed it.

That was the most important lesson

I learned—that a truck driven by a dog

could roll down a hill at dusk

and roll right off a dock into a lake

and sink, and if no one believes you

then what is the point

of telling them wonderful things?

I walked home from the pow-wow

on an early winter night in amazement:

they let me buy the toy tomahawk!

As soon as I got home I was going

to hit my sister with it, but I didn’t know this.

(poem source)

a picture & a poem: stuart dybek

chord by stuart dybek

--------------

A man steps out of sunlight,

sunlight that streams like grace,

still gaping at blue sky

staked across the emptiness of space,

into a history where shadows

assume a human face.

A man slips into silence

that began as a cry,

still trailing music

although reduced to the sigh

of an accordion

as it folds into its case.

(poem source)