Tag Archives: poetry

Poetry: Lilies of the Field

books poetry lit January 23, 2015 Comments: 2

When did the phenomena melt together, fused by expectation?
There are a thousand perfect poems in the fields. As a child,

I would gather samples — flowers, seeds and leaves, each one
poetic and complete, mysteries of form and wonder, pattern

and proportion. I took my own sustenance for granted, gave
no thought to need. When did my sight become constricted,

these open apertures grow narrow, restricted to seeing things
I understand, for which I have a purpose? When did the fields

become a flat expanse of un-mowed green? Look there!
In that field! I am too grown-up — I see nothing.

(from Returning to Awe, Balkan Press, 2014)

-Laura M Kaminski, The Poetry Storehouse 

Poetry: No One Goes to Paris in August

books poetry lit January 20, 2015 Leave a comment

A Montparnasse August
with view of the Cimetière. A yard of bones.

We wake to it. Close curtains to it.
Wake to its lanes. Rows of coffin-stones in varying light.

Walking here. Late with shade low, low, long.
We’re passing through, just passing through
neat aisles of gray mausoleums.

(From Paris. Send this postcard. This one.
Calm water lilies. Water lilies.
Nothing colorless.)

It’s morning. Baudelaire’s tomb.
Tree limbs casting shadow west.

This, a lot of time under a looming sky.
Nobody has time like this.
(Time to go to Le Mandarin for coffee
every day. We’re not complaining.
They bring the milk separate.
Watch the passersby on Saint-Germain.)

Nothing to ponder. This is the plight.
Pause by Pigeon in bed with his wife —
both fully dressed.

Pink flowers, pink flowers,
just beneath de Beauvoir’s name.
When she lived she lived two doors down.
Went south in August.

All of us smell of heat all the time.
We are the living. Oh dear!
There are the dead ones there.
Their thoughts more familiar, though.
Lives finished, nearly clear.
And they make it possible for us to go on living
as we do in their blue shade.

-Clarence Major’s forthcoming Selected Poems

Poetry: Garden In The Iran-Iraq War

books poetry lit January 19, 2015 1 Comment

In this time, happy branches bow
with young fruit so heavy
limbs must be lopped    off the trunk.      God needs to
borrow another son.    Sisters, it’s this,
we say, or your whole garden. And you—      you will want to hide
your fruit behind the family’s coats in a hall closet—you will want
your sons to stay still, buried
under your long coats, close—their bodies soft. Breathing,
maybe curled up, your boys will wait in a cracked suitcase,
or a wooden box,     just for the time
no bomb siren shakes
your trees. No, no one ever really knows.     Imagine
a night your courtyard’s lit by the fire of burning

oranges still clinging to their branches. Remember, this whole
orchard could burn.

-Aliah Lavonne Tigh, Matter

Poetry: Going by Taxi

books poetry lit January 17, 2015 Leave a comment

I wear gloves to my elbows;  you wear herringbone trousers.
It starts to snow;  the streetlights haven’t switched on yet.
I lack ordinary patience;  where’s the towne crier?
You say correction;  I say retraction.
The citrus look exacting;  they make calm orange pyramids.
Let me buy alstroemeria;  you choose the beer.
Wood bundles whiten near the awning;  remember our fireplace?
Life takes things away from you;  the snow gives way to sleet.
You say umbrella;  I say imbroglio.
Tuesday’s best for sleuthing;  we pursue the stubborn missing.
When I’m needy, I’m rude;  keep an eye down the avenue.
We don’t want to let that taxi go by;  we don’t.
All this time yields no evidence;  all this time gives no clue.
I say angry;  you say ennui.
Let’s kiss when the meter starts;  ah, here come the lights.
I’ve forgotten the address;  you’ve a claim check in your pocket.
We stocked our coat closet with wood;  it was ten, eleven years ago.
Bugs crept out under the door;  carried far from earthy homes.
You say step on it;  I say no stop.

We don’t know the tune on the radio, and the street’s turned black
with snow.

–Jeanne Marie Beaumont

Poem Published in ‘One Sentence Poems’

books poetry lit January 17, 2015 1 Comment

childhoodSo happy to say I have a poem in One Sentence Poems today! (With another coming in a week). Editors Dale Wisely and Robert Scotellaro run a fascinating literary journal focusing on poems that are are only one sentence long – which can include poems up to five stanzas, but means that the poems are invariably, compressed – short and sweet or profound, and hopefully satisfying. Here’s mine: Adagio

Poetry: Untitled

books poetry lit January 15, 2015 Leave a comment

Bedridden, I ate nothing for days.  Gradually came paper-thin
noodles boiled in lemon water, salt-less crackers they called
saltines and half cups of chamomile.  Unable to escape I assumed
nothing happened in the world beyond my bedroom.  Light
changed as it always had, doves cooed in the hollows of the house,
once the sound of a woman laughing, two men yelling in a strange
tongue, the old church bells down the road and the occasional car
passing by, but the restless silence seemed to be the most
unbearable thing.

-W.J. Preston, Apple Valley Review

Lilies of the Field Motion Poem

books poetry lit January 14, 2015 Comments: 2

Extraordinarily beautiful video by Marie Craven for The Poetry Storehouse, of a poem by Laura M Kaminksi

Lilies of the Field from Marie Craven on Vimeo.

Poetry: The Quadrant

books poetry lit January 11, 2015 Leave a comment 
                                                                      (Climb 
                                    in, climb out of the little black square) 

            The village rises into form amidst the pines. Cows and goats stand unstunned in
the forest. The Muslim and Christian quarters are made of flimsy wood and storage 
containers. Assemble, disassemble. There is a military technology fair in Orlando where 
you can purchase a village in a box. Then populate it: live inside it for a time. 

            At the beginning of the exercise, the soldier students are told half-truths. They 
must stabilize who and why. 

            While playing market, Nafeesa and Ralia cry out leblabi leblabi, to the soldiers. 
It is that roasted chickpea soup they sell in paper cones in the Middle East. “Win a-
leblabi, u ashgid?” (Where is the leblabi and how much?), I ask. They are so shocked that 
they give me a Coke.

Read more at Memorious

So in love with this gorgeous looping spiral of a poem from Nomi Stone.

The Flag

books poetry lit January 10, 2015 Leave a comment

On the roof of the old barracks
a row of air vents burr,
breathless as nuns praying.
A string of bird calls—
light starts trickling,
sleepers fret behind the gauze.

A string of katydid songs
stark in the foothills
of Tennessee,
maybe it was Morgantown.
There, the library in July was cool
like a nave. Tell no one.  Desire
is the flag I open and fold.
My room alights in doubt.

-Pui Ying Wong, Up the Staircase

That Which Scatters and Breaks Apart

books poetry lit January 9, 2015 Leave a comment

Everywhere they turn, the walls ask, why, why not.
From every space someone calls a question
and there echoes so many answers, it’s impossible to hear.

Save me, he calls.
Open me, she calls. Divorce me.
Their despair is a bird in an abandoned nest,
its brother has jumped out and died, its sister is dying beside it
and still it perches:
Do I fly?
Can I fly?

You’re here because you said,
I hate you instead of, I’m sorry.
You’re here because you couldn’t forgive
but kept on making stews and hand-washing his good socks,
blowing curses into hot water.

-Ladan Osman, Apogee