From the category archives:

Poetry

Working In The Garden

March 1, 2010

by Barbara Brooks

Roots, land-locked lobsters, pull free
from the soil. Legs intertwine
and bodies are two layers deep.

Clods of dirt drip
loose and drop into the bed.
Weeds, winter’s barnacles, cling
to the fragile tendrils.

Nestled into new spaces, green
antennae catch the breeze.
In the spring, they will become iris.

Originally posted 2008-05-03 14:04:40.

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Uncle

February 1, 2010

by Paul Hostovsky

For all his bluster
there was a sweetness
of surrender about him
that rose up like a shrug
when he rested from being right
the way the bulldozers and backhoes
at a construction site at dinnertime
are all finally perfectly still
the tines of their buckets
pointing upward from the ground

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Originally posted 2008-11-10 12:45:02.

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Friction

February 1, 2010

by Allan Peterson

Some trees have rubbed themselves raw
from each other
Like us both will die from such loving
but that takes years
Meanwhile we are doing the ordinary
looking for horse mint
for architectural detail   for bodies of dog flies
smashed with my hat

Originally posted 2008-09-12 22:47:54.

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Vice

February 1, 2010

by Oritsegbemi Emmanuel Jakpa

Like life
Vice begets vice.
Watch with prudency
You do not get it.
It could just be the penicillin
From the pharmacist.

Originally posted 2008-04-27 11:23:08.

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In the Temple of Whispers

February 1, 2010

by Joseph Milosch

The pine window frames shrunk in the cold.
Snow, the poor man’s insulation, drifted
between the storm and our permanent windows.
Dad left the house at 6:30 am.

He’d return fifteen hours later
with frozen pastures smooth
in his face lines, a bull’s
butt to the wind in his right eye.

Fifteen hours of coffee, cigarettes,
two lane roads, paved or dirt and selling.
Reheated meatloaf and mashed potato dinners.
A few words with mom.

When a father has his hands
crossed, will his belt
forget its looped past
and become a belt?

Finding my chisel on the work bench,
I took a bite of the dog that bit me;
unwrapped the memory of the whipping I received
the day dad found his chisel where I left it
on his work bench.
[keep reading…]

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Signs of a Middle Age

January 25, 2010

by Persis M. Karim

It isn’t the dark circles
that underscore the eyes
or lines that break out
in latticework at temples

not the deep
grooves that signal
the constancy of smile
or frown

resting on the face,
or heaviness
of chin
bearing the weight
of difficult decades

but the pinch of skin
just below the ears,
like the apricot

whose golden, taut skin
settles into softness
after too much ripening.

Listen to: Signs of Middle Age

Originally posted 2008-09-15 19:07:10.

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Distance

January 19, 2010

by Ag Synclair

red river desert
accipitridae seek food
the spoils of war

accipitridae

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Ancestral

January 17, 2010

by Margarita Engle

Descending
into the land
of childhood

a yellow-walled town
on the coast
of light

memory’s
turbulent landing

each rediscovery
of time flow
and place love
always new.

Originally posted 2008-04-27 10:41:05.

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Snow-Birds Settling

January 17, 2010

by Dretta Grace White

Snow-Birds settling
Made all the difference

She thought of their
Settling

And of the light they gave

And became in her way

As grey
As they

snow-bird

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Panopticism

January 16, 2010

by James Eric Watkins

embracing wind
encircles the universe
swirls the planet

consumes my senses
panoptically caresses the tall grasses
that sway
all around me

and night lies quietly against my skin

“panopticism” was published in Shemomin April of 2008

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