Recommened Poets

Recommended Poets

It's Different

LYNNE SAVITT

now it's approaching seven
& the lines at local restaurants
are mounting you think I'll crumble
with desire to sit in a cushy booth
with warm crusty bread in a basket
running my finger down endless
selections of veal, chicken, eggplant

longing for a slice of cheesy pizza
served on the red formica counter
icey diet coke with lemon or a margarita
guacamole salsa chips or by the water
my favorite table bloody mary shrimp
cocktail garlicky scallops salad with
goat chese & walnuts raspberry vinaigrette

think white tablecloth a wood smoked thick
slab of steak buttery corn thai dressing
or fried calamari i love dinner out any
where drive through a few square steamed
hamburgers white castle of my dreams
our favorite pastime dining together you
think i'll crumble for the dinner hour

it's different this time i won't give in for
sustenance that never fills me i'll
gorge on dry saltless pretzels finally
acknowleging no dinner supreme or
endless with you can ever fill me
what an empty booth we fill together
does anyone know we're there?

Doug Holder

I SAW MYSELF ON THE DUDLEY
BUS THAT DAY.

I saw myself on the Dudley bus that day
his eyes: a blinking, flirt
with the mid-winter's sun-
watching
the slow, fade
of a dying afternoon,
his face shadowed
in five o' clock.
Half light,
no hair.
A bus full of exiles
each mired in their personal
affairs.

And that man
perhaps me
looked a million
miles away.
I believe I saw
him briefly yesterday,
and for a first time
on that day
we saw each other
and quickly
turned away

Dave Church

OUTSIDE MYSELF

People ask me how
I can sit for hours
Still as stone
Staring out the window.

My answer is always the same --

I have no need for mirrors.

Annie Menebroker

ONE CENT, ONE VALUE

What I want to say
about the penny
is, it doesn't work
anymore - it's
flat, without
any vlaue
Everything written
on it has been
erased by weight
and wheels
until it is impossible
to tell it was
more than what
remains. I am
more than what
remains too.
Underneath
what you see
are letters
and old poems, even
an entire ocean, and
songs even the sirens
never sang.

Kell Robertson

SHORTY GIBBS

A walking piece of raw leather
dried in the sun
scarred, marked
with cactus, needles
bullets, the marks made
when men's eyes find you
and the world comes into focus.

Biggest horse thief in New Mexico
can't go to the reservation
or the Indians will shoot him
lives in a trailer house
surrounded by youngsters
with long hair
who take dope
& do not know his worth
feeding him wine
untio he shakes for more

Old man
rock in the sand
of a dry wash somewhere
long to be washed away
like everything
in this wild country
untamed by real estate
or taxes.

Stanley Barkan

STREETLAMPS

Her marquee smiles--

Streetlamps gawking
in the alleyways

where blind cats
rummage in the dark.

Mirror eyes
reflect the souls
of passers-by

flashing in the neon smoke,

green cigarettes
in their glowing mouths.

Only the mannequin windows
mock her painted hips.

Linda King

IN REALITY

In reality
He was not the man
With the charm
And completness
I had furnished
Him in verse
And I wanted
My version of him
Not the man
I had been experiencing
A man afraid of love
Afriad of love
Afraid of spiritual untion
Afraid of a duet
Afraid to sing harmony

Let me seek further
My man in reality
Not words and paper
But a man
Of truth
Unafraid of a challenge
Unafraid of togetherness
Unafraid of me

Hugh Fox

FOR THOSE I LEAVE BEHIND

Zen into the core
of every moment,
moment by moment,
hour by year by decade,

NOW
NOW
NOW.

I see Amazonas
water lily pad,
huge, water Buffalos
and a naked black African
girl, the Urubamba River,
vultures eating
fish-guts, wharves at Belem
my wife's face going from 20
to 80 in as long as it takes
to write these
lines.

Bradley Mason Hamlin

ULCER HAIKU

Staggering midnight
Beer & vodka & more beer
Morning spits up blood.

Sharon Ramirez

THE TRIAL

We watch the trial from the hospital room,
My aunt as bruised as Nicole Simpson,
And only a little more alive.
The trial proves that women are slaves,
Can be beaten, traded, raped,
Call 911 eight times, nine, or ten,
She still can't move or talk,
Her head listing to the right,
Eyes begging mercy.

Who will rescue us,
The victims of rage,
Forced to breed in captivity,
Our bodies used up by childbirth and sex,
Our fingers stiff and swollen from stabbing food
And scrubbing blood from the floor.

Her fingers tremble,
She plays as she remembers rag,
How she used to finger the keys.
Her legs twitch --
She is jumping her horse over mountains
While Marcia Clark acts as if she makes a difference
And can bring justice to women.

--Fresno, Ca. 1995

Eric Greinke

THE DIPLOMAT
For Pablo Neruda

The moon is an owl. It grows
and yawns. It greases its wings
Against the rain. A blind
Soldier paces outside an outlawed
Cathedral. Mexico. Revolver.
Singapore. Artaud. A mantle
Of banana trees infests the orchard
Of the sun. A sleek bone twists
Through a frozen crust. A star erupts
Inside a lung. We stand upon
A cloud. Rangoon. Aluminum. Coffee.
Madrid. The land
Is empty & Reflective. The ring
Outlives the hand. The map
Outlives the road.

ADRIAN MANNING

iT HAS BEEN AND GONE AND IS HARD TO RECALL

each night she brings the dark

unforgiving evening to a close

goes to the bedroom and waits

he sits in the other room

tv on at low volume

or sitting in silence

a small lamp burning

across the page of a book

she is waiting for love

a love which never arrives

it lies in the hallway

like a dead kitten

doors shut on either side

the mystery was solved

many years ago

when they were young and knew

little about each other

without mystery there is

no need for a solution

when he comes he will be thinking

of a young girl red hair on flame

a coiled body sprung like a cobra

she will be lost in sleep

dreaming of a young man

a young actor or athlete

they sleep slightly apart

separated by wet fish

only touching by accident

through the dark wilderness

of a world that has cheated

them

both

GEORGE WALLACE

The Face Of Money

this one ground from the bones of slavers
this one sleeping with the devil's wife
that one with tongue of horse leather
this one big unsmiling and wise
that one pale with gun and claymore
that one tall in the malaria trench
this one tipping continents over
that one smoking among the buffalo
this one a steamshovel on the open prairie
this one with his fingers spread wide
this one a saddle in the mouth of mountains
that one a teepee in his astrological mind
that one with his lightning grin
that one hiding among the blue beanfields
that one lost in a mississippi swamp
this one drinking blood and gin
this one his face is pitted with pox
this one nobody would bend over for
this one tucked in a g-string
this one blind and rubbed for luck
that one with his voice like static
that one caught in honey like flies
that one his heart is ether
that one his teeth are fences
this one his words are twisters
that one his promises are mines
so much folding money! oh, the silver rain!
this one falls from our pockets so fast
we ought to cover the earth with our blankets
we ought to measure the earth with compasses
where that one sleeps in his murder canoe
fold them! tear them! eat them! stamp them in gold!
place them on a dead man's eyes

Mark Terrill

Ways In, Ways Out
Hemingway's looking down the
twin-barrel of the shotgun
into a blue metalic void.

Hart Crane has one foot on deck,
the other over the rail,
his eye on the ship's boiling wake below.

Sylvia Plath's on her knees in the kitchen
with her head in the oven,
wondering if she paid the gas bill or not.

Paul Celan looks down and sees
one last despondent metaphor
in the swirling waters of the Seine.

Richard Brautigan's up in Bolinas
with a Saturday-night special
nudged snugly in his graying temple.

Lew Welch loads his 30-30 rifle,
heads up into the California hillls,
unsure about when he'll be coming back.

Anne Sexton's out in the garage
doors shut tight, motor running,
finding solace in a noxious gray cloud.

The ways in merge with the ways out
life's complexity compounds daily,
and no one's getting any writing done today.
PRIS CAMPBELL
Martin Luther King: MIA
I'm looking for you, Martin,
I'm searching Selma, back-row
bus seats, filthy lunch counters,
Dylan's guitar, Hoover's files ,tapes
of your I Have A Dream march
through days when protest and love
beat within the same heart chamber;
days when we thought black
would meet white and white would
meet black in a role reversal melt
down of ivory keys played
on a Sunday organ in churches
pouring Christ's blood into silver chalices
to hand out to whoSOEVER believed.
Where are you, Martin?
Do you sit, unseen, in laps
of the homeless, the disenfranchised,
the beaten and raped women,
the molested children and sad,
jobless men, telling them love
will still rule the world and no hand
will ever again be raised with whip,
chain or fist to innocent backs
and no lips will mark just-born babies
with a hunting dog's thirst for the kill?
Come back, Martin.
Take up your staff, strap
on your sandals. Lead us forward
to a salvation of arms outreached
in an endless ballet where princes
remains faithful and trapped swans
are set free by long journey's end.

The Fall
By Linda Lerner
(Published in Onthebus, issue 19/20, Fall, 2005)

When her hearing died and
she lost the words for things,
daughter became sister;
she spoke to her first-born
in spite of the word, better,
and to the son she called brother,
sometimes husband,
heard more with her eyes
than with that damn hearing aid
she kept loosing till
we stopped bothering her with it...
After the FALL four years ago
when she couldn't get up
from her living room floor...
two days before a neighbor
smelled an odor...
our mourning began
imperceptible as her falling,
her struggle to eat food
she stopped tasting
to please us,
falling...so light... so feather
broke her hip and rambled
lost in 93 year old country-side;
her eyes flagged us down.
When we left she waved;
a smile teared her face.

After they brought her back
from the hospital and back again,
doctors listened to her heart
with their stethoscopes, satisfied.
Nurses took blood, gave tests;
the word was, she's doing ok.
Not one of them checked her eyes for a pulse.

JOHN DORSEY

the holy mouth
for kell robertson

the blood  of socrates
your poem  read god's
dance is
         mambo

blessing the
              rain

a tear  in your
                heart

words are  the love
songs of
        angels

love poems  the son
of god  wrote under
a broken  cross held
up under  the shadow
of the
        sun

"sweet mary  holy mother
i purchased  your ode
because that  is what
betrayal is
            worth"

the sun is a
black madonna  shining ink
waiting for   the oaths
of scorpions   to kiss
its ass   with
                compliments

history's fine   cigar is
a dead   language packed
into polling   booths until
they are   the only
altars left   to  pray
                       in

with our  blessing the
weapon becomes   its
                     silence

words flowing  into the
holy mouth  of
               moonlight

skimming heavy  pebbles
at dawn  you laugh
a holy  river of
quivering lips  a fountain
of worthless
              gems

and sigh  thinking "thank
god  they   still have
a cowboy   ass to
be proud of