Saturday, September 30, 2017

Four Poems by Sheila E. Murphy

December Michigan
Inside threnody, the parsnips and warm butter smooth away pale clouds. Beyond the window, tepid branches loosen fragile weather. Casseroles intended to deflect grief simplify oncoming night. In a room of one-paned glass, the mattress feels too soft. House noises of ritual wood pop precede droning of the fridge. How many foil-topped dishes can be stored on its glass shelves? Bedroom floor of chilled hardwood brittles the barefoot grief. Walls ought to be warm arms versus a trance of solitude.
Second hand, equality in time, feather fallen to ground




Summer Ghazal

Young branches extract soil from the air.
Reverie insists upon enclosure.

Conversation seemed a secular sacrament
of video images and set pieces.

Walls left a blue white color sounded a caesura
Ripe with future possibilities.

Handwritten letters in an acid-free folder
invite a different present tense to hold still.

Faces at the decade reunion had grown taut
as if to mimic early softness of new complexions.

A metronome replaced all evidence of dance
despite a slight wind prompting motion in the clothes.

Gifts with velvet bows piled in the aqua pickup truck
drew eye light as the calendar kept advancing.




Winter Lines

Split wood moistens on the snow
Crumbs carelessly arranged draw brown birds
Sharp lens captures afternoon’s pale glow
Split wood moistens on the snow

Continuo interprets tones made low
The only language sounds its way in thirds
Split wood moistens on the snow
Crumbs carelessly arranged draw brown birds




Pantoum

Roughness leaves the child with no defense
Parent with stippled heart erodes curiosity
Hurt lasts beyond itself
Thoughts require cushioning

Parent with stippled heart erodes curiosity
Every question purifies the space between life forms
Thoughts require cushioning
This moment will have fed a future pain

Every question purifies the space between life forms
New skin plump to touch draws no lines
This moment will have fed a future pain
Voices woven into harmony find new tones

New skin plump to touch draws no lines
Feeling that resembles birth frames history
Voices woven into harmony find new tones
Elastic daylight smooths toward sleep at night

Feeling that resembles birth frames history
A child resists repetitive wind
Elastic daylight smooths toward sleep at night
The thought of dance releases weight

A child resists repetitive wind
Hurt lasts beyond itself
The thought of dance releases weight
Roughness leaves the child with no defense

Thursday, June 8, 2017

Three Poems

by Volodymyr Bilyk




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Author's Note: Collage poems made with improvising chinese symbols identifying them and then translating. Although i screencapped them from googletranslate, the actual words were taken from my own chinesevenglish dictionary

Monday, May 15, 2017

Notes Toward Some Lines on Nurse Rivers*

by Jefferson Hansen

Go in fear of absolutes!
“You’re only as crazy as your deepest secret.”

Sometimes, rather,
it is the secrets that keep us sane.

Take Nurse Rivers, for instance.
She accepted a medal for her work
on the study.

Her greatest contribution
we will never know:

Did she give the men penicillin

I,
            a white man
            of decades later
            of Northern climes,
imagine black people in Alabama
of her time
knew how to keep secrets
most savagely.

       Observant Hebrews eat no pork, today.
       The Law began, I assume,
       because pig meat could make you sick
       so easily
       in that time.

What was once utility
can become sacred.

I imagine Nurse Rivers keeping
useless trinkets on the second shelf —
more hidden there.
I imagine her smiling
gently at their crystal every day,
and taking them down every three
days to dust,
then placing them carefully back.

On all the other shelves
books
with no lettering on the spines
filled with all that has been said
about her.

She never goes there.
They are merely the frame
for the crystal.

One book quotes people saying,
“The men loved her
and she loved them.”

She married late in life.
I imagine she told this husband.
He had his trinkets,
too.

And these lines are my Nurse Rivers,

some lines
lacking spines.






*Nurse Eunice Rivers, an African American, was the only person who worked for the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study for all of its 40 years, 1932-1972. Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy (U of NC Press), by Susan M. Reverby. 

Monday, May 8, 2017

Joy Of Solitude

by Ted King

I will live
in a cave
hidden
from ordinary view

I will serve tea
every second day

You
will be one of
my guests

We needn't speak
The truth will be
in our eyes

You
are among the few
who will sip
my tea.

___________________________





Ted King has a PTSD in poetry. Otherwise, No grants. No contests. No awards.

Saturday, May 6, 2017

On the Beach in RIO

by Ted King

I remember so clearly.

It was you and me at sunset, on the beach, in Rio.

Or was it you and me?

Maybe it was you and someone else.

Is this your memory instead of mine?

I've never been to Rio.

Have I?

And yet, I remember.

Do you remember?

Remind me.

Did we ever stand together on the beach at sunset?

Or maybe it wasn't us.

Someone must have stood on a beach, somewhere.

I'm not sure this is my memory.

Maybe it's someone else's.

A memory fragment that I picked up as it floated by.

Why do you look at me that way?

Please nod your head, or wiggle a finger, or something.

I need to know you hear me.

I'm sharing a memory with you.

What does it matter whose memory?

I forget. Was that you on the beach?

And was it really Rio?

I've never been to Rio.

Maybe it was Lake Superior. The North Shore.

Or that little creek.

Yeah. That little creek.

When I was a kid I used to ride my bike out there, early in the

morning.

Must have been 6 or 8 miles.

I'd carry a cane pole and some worms in a bucket.

Fish for crappies. Catch a few. Bring em home.

Mom and I would clean em and we’d fry em up.

But that was morning, not sunset. And you weren't there.

I'm not sure I was either.

It might have been my brother.

I'll ask him.

No matter. I remember. I remember You, Me, Sunset, the Beach, Rio.

___________________________


Ted King has a PTSD in poetry. Otherwise, No grants. No contests. No awards.

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

Cello More Dictator

by Jefferson Hansen

                                                                 February 2017

more to the light of
        a solitary cello bouncing
                  its warmth from the stereo
              across newspapers
            strewn about

in February it rains warm in a Northern city
       becoming ugly
             in the run-up
                to differentiation
      even the sky
                    may be guessing

a restless balance announces itself
                things come and go
      what can’t happen already did
            and gone

the leaks are wiped clean
         by standardized lies
             sometimes called accurately

Terrence Folz Reading From "Bunt Burke"

  Terrence Folz's chapbook  Bunt Burke will appear from The Circulatory Press in August 2021. The above film features him reading some o...