Beginnings Again
By Poetry Issue 84
A silver thread pierces my hand, Gleams in lamplight, my fingers flexing there, The needle plunging into bleeding skin, Making a high-pitched, silver sound Becoming words shining in the flame that they create. Tarnished words converge into beginnings, Flame and words, beginnings In moonlight, fairy rings, clouds across the sky Entering a sentence that began…
Read MoreVerbum: A Rhapsody
By Poetry Issue 84
Word lived in solitude. Walked the dog before dawn. Coffee on the patio. The air was thin. There were no stars. Silence drifted from the river with the mist. Word wandered through the house, looked out the window. Could the darkness speak, what would it say? What would Word answer? Word took a deep breath,…
Read MoreSaint Francis Appears at the Scene of an Accident, Then Joins the Murmuration
By Poetry Issue 84
Black. Muscle. Stars. Wind. The horse was nearly torn in half. Black. Pulse. Strange. Light. The car’s right side was twisted open. Black. Crust. Oil. Shine. Imagine the night, the boy, the stallion, all of them closing in, loose for the first time in months. The car’s pointed hood, the horse’s neck, a low winter…
Read MoreTiny Fish
By Poetry Issue 84
The children fish off the dock where the minnow-sized ones hover oblivious to the hook jutting from the badly threaded worm. The water’s clear enough to watch victims gather at the bait. One after the other, hauled in, tallied up, tossed back. When the hook goes deep into the throat, they give the tiny fish…
Read MoreThe Open Window
By Poetry Issue 83
In Pierre Bonnard’s The Open Window the artist looks outward from his modest living room. It is summer, the heat baking the orange on the grill-like wall. To the right, a woman is resting in a chair, escaping as she can the sizzling midday air in which even her quizzical black cat blurs in the…
Read MoreThe Egret Tree
By Poetry Issue 83
In the past, I have asked for what this may be, more faithfully perhaps, haven’t I, for some covenant of intimate favor waiting along a byway? So how then should it be seen, what begins as just a blue, late morning crease between heavy rains, noticing the usual roadside toll of…
Read MoreArs Poetica: Baptismal Story
By Poetry Issue 83
My father thought the Anglican liturgy pure poetry, once, Three hundred people chanting in the multi-colors of the chancel, Saying on cue We do! Though they might have answered Otherwise in their own living rooms, together They committed to many things, the dignity Of every human being, the baby lifted high above My father’s head,…
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