Author Archive
Friday, March 19th, 2010
“Dear Universe” by Wendy Videlock
Wendy Videlock
DEAR UNIVERSE,
In all this calm,
in all this mist,
these vague shaped
continents
begin to drift.
A finger lifts,
falls again.
A foghorn sounds,
passionless.
Do you wonder
what we are
in all this calm,
in all this mist.
Wolf prints.
Red clay.
A slender wrist.
Murder. Magic.
Ballet.
–from Rattle #31, Summer 2009
No Comments » - Posted in Poems by Megan
Thursday, March 18th, 2010
“Microcosm” by Jeff Vande Zande
Jeff Vande Zande
MICROCOSM
She starts the engine, wanting
only the air conditioning.
He unloads their shopping cart
into the back and then slides
in against the scorching seat,
grips the wheel, and watches
her finger skim the receipt
until she finally announces
that the store didn’t charge
them for the table lamp.
They both turn around
as though to check a child
strapped into a booster.
It’s there. And, [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Poems by Megan
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010
“Death of the Hired Hand, Hiawatha, Kansas” by Kate Sweeney
Kate Sweeney
DEATH OF THE HIRED HAND, HIAWATHA, KANSAS
I loved his hands pulling that rattlesnake from the baler,
how the thing twitched slightly, as if shuddering in its sleep.
He fetched the shovel to grind off its head, that sick miracle
of jaw still opening and closing on the rusty spade.
I brought the body to grandmother who husked it [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Poems by Megan
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010
“Determing Who the Marchers Were” by Lee Stern
Lee Stern
DETERMINING WHO THE MARCHERS WERE
It was my job to determine who the marchers were.
And how long they had practiced the different steps they were used to making.
I wouldn’t say that it was a hard job.
Only that when I grew tired of doing it,
nobody else volunteered to take my place.
As it was, the marchers recognized [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in Poems by Megan
Monday, March 15th, 2010
SIX LIPS by Penelope Scambly Schott
Review by Claire Keyes
SIX LIPS
by Penelope Scambly Schott
Mayapple Press, 2009
408 N. Lincoln Street
Bay City, MI 48708
ISBN 978-0-932412-84-3
2010, 80 pp., $15.95
www.mayapplepress.com
Six Lips is dazzling. Were it for its language alone, I would savor these poems again and again if only to get some relief from the pedestrian gumbo of contemporary speech. [...]
No Comments » - Posted in E-Reviews by Megan
Sunday, March 14th, 2010
“Early Night” by Alan Soldofsky
Alan Soldofsky
EARLY NIGHT
In early December
singing under the hedge
of verbena beside the porch.
What lies the sun tells
of a few leaves stripped of their color,
parenthesis of rust on the hinges of the car door.
High wisps of clouds
lit up by something
that has fallen.
The edge of a storm front
faintly coming, a change in the smell
of the air, a [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Poems by Megan
Saturday, March 13th, 2010
“Poem in Search of a Horse” by Hayden Saunier
Hayden Saunier
POEM IN SEARCH OF A HORSE
Time is not reading the poem as you
read the poem, but rest assured he’s slipped
inside the room in his soft, polished shoes,
with his little cough, his bowler hat in hand,
so sorry to disturb. It isn’t that he doesn’t like
to read, he loves to lean across your shoulder,
let you feel [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Poems by Megan
Thursday, March 11th, 2010
“Into the Fog” by Mark Rich
Mark Rich
INTO THE FOG
Whiteness over this village and hill
obscures everything from view until
you are right on it—if in a car
with someplace to go. Having not far
to go, by foot, to a household sale,
we wonder how forecasters could fail
so completely to see this coming,
mute folds draping over everything
so that what we see is never quite
what we [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Poems by Megan
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
MOVING HOUSE by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell
Review by Maryanne Hannan
MOVING HOUSE
by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell
WordTech Communications
PO Box 541106
Cincinnati, OH 45254-1106
ISBN-10: 1934999725
2009, 98 pp., $18.00
http://www.wordtechcommunications.com/
At the 2007 West Chester Poetry Conference, I attended a panel discussion on “Catholicism and Modern American Poetry.” One of the speakers struck me as bold in defining the operational intersection of her spiritual tradition and artistic imagination with [...]
No Comments » - Posted in E-Reviews by Megan
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010
“Sunday Picnic on the Vltava” by Tera Vale Ragan
Tera Vale Ragan
SUNDAY PICNIC ON THE VLTAVA
The waves of air along the water
soothe the chapped spines of young
Czechs who’ve sheared their hair
to hawk it up and away from sweat
that pearls along their skull lines.
They gather clinking Pilsner bottles,
punk among the mosquito weeds and silted
rock the flood has left on the Ostrov strip.
They know the embankment [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Poems by Megan
Monday, March 8th, 2010
“Ohio” by Charles Rafferty
Charles Rafferty
OHIO
The state quarter celebrates our love
of sky, minting the Kitty Hawk and the man
on the moon together: the first step
and the first flight growing improbably
from that same Ohioan soil. If I had
my own quarter, I’d stamp it with a girl
who sung me to glass that glittered to bits
and the wife who glued me back.
Or [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Poems by Megan
Sunday, March 7th, 2010
“Unplotted” by Christine Poreba
Christine Poreba
UNPLOTTED
One woman leaned
over another on the shoulder
of the road. A thin black
sweater fluttered backward.
Whatever had happened
had just happened.
Trucks piled up
behind us, a procession
for the woman none of us knew.
And in this curve of dust
and sky, on Route 62-180
to El Paso, beside a mountain
where that morning
we’d risen in the wind,
where somewhere close a border
had been [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Poems by Megan
Saturday, March 6th, 2010
“It Takes Balls to Have a Vasectomy” by Sam Pierstorff
Sam Pierstorff
IT TAKES BALLS TO HAVE A VASECTOMY
You might think it’s nuts, but for the next 72 hours,
my three children are not allowed to play with blue balls
in the house because it reminds me too much
of the great pain hidden below the equator of my belt.
The twin planets of my testicles are throbbing
from elective surgery [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in Poems by Megan
Friday, March 5th, 2010
FAIR CREATURE OF AN HOUR by Lynn Levin
Review by Rob Wright
FAIR CREATURE OF AN HOUR
by Lynn Levin
Loonfeather Press
P.O. Box 1212
Bemidji, MN 56619
ISBN 978-0-926147-28-7
2009, 74 pp., $12.95
www.loonfeatherpress.com
What is a “fair creature of an hour?” The title of Lynn Levin’s new poetry collection suggests ephemerality. In the case of the sonnet from which the title is taken, it’s the end of Keats’ experience of [...]
No Comments » - Posted in E-Reviews by Megan
Thursday, March 4th, 2010
“(A+B+C)” by Charlotte Pence
Charlotte Pence
(A+B+C)
All month in Ecuador I’d been waiting for it.
So, when I found myself on all fours circled by
eight policeman, guns pointing at my spine,
left kidney, shoulder, it was something of a relief.
I’m not saying Ecuador’s that third-world
gang-rape-a-girl place. I’d been there
six times before, never felt nervous,
but I’d noticed a change this last visit.
Longer stares [...]
