Not Concrete by Anthony Ward

Not Concrete
by Anthony Ward

In our indeterminate future
I imagine stepping onto a barren landscape
Looking over at symmetrical mountains
Towering above immense craters-
As if set in stone.

Yet this world is not concrete.
It’s a living thing,
It grows and breathes-
Is constantly moving,
Prone to different temperaments
While it wails with despair.

Its grey complexion obscuring
A vibrant colourful persona
Exulting from the darkness,
That’s sheer lunacy to ignore.

Anthony tends to fidget with his thoughts in the hope of laying them to rest. He has managed to lay them in a number of literary magazines including Enhance, Drunk Monkeys, Speech Therapy, Turbulence, Underground, Ginger Piglet, Torrid Literature Journal and The Rusty Nail, amongst others.

A Fine Wine by Anthony Ward

A Fine Wine
by Anthony Ward

These finely aged novels,
Stored like bottles in a cellar,
Become all the more portent with maturity.
You want to drink their contents,
Be intoxicated by their words,
Until they have you speaking so fluently
The language pours from your mouth,
While those staid sober
Will stress you’re slurring incoherently-
That they’re far too precious to be drunk.

Anthony tends to fidget with his thoughts in the hope of laying them to rest. He has managed to lay them in a number of literary magazines including Enhance, Drunk Monkeys, Speech Therapy, Turbulence, Underground, Ginger Piglet, Torrid Literature Journal and The Rusty Nail, amongst others.

Tested by Kay Robertson

Tested
by Kay Robertson

Critically ill, hurting,
mind fogged by drugs,
he endures possible cures,
deadly side effects;
survival remains
a fickle bitch.

A year later, despite the odds,
scarred by many surgeries
he’s very much alive.

Home at last, he wants
to get his driver’s license back,
fly the Cessna again,
apply for grad school.

He’s always loved to write;
poetry, prose will come
from mind, spirit tested by fire,
wisdom paid for in blood.

Kay Robertson lives near Puget Sound. Much of her poetry is inspired by the unique beauty of Washington State. She belongs to Writer’s University Word Weavers on-line poetry group. Her work appears in Pirene’s Fountain Japan Anthology, Soundings Review, Loch Raven Review, Sugar Mule.

Sternutation by Anthony Ward

Sternutation
by Anthony Ward

We are but a sneeze through time
Our lives so brief we barely notice
Travelling at the speed of life
Getting where we’re going before we’re gone
The splendour of space converged to a future
Culminating in the past.

Anthony tends to fidget with his thoughts in the hope of laying them to rest. He has managed to lay them in a number of literary magazines including Enhance, Drunk Monkeys, Speech Therapy, Turbulence, Underground, Ginger Piglet, Torrid Literature Journal and The Rusty Nail, amongst others.

NEVER GIVING UP by Joan Colby

NEVER GIVING UP
by Joan Colby

The railroad museum is conducted
By retired conductors and signalmen,
Engineers and ticket takers, gandy dancers.
White haired, heavy set in striped overalls.

The steam tractor show is handled
By elderly farmers and mechanics,
Boilermen and harvesters.
White haired, scrawny in short sleeves and work pants.

Some can’t give up
Who they were, what they were up to.
No Florida trailer parks for them.
No golf, no casinos, no walking tours.

In winter, they grease the monoliths
Or assemble miniature farmsteads
Complete with wooden cows and pigs
And small green John Deere’s that work.

Seven books published including The Lonely Hearts Killers, The Atrocity Book, etc. Over 980 poems in publications including Poetry, Atlanta Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, The New York Quarterly, South Dakota Review, Epoch, etc. Two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards (one in 2008) and an IAC Literary Fellowship. Honorable mention in the 2008 James Hearst Poetry Contest—North American Review and the 2009 Editor’s Choice Contest–Margie, and finalist in the 2007 GSU (now New South) Poetry Contest, 2009 Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize, 2010 James Hearst Poetry Contest and Ernest J. Poetry Prize Joan Colby lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois with her husband and assorted animals.

For Jill Clayburgh, In Memoriam By Diane Elayne Dees

For Jill Clayburgh, In Memoriam
By Diane Elayne Dees

The image we will always remember:
You, swirling and spinning
throught the streets of New York,
becoming the blue and yellow and orange.
You looked excited, not afraid, not caring
that strangers gawked at you. You learned
to move with the wind, to stay grounded
while fate turned you round and round.
At one with the blue and yellow and orange,
at one with the streak of fiery red,
standing straight and filled with awe,
you let yourself be carried by art, by wind.

Diane Elayne Dees’s poetry has been published in many journals and anthologies. Diane lives in Louisiana. She publishes Women Who Serve, a blog about women’s professional tennis.

Tattered Wings by Paula Tohline Calhoun

Tattered Wings
by Paula Tohline Calhoun

A dwindling summer is the bittersweet prelude to fall.
I watch it all, just now, and sense already, on the tip of
my tongue, the metallic taste of winter. In my mind’s eye:
       the deep greens and subtler hues fading to brown, drying up,
       the sharp blades of grass pricking the soles of my stubborn-bare feet;
and know that in due time, snow will smother all that’s left of the now.
My ears prepare for the day they will be turned to the laboring creak of
       ice-burdened limbs, and bent on the splintering crack,
       the chuffing thud of branches on the snow-shrouded ground below.

Such insidious, gray thoughts are snatched away
by the appearance of a swallow-tailed butterfly.
Slower than the hastening summer and on-rushing winter,
she makes her errant way from leaf to blossom, in full knowledge
of the passing of her season of glory.
       The colors revealed on her first morning still shine on this her last.
       I wonder at such persistence through the fraying nicks of daily struggle,
       and sigh at the beauty – at the constant push and pull against the wayward
       currents of air – of her split and tattered wings.

Paula Tohline Calhoun is a 61 years old, and a life-long lover and writer of poetry – as long as she has been able to read and write, that is. She started at age 4 when her Dad first read to her from Ogden Nash’s collection. She is currently working on a collection in which she is collaborating with a poet from South Africa. This collection (untitled as yet) is her first publishing effort. Her poetry interests are very eclectic, and she employs a number of styles – whatever strikes her fancy.

http://paulatohlinecalhoun1951.wordpress.com - “Reflections From a Cloudy Mirror”

http://myphotoreflections.wordpress.com - “Reflected Glory – My Adventures in Photography”

Spin by Kay Robertson

Spin
by Kay Robertson

Incoming tides crash
on battered shore,
determined waves
splinter sunlight,
shadows tremble.

What was visible
moments ago
becomes obscured
by murky cross-currents.

In politics, veracity
resides in the depths,
at the mercy of slippery facts.

Kay Robertson lives near Puget Sound. Much of her poetry is inspired by the unique beauty of Washington State. She belongs to Writer’s University Word Weavers on-line poetry group. Her work appears in Pirene’s Fountain Japan Anthology, Soundings Review, Loch Raven Review, Sugar Mule.

The Grief of Atalanta By Diane Elayne Dees

The Grief of Atalanta
(For Kris N.)
By Diane Elayne Dees

Daughter of hunters,
Atalanta knows survival.
Daughter of bears,
Atalanta knows hibernation.
Daughter of man and woman,
Atalanta knows expectations.
Sister of many,
Atlanta knows abandonment.

Born to run, raised to fight,
Atalanta longs for winter,
a time to flee the race, the hunt,
even the golden apples.
She must make her own winter,
find her own cave, even in
the middle of the race.

The warrior always feels alone,
for those for whom she fights
stay far behind, not aware
that there is a war, much less
that they are losing it.

Diane Elayne Dees’s poetry has been published in many journals and anthologies. Diane lives in Louisiana. She publishes Women Who Serve, a blog about women’s professional tennis.

Ezra Pound, Modern Poetry Yale Video Lectures

I did say a while back that I’d been throwing in a few poetry lectures and courses…now that school’s started up again…here we go…

The lecture introduces the poetry of Ezra Pound. Tensions in Pound’s personality and career are considered, particularly in terms of his relationships with other poets and his fascism and anti-capitalism. The poem “The Seafarer” is examined as a quintessentially Poundian project in its treatment and translation of poetic forms. The first Canto of his epic project, The Cantos, is analyzed as a meditation on the process of expressing and engaging with history and literary tradition.