By Javen Tanner After Czeslaw Milosz and Philip Levine Keep your focus on the woman speaking to you. Do not let your attention be drawn to the three magpies fighting for bread under the lamp post–– one for royalty, one for deity, one for death. If it helps, let the woman’s …
Tag: poetry
Out of Your Head with Fever
By Anita Tanner “That which had struck into me my first profound terror, when as a child I lay ill with fever: the Big Thing.” —Rainer Maria Rilke Here the kinship of pain, here the account of your own childhood illnesses, the beast that grows in you with every elevated fever, swelling in …
Beg, Ch, Dc, Yo, Tr, Sc
By Anita Tanner Like Morse Code, the language as rhythmic as water, the hook angles, drawn on the thin yarn line to gather and build, a pooling of pastel color, an acrylic lap, stria of stitches where a part becomes the whole. No matter the signs— filet, shell, cable— fingers fast in form follow …
Shadows of the Heart
By Larsen Bowker I’d always assumed we all get some small bit of wisdom before we die, believing it came from some centrifugal force of the mind, but at nearly eighty and no sign of any, I was scaling back on this gentle hubris, until I heard some in a friend’s voice …
Love and Virtue
By Jeff Nydegger In a timid thought by chance I traced A faint and fleeting path. Like a rabbit trail, it seemed too shy To promise much to any traveler. And more than once, I lost sight of it among my gadding thoughts. But as a nerve would spurn against the body’s foes, So …
Departures
By Anita Tanner Some people move away without leaving— when you see them you can’t tell where they are. Others accompany their parting with angry words— you don’t discern the silence inside. You’ve seen them crying in the bedroom behind locked doors or standing at the kitchen sink as if they were present, their …
“Still Mormon” and “Articles of New Faith”
Or, right-click here to download the audio file: “Still Mormon” and “Articles of New Faith” Still Mormon by Dayna Patterson 1. I’m Mormon the way stars—rubbed out at noon, robbed by sun—still burn 2. The way a geode empty of its quartz is still stone 3. The way a …
In My Father’s House
By Cecil Morris Or right-click here to download the audio file: In My Father’s House The house that dementia built my father filled with people. It hummed with talk both day and night, a host of long lost relatives returned to relive stories he had never shared with me. Sometimes I was …
Four Paws Full
by R. A. Christmas Or right-click here to download the audio file: Four Paws Full Dog had his paws full. He’d run Bad Pup off because Bad wanted his job (and glory) but Bad took a third of of a litter with him. There was hell to pay, with Bad (The …
Still Mormon
By Dayna Patterson Or right-click here to download the audio file: Still Mormon 1. I’m Mormon the way stars—rubbed out at noon, robbed by sun—still burn 2. The way a geode empty of its quartz is still stone 3. The way a whisper is still a breath carved by tongue …