Contents: click on blue name to go to the poem
Mark McGuire-Schwartz
Sleep Late and 10 Other
Short Poems
Catherine McLaughlin
Desert Storm
Sara McWhorter
Coming Home
Lenard D. Moore
October In East Haddam
Eyeing It
Jill A. Moreno-Ikari
Quiet for a Sunday
E. K. Mortenson
Southeast Light
Pat Mottola
Fresh Catch
DN Muranaka
The Bruised Sky
Fred Muratori
Dogged
J. Alan Nelson
Gravity Wells
Marilyn Nelson
Queue
When Truth
Shari O'Brien
A Fragment Is
Jacqueline Dee Parker
Mother In Traffic
Steve Parlato
Her Absence Shows
Pit Menousek Pinegar
The Robin
David A. Prodell
Northern Harrier
Mark McGuire-Schwartz
Sleep Late and 10 other Short Poems
1
Ambition
Sleep late. Read War and Peace.
Go to the gym. Jog there, and bicycle back.
2
Know Thyself
Drive to a far away place where no one knows you.
3
Preparing for Depth
Dig a hole there, deep in the forest. Remember the spot.
When the hole is deep enough, place nothing in it. Nothing.
Fill the hole back up. Remember to remember where it is,
In case you need it later.
4
Return
Take the basil and run.
5
Impossible
Just be yourself.
6
Smarty Pants
At sad movies, he cries.
He tries to avoid those
Sentimental, romantic movies
Commonly known as chick flicks, because
He knows he will cry.
At funny movies, he is bored,
Until the tears
Roll down his cheeks.
7
Everlasting Love
Still, he keeps a bag packed,
And the car
Running.
8
Publication
I want my poems to be earthy,
So I write them on the bottoms of rocks.
I want my poems to be known everywhere,
So I write them on leaves,
And release them
Into the wind.
9
Apology in Advance
Write a poem about a drummer, ferociously
banging brass spheres. He always uses
cymbals in his work.
10
So They Said
I cannot work, I cannot sleep
I am obsessed. They warned
Me it would come to this.
11
Making quilts
I am using you. You are
Thread in my hands.
All your joy,
Your dreams for the accomplishments
of children. Your ability to control time.
Your knickknacks and grapefruit.
I sew you into a square.
11 again
Eleven short poems.
A poet’s dozen.
Catherine McLaughlin
Desert Storm
Let us be fed by heaven’s manna
not these MREs
under this ashen sky
what green can grow?
Sand rimes our eyes
and all we can see are shadows
sliding in darkness
black on black.
Who is the enemy?
That child, this car,
those barren trees
doorways of fire
and everywhere the rasp
of weeping grates.
When sandstorms blow
there is neither sky nor land
just this shriveled skin
and there is no god
the people are led
by passionate fools
who wail and wail…
and we are stalled upon a hill
or in the rubble of the streets
parched and dreaming of rain
on a vast field of corn.
Sara McWhorter
Coming Home
In a couple hours I will shave and shower and grab my jacket and flag
and head downtown to be a face in the crowd, a hand waving, a hand
waving a flag for Bravo Company riding down downtown on a fire truck.
Finally home! And the hands waving and the signs not like the signs before. So Welcome Home Troops! Bravo, Bravo Company! And the flags
waving and the yellow ribbons waving and the hands
waving the flags and the ribbons being taken down and the cheers,
Hurrah! and the hats coming off and the mothers crying a little and my hat
off and some dads saluting and my hand waving and the trucks wailing --
all this as sure as there is a war.
Lenard D. Moore
October In East Haddam
This first night a man
makes sense of the thick darkness
crawling outside his window,
where his reflection looks
at him, just in front
of the blazing lamp.
The silence hums
like a power line
suspended above the mouth
of the town, its heart
an old tune the man knows,
as if a gift for only him,
that sharp notes extend.
Eyeing It
My sister Angela dashes indoors,
tells me to hurry
to the pier
where the wedding party will gather.
When we reach the edge,
we stop,
eye the fifteen-foot long alligator
floating like a knotted log, black
and wide as a canoe;
its eyes bulged like
two unshelled black walnuts.
A woman grabs her three daughters,
takes them away,
tells them they cannot outrun
the alligator who faces them
in the deep dark current
of the New River.
Jill A. Moreno-Ikari
Quiet for a Sunday
With your needle,
my thread
I’ll sew us up
together again.
I’ll make dinner,
five courses,
I’ll even cook
meat.
But first
before I preheat the oven
I need to hear you say
I’m sorry.
But it’s quiet
for a Sunday.
The kit is under
the bed,
the covers over
my head.
The steak still
at the market,
your voice
too far on the night stand.
E. K. Mortenson
Southeast Light
Mohegan Bluffs rain into the sea.
They bury mariners and kelp
that drift with tideswell
against the cliffs. Lard oil
burns on the surface, lights the black
eyes of crabs and the impudent
oysters stubbornly attached by their beards,
fifty-five feet from the cliffs’ brink.
They are the stumbling block to Providence
and the Sound. The pictured women
lean forward, drawn
to salty magnets of husbands.
They smell the waves on their breath,
their hair foamy.
See the moon blown out
of joint by gale.
The foghorn tells
an inconsolable story.
My glass comes to rest
on the laminate coaster.
I move the lighthouse
further back from the edge
of the table. There is little cost
for such safe passage.
Pat Mottola
Fresh Catch
And then there was the day my husband
said he didn’t like to eat out anymore,
who knew what might be picked up
in a restaurant, and left me
no choice but to shop
at that fresh fish market where
the only things caught are
fillets of sole or maybe a lone clam.
And then there was the blue-eyed
fishmonger who showed me
all he had to offer, expounded
the joys of fresh water fishing.
I felt a wave come over me,
watched the palms of his strong hands
cradle those lifeless creatures.
And then I decided to pick up
a little something extra, for later.
DN Muranaka
The Bruised Sky
I don’t remember so much
about the total eclipse of the sun,
but that I woke up early
and, bleary eyed, sat
at the table for a quick breakfast
before standing in a lava field
watching the sun rise.
The dagger-like black lava hills,
crowded with people
with cardboard eye protectors
tied tightly to their heads,
looking like sci-fi monsters
with hour-glass faces
staring dumbly into the sky.
How the cloudy gray
faded into a bruise, swallowed
by the furious hole,
burning its halo into memory!
Quickly the anticipation
flipped into silence,
sudden as the flash of white pain
of a fierce pinch
at the base of the thumb.
The world becomes nothing
but open light.
And like the pinch’s instant release,
so was our collected breath,
instantly exhaled.
The new light rushing
through the clouds,
returning the sky to blue.
And when you had finally
had enough of me,
how I wished that you could disappear
as quickly as the bruised sky.
Fred Muratori
Dogged
A dog follows me as if I had a better idea.
Black, short-haired, a lab-cum-everything.
I'd miss him in a crowd of tide-glossed rocks.
Neither of us seems in a special hurry.
My post office isn't going anywhere
nor will his tree or kibble bowl or patch
of flattened fuzz once known as squirrel.
For a moment our strides almost match,
and I'm tempted to pat his knee-high head,
trace the smooth bump atop his skull.
But somewhere I read dogs hate that
and are only being tolerant of our love.
It's best to walk apart like this, parallel
but different, and make no bones about it.
J. Alan Nelson
Gravity Wells
She is disconcerted over kittens,
that Walmart moved to town
forcing Buddies out of business
and the Bransom family strained
to keep their business open
the youngest son dying in his thirties
a heart attack as he worried about sales
It’s the spirit of the times she asserts
or rather, the zeitgeist,
she says lazily from bed
wearing nothing but dirty white socks
as I take the kids to get donuts from breakfast
and review the rate sheets
for outsourced workers from India.
We don’t make anything,
we are conduits and consumers
Sometimes she finishes my sentences
with words not planned by me
but are more clever
and deeper
yet I pretend those words
were coming from my mouth
our lives are pulled by gravity wells
of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs,
David Deutchmann,
My life is pulled by the gravity
of my woman
as she walks in her jeans and bra
picking up clothes
She gets mad when I’m mad that she’s mad
at me for wanting to go to some highbrow function
on the local university campus
not fun for the kids
she’s surprising, wonderful in theory,
harsh in fact.
Marilyn Nelson
Queue
Excuse me, but this IS
the line for heart-break?
I wasn’t sure.
As we got closer
I started to think
we’ve been slowing along
toward happiness, by mistake.
When Truth
I’ve been so far out
on the gangplank of illusion
I’ve had to crawl
that last few inches back
as below me truth
bared its grinny hopes:
He doesn’t love you.
2nd Place - 2008 Wallace Winchell Poetry Contest
Judge Vivian Shipley
Shari O'Brien
A Fragment Is
You ask me how I could get through high school.
Without learning what a fragment is.
Go east. Across the foul-smelling river.
To where the refineries belch and defecate.
Passed the boarded-up Dollar Store
on the corner where kids go get high.
Passed the greasy windows of Al’s Bar and Grille.
Go north a block and turn left. Passed the houses slouched on their lots
like tired whores and used-up crack heads.
That joyless-looking sagging building with three busted-out windows?
With them ragged shrubs? That one there. Where you got a B
by showing up most days, an A for staying awake.
That’s my school. Where we went. With our broken lives.
Where I never did catch on. To what
a fragment is.
Jacqueline Dee Parker
Mother In Traffic
Today I’m pinball wizard and plain ol’ mom,
rolling fender to bumper through carpool
to piano lesson and market and home
again, home again, jiggedy-jog.
In the lush fuschia of this afternoon
couples hold hips on sidewalks,
sashay under live oaks, spring in love,
and I remember when we held up traffic,
pressed in the driver’s seat, tireless
kissing while the light shone green.
I could bolt from this maze,
leap to a tabletop, shimmy, grind,
shake my feet like pepper on your plate,
luscious--if I didn’t need to mediate
another upset in the backseat--
spilled drink, a lost doll,
kicks and pinches two ways--
then behold the lambent eyes of our children,
the paint-flecked wrists now risen
to protest discipline and begin
a new hand. My love,
Desire, I feel it even when
we both fall asleep on the couch.
Steve Parlato
Her Absence Shows
3rd place – 2007 Brodine/Brodinsky Prize
Judge Steven Straight
in weeds infesting parched beds; in untamed
roses twisting the trellis back; in blown
peonies that drip gunk. My father is
gouging the upper yard, transforming smooth,
bottle-green expanse to minefield: pitted
grave-ruts, cairns of busted stone he’s wrenched up
from earth like rotted teeth. He’s forsaken
upkeep, chain-sawing evergreens to stubs
as iris gasp. Sworn off scrupulous care,
he’s ceased pruning; seems to have forgotten
her. Swiping sweat, he pauses to show me
the new geraniums. I swear, these grew
since yesterday. They’re called Elizabeth
Ann. He blinks, quickly turning, back to stones.
Pit Menousek Pinegar
The Robin
It’s past noon, and she’s still at it,
the incessant peck-and-hurl into
the dining room window that woke me
at six this morning. Even the cat
has lost interest, but I need to understand
such dedication, such persistence. Has she
fallen for her reflection in the glass, come
to desire her own perfection more than
flight or spring, Narcissist with wings,
or has she caught sight of the nest
in my living room with the three
bright blue eggs, and does she imagine
she can hatch something from what is
inside and misplaced? How long will she
keep it up, this delicate battering?
Come in, I want to say, It’s all right,
I’ve had wild things here before,
but she’d discover the eggs are hollow,
that it’s a whole lot easier to get in
than it is to get out. I could tell her that.
Give it up, bird. Build your own nest.
Give your lovely wild and feathered self
to air, tree, a few warm blue eggs,
another lush and generous spring.
He Used to Rake Leaves
fall Saturday mornings, the gasp of his green lawn tractor
coming before you saw him, puffs from his Lucky Strikes
staying when he was gone. Always the same joke
when I waved to him: his legs kicked up, no hands
on the wheel, a circus clown in a miniature car.
Circling his house, he’d tip his John Deere cap to his wife
pacing behind the curtains, juggling a phone, wine glass,
cigarette, losing hair, teeth lost, fuzzy white slippers
snapping at her heels. At the leaf piles he’d crouch
arms outstretched, a strong man before the greatest
of weights, and cradle the bundles to his chest
like something sleeping or injured, laying them gently
in the trailer, pressing, smoothing as if tucking a blanket.
When his wife died, he moved to a cabin in Maine.
In a postcard to me, he couldn’t believe the pine needles
everywhere - on the lawn, deck, driveway. He lost count,
all the black plastic bags he filled, stuffed in trash cans,
worried the garbage man would leave them and take only
the real garbage. But every Tuesday, with a snap
of the wrist, the man hurled the bags, sometimes three
at a time, a high, sweeping arc for the truck, smiling
the moment the black balloons floated.
1st Place – 2008 Connecticut River Review Contest Judge Kim Bridgford
David A.Prodell
Northern Harrier
Steaming off a 20 oz. coffee in the vineyard,
hand pruners at rest, I lean back to share
a post with a long-handled shovel. Grape canes
elbow out along the trellis wires, the sinewy arms
of farmers draped on fence rails watching
cornfields whitecap with tassels. A half-eaten
rabbit’s talon-stapled to an end post, handy work
of the resident red-tailed hawk mapping
rodent byways. Or maybe it’s a “Vacancy” sign
from the northern harrier I’ve seen skimming
the fallow pasture next door. Unlike other hawks,
the harrier’s hearing is keener, its owl-like face
a disk of stiff feathers amplifying and flagging
locations of sounds – a corn kernel pinging
down a vole’s throat, roadkill breakfast clatter
of three crows, the creek’s mud-bubbling
mumble, or this warm October sun patiently
knitting from skeins of the seen and unseen, heard
and unheard, the pattern of this day, its needles
ticking as I slowly pull my wool sweater over my head.
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