??? The Road Not Taken: a Journal of Formal Poetry - Spring, 2010? ? ? ?

Spring, 2010

  • Glorious Spring

    Lads and lassies frolic in the fields alongside the newborn lambs.

    Spring has sprung! Yes, I know it’s a horrible clich, but I still have to use it each spring.

    I’ve hung a bird feeder on the back deck and have been enjoying my feathered visitors on a daily basis. The squirrels tend to hang around the front of the house, and so far, there have been no problems with them raiding the birdseed.

    We have an excellent selection of new poems for your enjoyment this season, from five new poets and one previously published here.

    I have opened this edition with Alfred, Lord Tennyson and one of his best known works, The Charge of the Light Brigade. Yes, I know it’s not exactly an early spring love sonnet, but hey, I happen to like it. And besides, it’s excellent poetry.

    Update: Since I wrote the above, we have added three more poets to this issue. Please enjoy!

  • Alfred, Lord Tennyson (August 6, 1809 October 6, 1892)

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    Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, FRS (August 6, 1809 October 6, 1892), much better known as “Alfred, Lord Tennyson,” was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom during much of Queen Victoria’s reign and remains one of the most popular poets in the English language.

    Tennyson excelled at penning short lyrics, “In the valley of Cauteretz”, “Break, Break, Break”, “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, “Tears, Idle Tears” and “Crossing the Bar”. Much of his verse was based on classical mythological themes, such as Ulysses … . Tennyson also wrote some notable blank verse including Idylls of the King, Ulysses, and Tithonus. His use of blank verse, rare in his day, may be related to his complete tone deafness which made it hard for him to follow the conventional rhythms of the poetry of his day. During his career, Tennyson attempted drama, but his plays enjoyed little success.

    Read more at Wikipedia.

    ??

    The Charge of the Light Brigade
    by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

    I.

    Half a league, half a league,
       Half a league onward,
    All in the valley of Death
       Rode the six hundred.
    “Forward, the Light Brigade!
    Charge for the guns!” he said:
    Into the valley of Death
       Rode the six hundred.



    II.

    “Forward, the Light Brigade!”
    Was there a man dismay’d?
    Not tho’ the soldier knew
       Some one had blunder’d:
    Their’s not to make reply,
    Their’s not to reason why,
    Their’s but to do and die:
    Into the valley of Death
       Rode the six hundred.



    III.

    Cannon to right of them,
    Cannon to left of them,
    Cannon in front of them
       Volley’d and thunder’d;
    Storm’d at with shot and shell,
    Boldly they rode and well,
    Into the jaws of Death,
    Into the mouth of Hell
       Rode the six hundred.



    IV.

    Flash’d all their sabres bare,
    Flash'd as they turn’d in air
    Sabring the gunners there,
    Charging an army, while
       All the world wonder’d:
    Plunged in the battery-smoke
    Right thro’ the line they broke;
    Cossack and Russian
    Reel’d from the sabre-stroke
       Shatter’d and sunder’d.
    Then they rode back, but not
       Not the six hundred.



    V.

    Cannon to right of them,
    Cannon to left of them,
    Cannon behind them
       Volley’d and thunder’d;
    Storm’d at with shot and shell,
    While horse and hero fell,
    They that had fought so well
    Came thro’ the jaws of Death,
    Back from the mouth of Hell,
    All that was left of them,
       Left of six hundred.



    VI.

    When can their glory fade?
    O the wild charge they made!
       All the world wonder’d.
    Honour the charge they made!
    Honour the Light Brigade,
       Noble six hundred!


  • Now let’s wander far afield as we peruse the poetry of our recent contributors.


  • Lark Beltran

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    Im from California but have lived for over half my life in Lima, Peru, along with my Peruvian husband, as an ESL teacher. Over the past several years my poetry has appeared in a number of online and print journals, including Able Muse, Strange Horizons, Penwood Review and Bolts of Silk.

    ??

    Aging distances the mind
    by Lark Beltran

    Aging distances the mind
    from spellbound sensesfog and flame.
    Their latitudes are left behind;
    aging distances the mind.
    Worldliness and calm, combined,
    muffle the frenzy of the game.
    Aging distances the mind
    from spellbound sensesfog and flame.


    ??

    Be Somewhat Choosy
    by Lark Beltran

    Be somewhat choosy what you call a child.
    A want of patience is a common thing,
    but words, magnetic, wreak their reckoning:
    a pall which leaves self-confidence defiled
    in later years. Incredible, a phrase,
    an epithet, so cavalierly tossed
    youd think its influence would soon be lost ...
    but no, it smolders long, and comes ablaze
    in times of apathy or sadness. I
    remember well a quick parental scorn
    (making me wish that I could be reborn)
    in times of learning-stress. I used to cry.
    But still, I called my son what Dad called me;
    it left a mark on his proficiency.


    ??

    Boondocks
    by Lark Beltran

    En route to elsewhere, glamor draws the eye,
    beyond car windows; fleeing past the train -
    a landscape moored beneath a richer sky.

    Such vistas, through imaginations eye,
    adventure and serenity contain.
    En route to elsewhere, glamor draws the eye.

    When travelling, I often wonder why
    the sweetest bits untrodden must remain -
    a landscape moored beneath a richer sky.

    Embellished in imaginations eye,
    it simulates a not-quite-earthly plane.
    En route to elsewhere, glamor draws the eye.

    Adventure and serenity slip by,
    forever taunt, alongside this domain -
    a landscape moored beneath a richer sky.

    Then give me boondocks - may they never die
    nor wither to expansion-greeds disdain.
    En route to elsewhere, glamor draws the eye,
    a landscape moored beneath a richer sky.


    ??

    Cauldrom of Earthly Mysteries
    by Lark Beltran

    Paintings in caves, Greek temples, arcane scrawls
    on shipwrecked coins, amphorae placed in tombs,
    dead languages on excavated walls,
    mosaic portraits in Pompeiian rooms,
    Celtic stone-circles, Inca bastions, gold
    figurines and century-scuffed beads,
    monk-copied manuscripts, their borders bold
    with passions rainbow - all expound the deeds
    of our late peers who lashed against the bar
    of times oblivion. Within these frames
    affixed by choice of soul, how frail we are
    at matters mercy, peddling our include "name.php";s,
    a sea of actors constantly withdrawn
    like bubble-sculptures, while our art lives on.


    ??

    Primeval Nostalgia
    by Lark Beltran

    Millenia have marked the human scene,
    but millions of years the planets face.
    What wonders flourished in the Eocene?
    What bestiary roamed its savage space?
    Here was the thrust of rare bromeliad
    and there the flash of sunset-colored wings,
    in vistas newly rinsed and rainbow-clad.
    What trills and lifebeats, roars and rumblings
    frequented nightscapes under a spray of stars
    fiery as the tip of fairy-wand!
    Clean amplitude - the bounty that was ours -
    has dwindled, like a lake to murky pond.
    Pity the lost lands charred and felled and tamed,
    the host of species vanished and uninclude "name.php";d.



  • Catherine McGuire

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    Besides appearing here previously, Catherine McGuire has been widely published over the past two decades, including The Lyric, New Verse News, The Smoking Poet, Poetry In Motion, and Main Street Rag. She has published a chapbook, Joy Into Stillness: Seasons of Lake Quinault, and is assistant director at CALYX Press.

    ??

    Morning Ritual on Canyon Road
    by Catherine McGuire

    Suburban used car lots: block-on-block
    of flapping pennants; flattened, asphalt ground.
    Staggered herds of polychromed peacocks
    awaiting riders silently surround
    the dealer men, in worsted suits and gray
    Wall Street haircuts (polished shoes). With fists
    of balloonsdour circus vendorsthey
    waft their lures toward passing motorists:
    Mooring candy-colored bobs to cars;
    unlikely union (linked perhaps by lust
    engendered in our depths by rich bazaars,
    carnal cravings undeterred by rust).

    Resigned to pimping metal for their bread,
    the dealers loft inflated hopes on thread.


    ??

    Harvest Rondeau
    by Catherine McGuire

    These harvest fruits are in the pot:
    peachy jam, tomatoes, hot
    pepper salsa, pickled beans
    taking up the Fall routine:
    preserve a summer. Apricot

    wine let nothing rot,
    though spurned by shoppers, who will not
    chop or stir; and distain to glean
    these harvest fruits.

    Our “flash society” forgot
    where food comes from it’s not
    from shrink wrap! The more we lean
    on factory farms and fields unseen
    the less transforming will be what
    we get from harvest fruits.



  • John Van Doren

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    My include "name.php"; is John Van Doren. I live in New York City. I was a teacher and editor for most of my working life. I've been writing poems, some of which have been published (I have not often tried), for 30 years. Among the magazines where they have appeared are Prophetic Voices, Tapestries, Jewish Currents, The Lyric, Kentucky Poetry Review, The Willow Review, Comberland Poetry Review, Gryphon, and Iambs and Trochees. Poems will appear shortly in lucid rhythms, Chaemera, Able Muse, and The Road Not Taken: a Journal of Formal Poetry.

    ? ?

    Heaven’s Harvest
    by John Van Doren

    The woods across the stream let in
    a light reflected by their turning leaves,
    gold now in mid-October, the many sheaves
    that stand for heaven’s harvest, tall
    against the sky. Their fate is burial,
    though, not storage—food only worms can win.

    I walked about among the trees,
    looking upwards through the branches widening
    like fans as thin as paper, vanes drifting
    weightless to the ground. A few
    sailed off, leaving a sadness. I knew
    i couldn’t stop them, was only one who sees.

    Who would be fool, be lovesick, trying
    to hold a thing that can’t be held? Yet still
    I wish old poet, that gold could stay. And Will
    might tempt me, if it could. But there,
    it needn’t. For memory has care,
    and words, upturned, against this autumn dying.



  • Rhonda Johnson

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    I have a Masters degree in English from the California State University, Los Angeles where I taught basic writing in the Teaching Associate program and was vice president of the Creative Writing Club. I won the Henri Coulette Memorial Poetry Award a university based award of the Academy of American Poets.

    ??

    The Dash
    by Rhonda Johnson

    On rolling hills inside an iron fence
    That gives a sense of closure to the lives
    Now lived and settled all the nevers sealed
    In stone. Apostrophes for people that

    Meant something, gave a lot and suffered all
    A crinkled rose, its petals blown by wind
    Its stem a root now deep in earth, in stone
    Which beaten by the rain and wind retains

    Its dates of birth and death a finished chord
    These numbers frame a dash now worn but clear
    And thick with love adorned by unseen acts
    The roses tell the story of a life

    A stranger calculates the stone etched years
    The dash between is dear to fallen tears



  • Richard Peake

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    A native of Tidewater Virginia, Richard (Dick) Peake has become a Texas resident since retirement from the University of Virginia’s College at Wise. He began writing poetry while an undergraduate, won the Mary Cummings Eudy poetry award, published poems in and became poetry editor of The University of Virginia Magazine. He published poems in Impetus alongside John Ciardi and Hollis Summers as well as in The Georgia Review and many small journals. Collections of his poetry have appeared in Wings Across and Poems for Terence published by Vision Press, which also included poems of his in A Gathering at the Forks A. He published further poetry in Birds and Other Beasts in 2007. During 2008 and 2009 he won a number of awards from the Gulf Coast Poets and The Poetry Society of Texas and his poems were published in Sol Magazine, Jimsonweed, and Shine Journal and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. In 2010 his poems have appeared in Avocet, Asinine Poetry, Jimsonweed, The Book of the Year PST, Raven Images, The Road Not Taken, and elsewhere.

    ??

    In Defense of Milton
    by Richard Peake

    Too ready to proclaim woes of marriage,
    feminists say Milton hated women
    because his Eve prompted mankind’s sin
    though he obviously was uxorious,
    never gave up seeking feminine charms,
    married three wives and wrote radical tracts
    proclaiming meeting of minds is needed
    for happy unions, arguing for divorce
    when minds unsuited join in wedlock
    not words against women but mismatches
    made in some place not heaven, by mischance.
    Mary, his first wife, from Cavalier folk
    who frowned on Puritans, poisoned her
    against Milton, though he protected them,
    provided for them without hint of thanks.
    Small wonder, then, the poet created
    his Eve in Mary’s likeness, willful, smart,
    so tempting Adam could not refuse her
    (fondly overcome by his female’s charm)
    any more than Milton could forget Mary.
    The poet describes his next wife as a saint
    loved and loving. His third surely loved him,
    he her. She cared for him in his blindness.
    Remember Adam and Eve hand in hand,
    sad, chastened, departing from Paradise,
    loving, enduring punishment together.
    Adam and Milton were not misogynists.


    ??

    Southern Voice
    by Richard Peake

    The poet Frost says ovenbirds tell us
    what we should make of diminished things,
    and that is true for those of us who trust
    the teacher, teacher, teacher call that rings
    the northern woods, but southern ovenbirds
    give a different call. Their teach, teach, teach
    presents a more strident voice that's heard
    when summer brings to southern forests' heat
    the ovenbirds demanding we pass their
    lessons on. Those ovenbirds have taught me
    in cathedral wooded haunts, their secret lair,
    the patience to seek out a singer free
    to walk the leafy floor that hides his form
    from stalkers that his ringing song transforms.

    We hike up flowered slopes of mountaintops,
    halting along the way for bird and bloom;
    the familiar call of teach, teach, teach stops
    our hike. Alert, we peer into the gloom
    of forest floor until a vireo’s
    querulous sneeer distracts our fickle ears,
    and we gaze up to search the limbs, too slow,
    it flies from branch above and disappears
    we marked him, though, blue-headed vireo
    back to Appalachia another year
    from balmy winter suns in Mexico
    where he hunts bugs with avian shears.
    Stumbling over wake robins and yellow
    Slippers, we hunt him with binoc’lar spears.

    once we have found that worm-eating bird,
    our thoughts turn back to the other singer,
    the feathered seer whose strident call we heard
    before our gaze strayed from Jack and ginger
    blooms to seek vireo. Bird song teaches man
    the woodland lessons of the ovenbirds
    that their ringing teach, teach, teach demands
    of those who learn their woodland lesson plan:
    the beauty that the natural world displays
    to those who seek the singer’s secret way
    and learn the patience to sit and let him sing;
    to lead them to the forest’s ageless play.
    the ovenbird makes solid tree trunks ring.


    ??

    Viewing Neandertals
    by Richard Peake

    Observe, look at that low-browed skull.
    The artist has made the dull being
    live again though it’s just a hull
    of the pulsing, feeling, living thing.

    That low forehead concealed cunning
    enough to survive the ice age
    by living in caves and hunting
    wooly rhinoceri with courage.

    We will not fade away quietly
    like Neandertals. More theatrical,
    we’ll have a big blast, noisily
    leave museums nothing at all.



  • C.J. Clayton-Dippolito

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    I am an MFA student at Kent State University with stories and poetry published in Ruminate, Rubbertop Review, Gloom Cupboard and forthcoming in The Penguin Review. I have just received an honorable mention in the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Intro Journals Contest.

    ??

    Turtle in Drought
    by C.J. Clayton-Dippolito

    When drought begins to leech the waters dry,
    the painted turtles march in thirsted hordes.
    To ponds and creeks and bogs with deeper pools,
    they creep and slink in search of sodden quench.
    It pains to watch the turtles as they go
    on inching forth like pilgrims off to pray.
    Their Mecca , Lourdes , their Ganges nothing more
    than rank ditches and scummy culvert drains.
    Most all the other creatures burrow fast
    from sear of summer scorch and blistered skins.
    They tunnel cool graves, escape the staring
    summer's eye 'til it drops its dim-waned lamp.
    Yet turtle trudges forth despite the yoke.
    He'll crawl a mile or so before he quits,
    succumbs to the anguished despair and the
    brutal promises of liquid mirage.
    A sweltered stranded victim on the dune,
    he conjures wishing wells that seem to grow
    two feet and arms that sprout out from the sides.
    Oasis picks her bricks up like a skirt,
    and tiptoes back, laughing until she's hoarse.



  • Michael Ferris

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    Michael Ferris was born in Los Angeles. His first true love was JS Bach; since then he’s had reckless affairs with, among others, Blaise Pascal, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Robert Frost. He studied nothing of commercial value at Dartmouth and Yale. He started writing in 1993, and has kept at it as he dropped in and out of Wall Street. Mammon is a clumsy and boorish lover, so he cheats on him continuously with a stable of novelists, philosophers, and poets, little caring if they still draw breath. He lives in Kingston, NY.

    ??

    The Modern Game
    by Michael Ferris

    (with a handshake for R.F.)

    Open-stanza groundies
    and indiscriminate lines;
    the rules are faint suggestions —
    no umpires, faults, or fines.

    The deuce with counting bounces,
    and stressing over feet!
    You lob up some emotion,
    and they’re out of their seat

    applauding at your genius.
    That’s how to rock the joint —
    technique is musty old-school,
    and form is not the point.

    Just serve it hard, then harder;
    slam and raise a racket;
    howl to prove your passion
    and show how you can hack it.

    Your play lacks rhyme or reason?
    No need to get upset;
    every shot goes over
    since we took down the net.

    Advantage to the people!
    The power of the frame
    makes everyone a winner —
    that’s the modern game.


    ??

    Old Milton
    by Michael Ferris

    Rereading Milton, there’s a lot
    we moderns smile at in his thought:
    nobody anymore adheres
    to Ptolemy’s ten concentric spheres;
    we can’t suppress a laugh when told
    that Earth hangs from a chain of gold,
    a bauble on a Christmas tree –
    what a cute cosmology;
    that Heaven’s skirmishes unfold
    just like in Albion of old
    (the action, though, is pretty good,
    like something out of Hollywood:
    Rambo say, or Richard III —
    quite studly of the Eternal Word!)

    All-too-human; nevertheless,
    in time we’ll see the seriousness
    in Milton’s project – to boldly try
    a universal alibi.
    For whether men were made by God
    or crawled up out of some steaming bog,
    the problem is as old and new
    as Abel and Job, and me and you:
    if God exists, and God is good,
    how is suffering understood?
    He may not leave us satisfied,
    but Milton (via Anselm) tried.

    Yes, much of Milton does seem quaint,
    and we can laugh until we hurt –
    then we should feel a little pained
    we mocked old Milton, unconstrained
    to find a better answer first.


    ??

    Black Rat Snake
    by Michael Ferris

    He too has to eat, I suppose.
    Or she? I can’t really tell
    without forcing a moment too close
    what ages of instinct repel.

    Experience, too, truth be told:
    I’m no fledgling in love’s swoons and aches,
    and nothing makes my blood run cold
    like the wiles (and pudenda) of snakes.

    But live and let live’s what I say;
    let God judge the heart in each breast –
    except when He’s prone to delay
    and that heart covets my phoebes’ nest.

    The snake tipped the lash of my eye
    as he slid up a section of fence
    like a sinuous coquetry,
    a proposition of carnal intent.

    Then he flexed and he stretched out his back,
    like a vine up the wall of the shed —
    as if he had tendrils — and tacked,
    til he landed the roof with his head.

    Precarious under the eave
    the moss-crib of hatchlings stood.
    Could even a Tennyson leave
    to fate – or to faith – such a brood?

    I arrested the snake with a stick,
    and I set him, as it were, to flight;
    for field mice I gave him his pick,
    all the toads he could woo every night.

    And I cast round the foot of the fence
    a medicine such as should fix
    a prurient snake: nylon nets
    like a web that invites, then constricts.

    And I prayed — an unwonted lust —
    for the succoring limbs of the trees;
    and the snake preyed as his nature must,
    for a taste of the least of these.



  • Mark Blaeuer

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    I’ve pasted one poem below for The Road Not Taken. This poem was written during the time my wife and I owned a cabin in north Arkansas. We had to sell that house for a down payment on the one we have now, which isn’t as rustic but has just as much timbered acreage to walk in. I live in southwest Arkansas and have had my poems published in journals such as Hiram Poetry Review, Paintbrush, Barefoot Muse, and many others.

    ??

    Single Pen
    by Mark Blaeuer

    Varnished inside the cabin, these pine logs
    chant in the umber dialect of sky
    at sunset over Shiloh Mountain; of fog
    enveloping Lost Peak, suffusing Dry
    Fork hollow with air-water at sunrise.
    Each adze mark is a genuine effect
    rough hewn, no modules for the builder’s clan.
    Spirits molder in their resinous eyes,
    knots and pegs where branches have been hacked
    away, blunt vestiges of rural men.

    I’m unrelated, shadow on the tongue,
    here to bow to a ready-made rainbow.
    Who’s lonely? Not some bluffer dangling
    his feet in heaven, happy as Thoreau
    atop Fair Haven Hill. An emerald
    glow hints of earth. On weekends of escape
    to quiet reparation, I hike down
    to Thomas Creek with dogs who come when called,
    obedient to joy. The proper shape
    and heft of solitude are, at last, won.

    First, realtors earn a commission. In
    law, deeds convey land; human acts redeem
    the ownership. I rake leaves, and gray stone
    foundations iterate to me their dream
    of eaves and shingles, walls and furniture.
    I rest inside with coffee, marmalade
    on toast. Then I’m out to split hickory
    and oak for an investiture of fire
    in blood and domicile. An ideal trade:
    to pay too much, a pittance, and go free.



  • Mark J. Mitchell

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    I studied writing and medieval literature at the University of California at Santa Cruz with Raymond Carver, George Hitchcock, Barbara Hull and Robert M. Durling. My work has appeared in many magazines, including kayak, Blue Unicorn, Black Bough, Santa Barbara Review, Pearl, Runes and Poem. It has also appeared in the anthologies Line Drives (Southern Illinois University Press), Hunger Enough Puddinghouse Press) and Zeus Seduces the Wicked Stepmother in the Saloon of the Gingerbread House (Winterhawk Press). My chapbook, Three Visitors won the 2010 Negative Capability Press International Chapbook competition and will be published later this year.

    ??

    Fado
    by Mark J. Mitchell

    Her voice is bleeding in an unknown tongue,
    The sorrow is ripe, rich enough to touch.
    A flower broken early, broken young.

    Her song wraps its tune around you. It’s sung
    Tenderly, the guitars don’t count as much
    As her voice that bleeds in a different tongue.

    It’s as if those words, unknown, caught and clung
    To your body, like some tropical vine that clutched
    You. The broken flower brushing your young

    Flesh. Your mouth tastes it as it gently numbs
    All your senses. You lean on her song like a crutch
    This voice that’s bleeding in that foreign tongue.

    This record is scratched. The needle is stung
    From the grooves. Vinyl’s delicate, it’s such
    A broken flower, lost when you were young

    And stupid. But the song, so sadly sung,
    Strokes hidden nerves that no one’s ever touched
    That bleeding voice, this subtle tongue
    Her flower breaks early and she broke young.


    ??

    Rondeau On Yellow Paper
    by Mark J. Mitchell

    Like a trap, cruel yet benign,
    With its wicked mouth, velvet lines,
    Morning startles you our of bed
    With just the lightest kiss of dread
    Leftover. You pull your face in line,

    Scan your wrecked sheets. Nothing reminds
    You of that cold dream left behind
    When the sun brushed your aching head.
    But some relic lurks, a word unsaid,
    Like a trap

    Coiled tightly in your brain, designed
    By your failures, a self-planted mine.
    Get yourself dressed. It’s in your head,
    That’s all. Face this slow day instead
    Of night. Watch it passinglike time
    Like a trap.


    ??

    Sunday Afternoon, 3:15, Torrance, 1966
    by Mark J. Mitchell

    She wipes her palms on her skirt, brushes away
    A lone gray hair, smiles and opens the door
    To nothing. Empty air. She would have sworn
    She heard a ring. Palms bend by the freeway
    Under a spring breeze. She shakes her head and sighs,
    Almost turns inside, looks down and her eyes
    Light on a box at her toes. Square, unwrapped.
    No one in sight, it couldn’t be a trap.

    What a silly thought. She passes her damp palm
    Across her brow, picks up the package, calms
    Her brief flutter, retreats into her house
    With no thought but the stain on her blouse.

    Silent, in the dark heart of that plain box
    Are letters mailed years ago to a boy,
    And photos of her under palms, some toy
    He won for her. Only the clash of clocks
    Parted them. Some nights she recalls his palms
    Sliding along her hips and down, her qualms
    And her assent. Not today, as she rolls
    Dough for a crust. Whatever the box holds

    It’s meant for someone else. She lets her mind
    Empty, pushing wood across flour. Her time
    Is different now. She dusts her cool palms,
    Pats the board. She won’t look. This is her balm.


    ??

    Tenebrae
    by Mark J. Mitchell

    “The voices of the Benedictines are massive, impersonal.”
        —Kenneth Rexroth
        “Wednesday in Holy Week, 1940”

    They sing the darkness. Cold tones, old as stone,
    Intoning dead syllables that no one speaks.
    An old record that my father once owned.
    I’m listening halfway through Holy Week.
    It is, my mind knows, an archaic rite,
    Mothballed by a dead pope when I was born.
    It feels right, apt on this cool graying night
    While rags of my deserted faith flap, torn,
    Around my guilt-fed soul. A candle glows
    I may light some more to brighten my doubts,
    Because this is the rite of shadows.
    Once I was taught just what it was about.
    The record ends and there’s nothing done.
    I extinguish the candles, one by one.



  • ?

    Would you like to see your poems published here?

    We want to publish high quality formal, metric poetry. We are now publishing here online four times each year. If you have some work youd like to see in this journal send it to: jimatshs@yahoo.com We will try to respond within a month. And thank you.


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