No devil-watered blackberries,
Whose succulence is long past anyway,
Since Winter’s chill blew down the collar of the wood,
Swept clean the dell and dingle, copse and field.
Sweep clean the dell and dingle, halt the yield,
Hibernia’s onset blast! Freeze crop and crud!
They’ll shiver in a gasp of shorter days
And doff their autumn liveries.
_________________________________________
Photo by Robert Moore via Creative [...]
As Wilderness Interface Zone approaches its third birthday, it’s growing up a little. Formalist poet Jonathon Penny has consented to join WIZ’s literary ecotone in the role of contributing editor. Jonathon has a keen eye for the belles-lettres. Beside being a wonderful poet possessing a unique voice, he took his MA in Renaissance literature at [...]
Fire in the Pasture: Twenty-first Century Mormon Poetry, edited by frequent WIZ contributor Tyler Chadwick, made its debut at 2011 end in impressive style. Tyler reports that Fire in the Pasture has “risen as high as #2 in both Hot New Anthologies and Hot New Inspirational & Religious and #12 in Hot New Poetry.” The [...]
We’ll breakfast at Las Brisas when we’re gray,
Discussing all our commonalities
And differences, admiring the breeze.
We’ll chatter and remark about the way
The rocking eucalyptus branches seem
To hammock threads of morning sun along
The coast. Pale clouds will sift to butter-cream
And melon, swimming through a blue sarong
Of tinctured sky. I’ll scan the beach and sea
Where I once played [...]
Today I read your verses, and I wept.
Your loss, transcending centuries, has torched
a hole in my self-pity, scattered ash
across four hundred years, and scorched
my martyrdom into the oak-slat floor.
The sad account of how your house burned down,
your passing of the ruins every day.
Each broken brick of future, smudged and brown.
And now I know the leaving [...]
It’s here I pause with each December, where
the snow-trimmed walls of timeworn brick align
beneath the windowsill and winter’s bare
limbs bend beneath a delicate and fine
glossing of frost. It’s here I garner all
my thoughts of months gone past, beside the sheers
and yellow paisley chair. A woolen shawl,
a pearl and knit of smiles and raveled tears,
is wrapped [...]
How ugly you all are,
An all-over ugly!
Iris bulbs unearthed and scythed
Of top leaves,
I lay your twisted, tuberous
Bodies across a gutted paper sack
And take a moment to grimace
At your grotesquery.
Dirt clings to your stringy reaching roots.
Not even warm water and bleach
Can pretty the rough hide of your skin.
Poor horrid hags!
But wait—don’t droop,
Shrivel dry in shame.
For I [...]
(for R.D.)
river rushes north
along aged Indian
trails cupping hands
with scout guides
and ghosts of foreign
navigators once lost
among mosquito marsh
and dense brush, asking
sustenance from
unforgiving earth
plucking berries
you picked in autumn
before she turned
gold to silver and
mud brown—the
end of hunting
and the creation of
renewed paths, when
beauty paved the road to
harshness, we gathered
dancing in deer skins, to
the sacred drum, hoping
to find the heartbeat [...]