“I’ve always pictured Cedar Hills as a daffodil city. They’re beautiful and the deer won’t eat them.”
“He’s laughing.”
“Sorry. It’s just such a good quote.”
“I’ll look for it in the paper.”
An hour later the reporter stops short of his car.
Behold
Three night-lit deer on the lawn,
Across the street three more in the [...]
April is the lovers’ month. Though some
would say June, with cancer’s sun
on the full-blown lips of Tudor
and Lancaster—I never (after
all) could think love and war the same.
The swelling earth, the dusting rain
waking the buds of branches. Brave
Green—that bright, defiant color
of the lovers’ month.
And secrets in the woods; I come
here often, whispering the names
I know. I [...]
This is a rather wretched place,
All things considered:
More paradox than paradise;
A poky little patch of dust and scrub
Now parched, now drowned,
Shaken and, as often, stirred;
A heaven gone to ground,
Ground gone to seed,
Thorn- and thistle-crowned
And for the very birds—
The dove, the hardy thrush,
The brown chat with his melancholy word.
It’s an abated wish,
This dense and dropping orb,
A [...]
It’s funny how things look
From however many thousand feet
One has to be to sail on clouds and see no birds.
And when the clouds burn off, I find a charm in streets—
Their random pass, the patchwork of man’s world,
The green and brown space, the plaid or checkered shirt,
The crawl of hills as if topography encroached on [...]
Remember wild, ungardened greens?
Dark mulchy woods of unkempt trees?
That broad, telestial paradise
Of birds and bugs and field mice?
Remember snows of varied hues?
High drifts? spring thaws? fat summer dews?
And fragrant, flatland buzzing air?
Paint-palette, musty harvest fare?
We’ve none of those in this dry place
Where seasons are a figment of degrees
And landmarks fickle as a ninja bride:
Trembling within, [...]
Déjame que te cuente cómo me compré esta casa
Verás
Habíamos visto ya cuarenta y nueve pisos en dos meses
Algunos vacíos
Otros recién abandonados, con frascos de colonia
Aún expuestos en el baño y un añejo olor a tabaco
En las paredes desconchadas.
Otros seguían repletos de vida, con fotos enmarcadas
Mientras tú intentabas prestar atención a la chica de la inmobiliaria.
Era [...]
I would like to thank personally each participant in the 2010 Spring Poetry Runoff Celebration. You helped make the Runoff a very successful event this year, not just for me but for readers and other participants. I hope everyone enjoyed the poetry and all-around gathering of talent as much as I did. The list of [...]
Thanks to great participation, WIZ’s Spring Poetry Runoff Celebration ran halfway through spring. Now it’s time for followers of and participants in the contest to make their preferences known. Here at WIZ, we all get to be poetry judges for five days–part of the informal nature of this contest. But rather than restrict each judge [...]
A solitary hawk beneath
a sky of lavender and gold,
assumed the vantage of a tree
and there reconnaissanced the cold.
Once-melting drifts of speckled snow
grew stiff against the freezing ground.
The humid gusts abandoned hope
and left the air without a sound.
What once was flowing now was tamed;
the rivulets, muddy and curled
lost strength and stream, as puddles became
glass windows to [...]
At five in the morn I gaze upon the Earth
Holding my little one so innocent and mild.
Hoping that I might have a chance
To feel her trails of glory
The midnight rain ended soon,
Leaving clean the outside world
I glanced through a crack to catch a glimpse
Of Nature’s hallowed view.
Crisp, Clean, Calm the scene lay before my eyes.
Each [...]