Tag: Free Verse

Two Poems by Marcello Giovanelli

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ Leave a comment

January

You can feel him,
here, close, now,

in the early scent
of wintersweet,

your fingers pinch
memory’s pale skin,

probe its faint creases,
its hardened edges,

bedtime stories,
and traces in the snow.

And together you sing
as twin birds, limbs

outstretched, flightless,
to the point of breaking,

and all unwarmed
in the January sun.


Sun Grazes

I waited on the corner
of Coniston Avenue,
as you slowly walked

towards me, all newly
satchelled, wedged hair,
red jumper, coral eyes,

and those sun grazes
gently touching
the side of your head.

I can still feel those low
November clouds
hurrying you away,

the loss of colour,
a fine soot of
memories overlaid.

But now, slowly,
small and bird-like,
cradled between

warmed finger-tips
you’re here,
and those sun grazes,

brilliant once more,
gently touch you still.




Marcello Giovanelli teaches English in the West Midlands, UK. He has previously published poems in various online magazines such as The Poetry Village and Poetry Plus. Find him on Twitter at @mmgiovanelli.

“Ever After: A Dove’s Story” by P. C. Scheponik

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ 1 Comment

She came to me as a hand-fed squab,
soft, silk feathers the color of snow.
We kept her in a large screened cage
fastened to our bedroom wall,
where she perched and cooed and
rearranged her lovely white wings
that clapped in the air with a soft
whistling whenever I let her fly about
the living room, which was every day.
We named her Snow White,
needless to say the Disney in me still
nested in my heart like a little dove egg.
She had small feet, red as a rose,
with tiny toes sporting delicate nails
that pattered lightly against the gravel
sprinkled on the paper lining the bottom
of the cage.
Her eyes, two bright anthracite beads,
sparkled with delight each time I’d reach
inside her home and gently nudge below
her breast with the edge of my open hand,
offering her a nest of palm and fingers.
She loved when I ran my forefinger down
the back of her head and between her folded
wings.
She’d fan her tail and nestle down,
close her eyes softly and dream whatever
doves dream.
One morning, just three years from the day
we brought her home, I found her lying
on the floor of her cage.
She lay on her side, her rose-red feet clenched
as if ready to fly, her wings slightly separated
from her sides, her tail feathers snapped shut
like Venetian blinds, and her little coal-colored
eyes, closed as if sleeping.
I lifted her up, cradling the stiff body in my hands,
the downy neck and elegant head dangled to one side
as I pressed her feathered breast to my lips,
giving her one last mournful kiss.
But I had no princely power to lift death’s curse,
to awaken beauty.
I had only sorrow and the magic of verse to speak
about ever after.




P. C. Scheponik has published four collections of poems: Psalms to Padre Pio (National Centre for Padre Pio, INC), A Storm by Any Other Name and Songs the Sea has Sung in Me (PS Books, a division of Philadelphia Stories), And the Sun Still Dared to Shine (Mazo Publishers), and Stained-Glass Faith (Alien Buddha Press). A 2019 Pushcart Prize nominee, his work has appeared in numerous literary journals and fared well in multiple competitions. His newest collection, Seeing, Believing, and Other Things, is scheduled for publication by Adelaide Books in Spring 2021.

Two Poems by John Muro

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ 2 Comments

Vultures

Welling up from ditches
like caretakers of loss,
they ride thermals
with large eye-lashes
for wings and long-
stemmed fingers
delicate as coal dust;
relishing the idle drift
into black kettles of air,
travelling half asleep
for miles in search of
food using only wind
for lift. Disciples of decay,
they nest with death
and indulge a life of
dark leisure, as meals
arrive without effort,
wind dispersing the
curious odors of carrion
and neglect from farther
fields, back roads or dumps.
Roosting in barren trees,
their naked heads appear
like enflamed gullets,
drowned in the colors
of garnet red or weather-
worn brick, stripped of
both feathers and flesh,
like the lives that still
follow them, weight-
less, up into alien air.


Apparition

Disheveled autumn’s deftly
side-stepped winter’s grasp,
carrying in wide, blousy
pockets slumbering bees, brittle
nests and the easy currency of
pungent musk lifted from tea-
brown pools of leaf-rot and
acres of decay. Arrives poorly
attired in a worn, tweed cap
and thinning hair, mud-caked
shoes and a shawl of drab-scarlet
woven from wool, blithely
traipses through the well-worn
paths of woodlands, dank ruts
of orchard and rain-glazed
pasture, and, bojangle-brazen,
turns wind-ward and pivots
on his crooked walking stick
as he nimbly rises and entwines
with phantom light, pauses amid
the mottled luster of leaf-scatter,
drinks in the bright applause
of interloper crows and then
bows meekly before sauntering
off into the upsweep of gray
gusts like a happy grief.




John Muro is a resident of Connecticut and a two-time 2021 Pushcart Prize nominee. His first volume of poems, In the Lilac Hour, was published by Antrim House (2020) and is available on Amazon. John’s poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Barnstorm, Euphony, Grey Sparrow, Moria, Sky Island and Sparks of Calliope. Pastoral Suite, John’s second volume of poems will be published this spring. You can contact John via Instagram @johntmuro.

Two Poems by J. K. Durick

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ 1 Comment

Precisely

She takes off her glasses
examines them
looks at the lens from
several angles
decides
then spritzes the lenses
with a glasses cleaner
she bought just for this ritual
each lens gets two squirts
per side
then she takes a cloth
designed for this task
and rubs each lens
then examines them again
satisfied she puts them back on.
This is precision
this is being precise
orderly, methodical, thorough
a study in precise detail
step by step
a common task done in depth
achieving its end.
And then
with her glasses finally clean
she goes back to her needle work
each stitch as exact
as the one before.


Rainbow

You caught it, saw it out of the corner
Of your eye
A full rainbow, a double rainbow –
Like an exclamation point
At the end of our day.
The slight rain we knew
But didn’t know it had promise in it,
Had the makings of this sight, something
Memorable, something you called to
Everyone’s attention – Look
And we gathered around the door.
I tried briefly to video it
It came out okay but nothing can match
That moment
When you called it to our attention
And we witnessed the double rainbow
That marked our time together.




J. K. Durick is a retired writing teacher and online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Literary Yard, Black Coffee Review, Literary Heist, Synchronized Chaos, Madswirl, Journal of Expressive Writing, and Highland Park Poetry.

Two Poems by Christopher Sahar

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ Leave a comment

33

No one visits
Old man shelved in 33,
Family turned to dust
Joined the stars
Few years ago.

He watches
Standstill as
Frozen grass,
Fretting the rats
Would steal
His seed cast
For beloved Robin.

Old man in 33
Knows Winter Robin’s
Peculiar ariosos:
Half steps down
Two-at-a-time,
Minor leaps thrice,
Clicks a-four to bar,
Roulades at eights and nines.

Winter robin
Raptured by ample seed
Cracks husks
Leisurely despite
Bottomless freeze.

Old man in 33
Keens for his
Beloved’s arioso but
Swoons, keels, evaporates
Into cirrus-studded sky;
His benediction:
A crackle of husks,
A woof of wingflap,
Winterwind’s glacial heave.


Rainey Park, 2018

Eastriverskin etches
Mathematical formulae
Upon undulating aquaplane.
Maxima, minima,
Abscissa, ordinates
Integrating, deriving
Functions multivariate
Convergent, Divergent
Infinities and finites,
Colliding constellations
Of mathematical vectors,
Reform to north zero direction.
Our plane, a mutinous
Mutating mathematical
Choreography too rich
Compared to the infantile simplicity
Of the vector sum of those outside
Our criss-crossed planeskein.
Yet all dissipate as riverskin
To creek, marsh, prim-
Ordial slime, ooze;
Earthen death husks’
Sheening, refracting, redacting
Live billions under thermo-nuclear star
To Dusk’s mercuryslipsilveredslatebluestone-
Antiquedbrassgoldenaquamarineinkstain’d fringe.




Christopher Sahar is a musician who enjoys writing poetry as an avocation. Born and raised in New Jersey, he received his B.A. in English from Oberlin College and his Master’s in Music Theory and Composition from Queens College/City University of New York. He resides in the Astoria, Queens section of New York City, where he works as a church musician, educator, and occasionally earns income from music compositions and free-lance writing.  A composer, his works have been performed both in the United States and Europe, and he has written a libretti and lyrics for operatic and vocal works. 

“Epigraph” by D. R. James

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ Leave a comment

2022 Pushcart Prize Nominee
2021 Best of the Net Nominee

Poems are never completed—they are only abandoned. —Paul Valéry

So as I begin this one—
vowing as an experiment
not to give in to the vice

of revision, that sumo
of manipulation I so try
to apply to my life—

I wonder where I’ll leave it.
Will it be in some sun-warmed clearing,
a rocky outcropping in an old pine forest?

And will I have set out
earlier this morning with getting there in mind?
Maybe it will fall out of my pocket

along a downtown sidewalk
and blow a few feet
until it lodges under a parked car,

the puddle there and the dark
intensifying the metaphor:
a poem’s being abandoned.

Thus bookended by country and city,
both speculations in future tense,
the claim neglects the unfolding.

As if completion weren’t
every word as it comes out,
means and ends at once.

The cone is not container
of future tree. It is cone.
Nor is an old cone empty.




D. R. James’s latest of nine collections are Flip Requiem (Dos Madres, 2020), Surreal Expulsion (Poetry Box, 2019), and If god were gentle (Dos Madres, 2017), and his micro-chapbook All Her Jazz is free, fun, and printable-for-folding at Origami Poems Project. He lives in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan.

 https://www.amazon.com/author/drjamesauthorpage

“Frozen Ground” by W. Roger Carlisle

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I remember the winter when my mother left.
My dad and I walked bare frozen
ground on the Nebraska farm, no trees,
just a few broken stalks of corn.
“Your mom is gone,” he said
everything will be OK.”

I was nine.
We were visiting my grandparents farm.
I kept asking about my mother,
listening to family whisperings,
receiving no answers,
stunned by how quickly people disappear.

Years later, I learned from my father
the unspeakable truth:
She had been in a mental hospital,
too crazy to be mentioned,
too ill to be seen.

I still live in that frozen moment.
Even now, I never ask for help,
expect no one to listen.

 

 

W Roger Carlisle is a 74-year-old, semi-retired physician. He currently volunteers and works in a free medical clinic for patients living in poverty. He grew up in Oklahoma and was a history major in college. He has been writing poetry for 10 years. He is currently on a journey of returning home to better understand himself through poetry. He hopes he is becoming more humble in the process.

“The Artist Observes a Dead Tree” by R. Nikolas Macioci

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ 2 Comments

2022 Pushcart Prize Nominee
2021 Best of the Net Nominee

Five separate offshoots of one tree trunk twist
into each other.
It looks as if a giant has braided
the limbs together into one gnarled distortion.
Nothing is more naked than barren limbs
when everything understood about a tree is dead.
What illness killed the annual rings, or was it
stone cold nothing of old age that stripped it bare?
There will be no more listening to language
of restless leaves. Maybe somewhere its heart
still struggles. As the book says, everything
has a psyche.

Someday someone will paint, sculpt, or photograph it
because it is misshapen, malformed, and gnarled.
Some people hunger for the ugly, enjoy breathing
dark thoughts and even adore the deterioration of stars.

This tree is nothing now but a rupture in the earth
from which birds still speak echoes. This tree
represents impeccable death, wrapped in the question
of what it is still doing here? Someday an artist,
swayed by appreciation, sympathy, or regret, will paint
this tree that has poked a hole in heaven from which
a surprise of butterflies will pour out of the opening.




R. Nikolas Macioci earned a PhD from The Ohio State University. OCTELA, the Ohio Council of Teachers of English, named Nik Macioci the best secondary English teacher in the state of Ohio. Nik is the author of two chapbooks as well as eight books: More than two hundred of his poems have been published here and abroad, including in The Society of Classical Poets Journal, Chiron, The Comstock Review, Concho River Review, and Blue Unicorn. 

“Big Bang Theory” by Richard DJJ Bowdery

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ Leave a comment

This present is where
past and future collide,
Exploding into
the here and now,
A microcosm of life
in a single moment,
Before that moment
Is devoured by history.




Richard DJJ Bowdery has published three pamphlets of poetry — Out of the Darkness (1978); When the Cock Crows (1984); The Travelling Poet Wanders (2013). His poems have also appeared in a variety of anthologies including: Making Waves (1985); Poetry Now (1995); He is Risen (1999); Reflections from Two Continents (2000); Forward Press Poets — South & East England (2008); Honest Rust And Gold (2020).  Between 2015 and 2018 his work featured in several books published by community publishing house Cray 150 Publications. He is also co-author of Dove On The Wing (2013), a biography of English poet and pacifist Donald Ward.

“Libraries and Love” by Robert Nisbet

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ 2 Comments

At nineteen years of age, he said to a girl,
I have two lodestars, libraries and love.
Love? .. well, girls and dances anyway.

Vacation weekdays now, he’d go to the library.
He knew and could define the word “repository”
so yes .. his town’s repository of knowledge.
They’d all of Steinbeck there, and Joyce
and Keats, John Clare and politics and art.

Saturdays, the dances and the thrill of sound,
as rock’n’roll was shading into Beatles,
and he started taking Clara home. They’d stop
at their bench behind the Parade and now
his hands would mooch just wheresoever
they were allowed to go.

The rest of the walk, to her parents’ house
on Merlin’s Hill, went past the library. And there
was his friend the storehouse of learning,
quiet and unperturbed the weekend through.
Some nights, flushed with the evening’s warmth,
he’d cast a wink at the library. See you Monday, pal.

And when the firework friendship fizzled out,
and through years and decades on, the library stood
through weekends, wars and noise and fluster,
its knowledge there and in repose.




Robert Nisbet is a Welsh poet who has been published widely in Britain and the USA, where he has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.