Backbone > Poetica

Eited by Phil Levine

Winter Ghazal

It could go on forever, this intimacy of the apparent and clear,
signaling from the thin bridge of one night.

Weeds blacken under the stiff sun, thin and alert
Like pens stuck in the dead snow, waiting to write on the sky.

We sleep for months numbed by the words of an evil fairy.
She is girdled in bluebells, trailing her earrings for bait.

Winter in the Catskills - a need to believe that we can flame
above the cold and darkness, donating ourselves to the air.

Our original intentions are lost but they ripple through the room
like the folds and tears on old photos.

A white horse stands in the field alongside the Bearsville hill.
The sky, a canopy of nickel, balances on a bare maple.

Last night the words I needed flew away into a dream of planets.
They were soft flannel words, warm words that did not cling.

My life is as simple as bread and mushrooms on a plate.
There are things I know so well, I forget to expect them.

In my notebook a page with 4 words: the waiting of women.
I write quietly, in secret. You do not know how far I have gone from
you.

—Nancy Rullowa

Pitted Dates

You want poetry
go read books
I told her.

It had been years
absorbing the jeers
of a literary snob.

Once I made a joke
about pitted dates.
She said

my mother says pun is the lowest
form of wit,
to which

I should have said
insult is the lowest form of instruction,
but I didn’t.

I just walked past the station, jealous
of the busses, the small sign in the windshield
indicating San Diego.

—Kristen Henderson

Where Morning Doesn’t Reach

Where morning doesn’t reach
In that illuminating hour
No glimmer of the weeping sea
No awakening for the flowers

Dreams that dance along the blossoms
Of all things once remembered
From clouds that were once gazed upon
Stars glowing like life’s embers.

Where morning doesn’t touch
Splintering rage of smog and lust
Groans on end with shadow’s tears
And the mournful settling of the dust

Where darkness freezes over time
With a stinging spray of a charred whale’s breach
I need not see it, it is not mine
Where morning doesn’t reach.

—Derek Daunicht-Beaston (age 14)

Another Victory

Hey, we took out thirty thousand
men, women and children,
as if it were a video game.
Ain’t we great
Thank God they don’t have families.

—Alec Emerson

untitled

You’ve forgotten more poems
Than you’ve written: this is the key.
They run through you like water through a stream
And there you are building dams—
Calling them cathedrals.
This deep water will drown you.
Let the river run wild
These stones will be to stand on and fish
Not boulders around your neck.

—Timo McGillicuddy

Ethos

Here is We
there is They

To They
We are They

see the difference?

grab the guns

—Joe Dolce

You can submit up to three poems to CHRONOGRAM at a time. Send via snail or e-mail. Poetica. PO Box 459. New Paltz, New York 12561. E-mail: info@chronogram.com. Subject: Poetica.