Poetry Addicts

Pat Ranzoni

2012-01-31T11:21:00.003-05:00

ANSWERING WHAT’S HE DOING TO HER, THE RAM
                vignette: scene to fit on a vine leaf

Fall in the pasture air
                 his flaring nostrils
                              her standing readiness

Children at the barnyard window asking.

Oh, they’re breeding, dear (taking the sacred chance).
That’s how their lambs are made. How babies are made.

           Even people?

Even people.

           You mean Daddy did that to you?

Yes, dear, only we call it making love.

           You mean Daddy did that to you three times?

grape leaves
           on his cedar log frame
                         whisper Earth’s ways

Pat Ranzoni, a former child development specialist, writes from one of the subsistence farms of her youth in mid-coast Maine. Her work, gathered in eight collections so far, has been published across the U.S. and abroad, most recently in BEDDING VOWS, Love Poems from Outback Maine (North Country Press, forthcoming) from which this poem comes. She was one of four "Maine Farmer Poets" invited to read at the 2011 American Folk Festival and is featured with husband, Ed, on his tractor, on the Winter/Spring cover of Puckerbrush Review. www.pw.org/content/patricia_ranzoni_1

Emma Seyes

2011-12-05T15:33:00.000-05:00

Validation

Oh wait, I’ve got it this time

it’s the way the moonlight

balances on the edge of the wake

Yea, let’s see, what else…

of course Vega shining like a diamond

before the sun is gone, that counts.

Bonding with strange men twice my age?

Relying on them for my personal safety?

Nah, not really.

Learning the value of home,

okay that counts.

But that only needs to be learned once.

(Unless you’re really stupid.

Then you’d probably never see it anyway.)

A real bright pink sunrise over water like glass is cool,

but those don’t come very often

and it might be on a morning when you’re too pissed to feel the magic.

Nothing yet has beat those three guys in the fishing boat in Marysville.

I could tell by the way they waved,

each knew I was the girl of his dreams.

Gemineye

2011-02-20T08:38:00.001-05:00

Donal Mahoney

2011-02-15T08:25:00.006-05:00

Father: Every Morning of His Life

The cup he took his tea from

all those years was Army surplus,

made of tin. It whirred

to the spoon he wound in it

15 times per lump of sugar.

We who slept in rooms just off

the kitchen rose like ghosts

to the winding of that spoon.

In my house, now, mornings

Sue’s the first downstairs. She

scalds the leaves and wonders:

Will the winding ever end?

Donal Mahoney has been writing for awhile. He has had poems published in a variety of print and online publications, including The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Revival (Ireland), The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey), Public Republic (Bulgaria), Poetry Super Highway, Poetry Addicts, Calliope Nerve and other publications.

OneL

2011-02-13T08:34:00.002-05:00

Len Kuntz

2011-01-13T16:27:00.003-05:00

Summer on the Dock
The sun has given you a constellation.
I see Orion and Jupiter hula hooping and then a billion other stars like
orange breadcrmbs dribbled across your chest.
Birds feed on you.
The sky gazes long.
Even the proud eagle gives me a wink.

Len Kuntz lives on a lake in rural Washington State with his wife, son, an eagle and three pesky beavers. His writing appears widely in print and online at http://lenkuntz.blogspot.com.

Donal Mahoney

2011-01-07T11:34:00.025-05:00

Brisk Man from Jaipur

Two men tall,

one from here

and one from there,

in raincoats

at a bus stop,

pace and stare.

One of them

is soaked in tea,

brisk man from Jaipur

who semaphores

an anthracitic glare.

To barter for a smile

an alien’s obeisance

he, no fawn,

refuses.

The other man,

white cane and dog,

doesn’t seem to care.

Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri. He has had poems published in a variety of print and online journals, including The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Commonweal, Public Republic (Bulgaria), Revival (Ireland), The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey), The Osprey Journal (Scotland), Pirene's Fountain (Australia).

Michael Estabrook

2011-01-06T11:31:00.001-05:00

4 AM

We’re both up in bed.

I’m telling her,

“We have nothing in common, you know:

completely different lines of work,

live on opposite coasts of the country,

don’t have any sports in common,

he’s a golfer and I swim,

no hobbies the same,

he certainly doesn’t read poetry

or have any interest in the arts,

I have no interest in traveling like he does,

or in all these modern electronic gadgets.

We have nothing, except for our family history,

we have nothing else in common.”

She’s sleepy certainly, but replies finally,

“None of that matters. He’s your son.”

The Bus to the Ferry to the Subway and back again

Sadie worked fulltime until she was 70:

took the #9 bus to the ferry

to the subway to her office in Midtown Manhattan,

through sun and rain and wind and snow,

at her desk for the duration:

8 hours a day 5 days a week 50 weeks a year,

writing memos and reports, sending letters,

attending meetings, answering the phone,

cherishing her brief lunches with her friends,

sometimes splurging at the Horn & Hardart Automat,

cherishing her evenings and weekends and holidays

with her family.

And she’s here with me, Grandma Sadie is.

I can sense her here in this archetypal dull gray

meeting room, looking over my shoulder

at my memos and letters, notes and reports,

whispering in my ear, “Michael,

you need to pay attention to what’s important in life,

do your best at your business certainly,

grin and bear it all the best you can

to get through each and every day.

But continue to bear in mind,

I’m sorry to have to remind you,

that all this busyness of business,

this endless daily grinding rat-tat-tat,”

she’s drumming her fingers on my shoulder,

“Doesn’t amount, when all is said and done,

to even a small hill of beans.” She shrugs sadly.

“Because when it’s all over, it’s over.”

And she’s gone.

When The Muse Speaks

She’s actually reading my latest book of poems,

really, truly, reading

my latest book of poems,

something she never does:

“I don’t understand them.”

“I don’t read much anyway.”

“I never know what to say when I read them.”

(Nora never read James Joyce’s writing either

so she’s in good company.)

But today she’s sitting here

in the living room reading them

and she’s laughing

and saying, aaahhh, and

“I really said that, ‘I’m a gardener, not a gatherer?’”

So distracting having her, my Muse,

reading my latest book of poems:

When The Muse Speaks.

She finishes and tells me how good they were

and how much fun

it was to read them.

“When I saw the title I said, oh no,

a bunch of love poems to me,

glad it wasn’t that,” she’s smiling

and nodding her head. Oops,

guess I won’t be showing her my next book of poems.

The Future

Remembering back when we were young,

the future streaming out before us

like an endless comet traversing the cosmos.

I’d hold you close, so close to me,

close as close can be, reverently,

as if you were a delicate new porcelain doll,

and I’d feel your perfect heart beating

like a symphony – The New World Symphony –

against mine, feel your sacred breath,

pure and sweet as goddess wings caressing my neck,

feel the very essence, true and precious,

of you, my girl, my very own girl,

my more-precious-than-gold girl

going warm as a flaring solar wind

up and down my spine,

the future, our future,

a supernova blazing at the base of my brain,

unstoppable, endless and forever, like the universe.

Flirting

Don’t recall her actually flirting all that much,

certainly don’t recall her flirting with me.

But come to think of it, there was that time

she was crossing the quad with her blind date,

throwing little snowballs at him,

clutching her scarf to her chest and giggling.

And there were those occasions when

she’d stand in her math class full of males

and recite French poetry,

and that time she told an early boyfriend of hers

that she simply adored him in his green sweater.

And then recently in ballroom dancing class,

she kicked off her shoes,

(truly actually really kicked off her shoes)

and grabbed a-hold of Dick firmly so he could

teach her the proper way to tango,

seeing as I was getting it all wrong.

Guess I was wrong about not recalling

her flirting all that much.

Michael Estabrook is a baby boomer who began getting his poetry published in the late 1980s. Over the years he has published 15 poetry chapbooks, his most recent entitled “They Didn’t Leave Notes.” Other interests include art, music, theatre, opera, and his wife who just happens to be the most beautiful woman he has ever known.

Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal

2010-12-23T20:31:00.004-05:00

IF DEATH COMES KNOCKING

If death comes knocking,

leave a window open.

Spit orange seeds into its eyes.

A blind death cannot take you.

The reaper will harvest those

who do not fight back.

If death ducks the orange seeds,

flee through the window.

To read a review of Berriozabal's latest book, Digging a Grave, visit Orange Alert.

Patricia Ranzoni

2010-12-21T08:24:00.004-05:00

BUCK NECK STEW                                         for the winter solstice

     Everything in it from Ed and God though belief is not required for potatoes
and carrots to swell. Onions, tomatoes, garlic, beans. Reverent fingers in the soil
and hunt. Fire from the wood from the land from his hands.

     The Paul Winter Consort’s Silver Concert on the radio. Gabriel’s ashwork
dancing in my arms, lid off to collect the wolf and human howls around the fire and stew.
Gal’s prayers.

     This summer at our place, he saw the old gathering basket, nearly worn out,
and sat with it, listening, eyeing and feeling, honoring his wife’s knowing gaze.
Lifted and held by him it rejoiced to his touch, remembering its source.

     They took it back, home to his tree-pounding place where it would board
with them upriver, the way my family did years ago, rooted in relative time.

     And when it was soundly born again, they delivered it in the shortest days
of longest nights, surprising us where people gather at the book place at the mouth
of the river for stories and songs, candles and cake. The gift of myself back to myself
when he laid it in my arms, his heart and his wife’s heart overweaving. When I raised
its new lid it filled with our sighs and praise.

     After the basket had gathered that night’s thousands-of-years-old-fears that
the sun would leave forever, along with promises to light, without waste, our houses
and trees, and build fires and listen to one another’s hopes--and help--if it will please
come back; and we had waved them back upriver with kisses, I brought it home
to sleep with me and my old man, listening for reasons.

     Every longest night since, rehearing the strains, I lift it to dance,
opening it to give and receive the whole world singing and promising on the airwaves,
praying for Reason, which is to say Light, to return.

     I twirl with it, and bow, and the basket lifts me with reinforced legs,
refurbished ribs, arms renewed, and thick sweetgrass rim which is to say dream.
Stronger. All the more useful, we are grandmother and grandfather vessels restored
with felt respect. As with the venison stew, my good husband’s sacramental voice.
God food.

FILM MAKER RETURNS TO DEXTER IN DECEMBER
He’s come back to a Maine highland higher than the one he left.
Now, the streets down town hearken to his after-dark parades
complete with his cousin’s bagpipes. No more shame.

Now, smoked salmon spread and champagne, toasts enough
to go around. No more going to bed hungry.

Platters of sweets and savories, pine boughs with nothing but gold
while the fancied fire laughs away any shivery remains.
Stories reel between guests, gifts, all bound for his moving pictures.

No orphan scenes since exchanging vows with his interior decorator.

WINTER WHISPER
at the solstice

Oh let us not dread
the dark!

Oh let us mark
our neighbors’ fires!

Oh let us keep
these coals!

Blow our souls
into rivers of light!

Patricia Ranzoni at Poets and Writers

Sarah Daugherty

2010-12-20T08:15:00.000-05:00

Meat, Maybe

Maybe they are small men

from small towns

or mean men from larger ones,

carving out oval holes

in their cubicle desks

for their ever widening bellies.

This is not a contradiction, really:

the smallness is in their eyes, not beneath their belts.

Maybe they meet twice weekly

for brunch

at the predictable strip bar

on the inevitable outskirts of time.

Here, they eat donuts and Tony Roma,

swill down beer with lime and whiskey,

and complain complain complain.

And when the last brunch dance has ended

and the last laudable frosted blonde

robes and readies herself

for the impending strip-dinner crowd,

maybe the brunch men slip out

the paint-faded club's side doors.

They all stand elbow-close for a minute,

blinking at the unexpected sun.

They wipe sugary rib gristle from each other's slippery mouths. . .

And then car-pool home

to groan tangy

incomprehensible

nothings

at the women they'd built to marry.

David S. Pointer

2010-12-05T18:29:00.000-05:00

Organized Crime’s

Classroom Fairy Tale

The ratted out wrongdoer chased

his ex-cellmate down a service

steps exit into the poem where the

crimes were like none penned up

before in elevated literature living

an awarded well worded lie

through omission and silence

selling it to enrolled kids and

MFA candidates riding a

red-cupped plunger to wonder

Tom Lyford

2010-11-30T09:25:00.001-05:00

EASTER PARADE

Every sunrise but the Sabbath
the faithful stationed along the route
anticipate my arrival like a prophecy—
the coming of The Promised One…

and house by house, by ones and twos,
the pre-leash law pinscher and pointer,
the beagle, boxer, and bassett… and even
Judas the Jack Russell ‘doubting’ terrier…

wagging their windshield-wiper tails,
watering telephone poles, righteously
sniffing butts, and helping lawns
to be fertile and prosper… join me,

casting aside their nets… casting
their lots instead with me, their
suburban Jesus du Jour, swaddled
in newspaper delivery-sack cloth…

my missionaries of the word—
my dozen disciples delivering
the Good (Bangor Daily) News…
barking their happy Hosannahs!

Poet, humorist, and storyteller, Tom Lyford has been a featured guest performer at cafés, schools, and libraries from Portland and Camden to Millinocket and Rumford. Tom frequently provides poetry and writing workshops for area schools, and performs monthly at local nursing homes. His poetry has been published in the Bangor Daily News and several Maine journals such as Wolf Moon Press, Bangor Metro,Up North, and Off the Coast. In the last five years, Tom has published five poetry chapbooks, three of which have garnered positive reviews in Off the Coast poetry journal and the Bangor Daily News. In August 2009, he released his first non-fiction work, a sardonic memoir entitled, Work Aversion Trauma: A Lifetime of Suffering. http://www.tomlyford.com/

chris cunningham

2010-11-17T09:34:00.000-05:00

supplication

a flash
of lightning.

the headstone
is illuminated.

a burst of rain
washes the emerald ring
from the dead man's finger.

a train whistle
blows ghostly

thru pine trees silhouetted

in the thick mist
by a light with no source.

flowers are torn and tossed
and scattered like ashes by the
shivering wind.

the mourners
have dissolved.

the mouth
of the
graveyard

yawns.

chris cunningham lives with his lady and two dogs on a small farm outside of Asheville, NC. Visit his blog http://savageheavens.blogspot.com/.

About

2010-11-13T01:41:00.000-05:00

Welcome to Poetry Addicts. Please pull up a chair, join the circle, and introduce yourself. There is always room for one more. Poetry Addicts was created to offer poets a room where they can simply enjoy poetry without worrying about prestige, where they can feel free to be themselves.

Please join me in celebrating language by reading poems, leaving supportive comments, and sharing your own poems with us. All forms, all types, all genres of poems are welcome, as are you.