April Poem of the Month — Sharon Venezio

 

 

DISQUIETUDE

For two months I’ve been living with monks.
No longer dizzy from the circle of worry,
I see truth in the order of things,
eat for the body, not the senses.  Still

I crave the sky in my mouth, feel
Kerouac’s fabulous roman candles explode
like spiders beneath my skin, wake

yawning for coffee, daydream
of curry and spice, make poems in my head
about the wild dishevelment of being,
that fierce blue drowning.

Of the ten defilements, passion is the one
I can’t shake.  In a month, I’ll step out
of the forest, carry my longing home again.

 

Sharon Venezio received and MA in creative writing from San Francisco State University.  Her first full-length collection of poems, The Silence of Doorways, was released by Moon Tide Press in March 2013.  Her poems have appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Chaparral, Midway Journal, Reed, Transfer, and elsewhere.  She is co-director of the Valley Contemporary Poets and works as a behavior analyst in Los Angeles. You can purchase her book here: http://www.sharonvenezio.com/books.php

March Poem of the Month — Georgia Jones-Davis

 

DID YOU WAVE AT THE TRAIN?

Did you wave at the train
with its shrill keen,
as it went its own creaking way
into the distance of money?
Did you wave at the train
with its grim, receding aria?
The men who work trains
come from the borderline  –
Needles, Winslow, Modesto;
pine for the wild flesh of Alaska,
Seattle with its bracelet
of green islands,
anywhere tracks will take them.
They ride the rails
into the black tunnels
of  broken imaginations.
Some will never look up
where you, cold-eyed as a bird,
speed through clouds
in the silent altitude of years,
miles above the engineer’s
aging ranchera music,
the burnt grids of track-worn cities,
skinny Vegas nudity of the tourist desert,
miles above a snaking, lovelorn train’s
fading whistle.

Georgia Jones-Davis is the author of a chapbook, Blue Poodle (Finishing Line Press). Her poems have appeared in numerous publications including West Wind,  The Bicycle Review,  Nebo, Ascent Aspirations, Brevities and South Bank Poetry, London. New work will appear in the fall 2013 issue of Eclipse.

February Poem of the Month — Don Kingfisher Campbell

ISSA FREQUENCY

a car roars outside the window, a
sudden passing marked only by sound, sudden
shower-like it comes, passes, goes, like a shower
falls out of hearing as a memory falls
and all one is left with is recollection, and
naked at that, because the ears hear naked
I, receive the signal, experience vibration, I
am a natural receiver for existence, I am
riding the waves which pass, reverberate, riding
on an invisible wavelength of experiences on
a plane making my path, my sense a
naked transponder for what is here, naked
horse, no, more like two hundred horses

Don Kingfisher Campbell has recently been published in The Bicycle Review, Crack The Spine, Lummox, Poetic Diversity, The Sun Runner, and Poetry Breakfast.  He is currently working on an MFA in Poetry at Antioch University in Los Angeles. Google him for more 411.

 

January Poem of the Month — Terry Wolverton

 

GUILT

When I make my ornery confession,
circuitry vibrates with the orange pulse
of my crimes. Density of a half-blown
universe succumbs to swirl; cracks in its
surface reveal the bare, solitary
planet beneath us, a sad strip club in
Candy Land.  Hale-Bopp screams through but we don’t
look; we plead true innocence and still drink
the last of the Kool-Aid.  I am guilty
of an attitude problem, painting my
secrets blacker than yours, sleeping when the
heart train zips by, face catching that red light.
Once my trance dissolves I will taste wonder,
more moon than molecules, at last reformed.

 

Terry Wolverton is the author of ten books of poetry, fiction and nonfiction, most recently Wounded World: lyric essays about our spiritual disquiet.  “Guilt” is the first entry in a new interactive blog, “Dis•Articulations,” http://disarticulations.wordpress.com. She encourages your participation in this blog.

December Poem of the Month — Audrey Lockwood

 

What if the Sea Told Us

What if the sea told us
look to the eastern sky?
Look up at the moon through
a spider’s web spread delicately
backed by blackest night and
golden light?

 

What if we listened to its darkness?
Danced to its backlit spider’s moonlight?
What then would we feel?
Would we be shocked at the knowledge
of distant orange so slight? Awakened
the gentle, touched by the anvil
sheltered by light?

 

In seashore’s inlets and bird call sounds
whales in winter, beckoning
us as a seagull flies erratically
lined to the dance of cormorants
Feathered yet again, calling us to knowledge,
taking us there as if knowledge itself was
the actual air.

 

If knowledge itself was a best friend
By day, a guide in the night, something
There both solid and bright, best felt
Tender as velvet, as warm as the fire itself
Lonely in its happiness, tragic in its joy
Sovereign as the nation we’ve longed for,
Kind in a way we’ve never known ashore.

 

It’s message so clear to us, staying the course
By the dock, or boarding the craft
That line of loving orange, leads elongated cloud
Exquisitely divine
The purple black spread across the eastern sky
it lives in its own Land and what if it told
us the secret to life?

 

What if the sea told us its secrets or two?
What if we listened, what would we do?

 

Audrey Lockwood is a financial planner by day and a poet at heart.  Poetry fuels her irrepressible mind. Her inspirations are many, including  sunsets, Mary Daly, mermaids and William Blake.

 

November Poem of the Month – Bethsheba A. Rem

Sun Dial

Remember your Gods, Nike and Aramid.
Call on them when the voices are too loud.
Find a corner. Raise your hands. Kneel and pray.
Summon the discipline of your mother,
the muscle of your father, and relax.
Speak directly in the ear of your Lord
and confess your premeditated blunders.
The women will be tempting, O, I know.
Sweets and sugars will be offered on plates
of gold. Careful they are not laced with lye
or hallucinogens; jealousy owns
a vast wardrobe. Buttons will be shiny.
When a stranger appears offering ad-
vice, ask them to first remove their fur coat.

Bethsheba A. Rem is the author of her first poetry collection From Foster Care to Fame; she has been published in several anthologies including Home Girls Make Some Noise, which garnered a NAACP Image Award Nomination. She has benefited from the Virginia Independent Writer’s Fellowship and has been Poet in Residence at the University of Illinois, Champagne Urbana. She is currently an MFA Creative Writing Candidate at Antioch University in LA. www.facebook.com/thequeensheba8

15th Anniversary Spotlight — Yvonne M. Estrada

Each day for the 15 days leading up to the WAW Open House (October 7, 2012, 2-5 p.m.), we’re going to feature a current or former participant who’s completed a major project (book, film, album, academic credential). We’ll find out what they learned that helped them with their work.

Yvonne M. Estrada, Poets At Work, Women’s Poetry Project
Project: MY NAME ON TOP OF YOURS, poetry chapbook (Silverton Books, 2013)

I brought in a poem on the subject of graffiti.  During the critique it became clear to me that I had many more things to say about graffiti than could be contained in one poem.  It was suggested that maybe i needed to write a series.  Learning that I could intentionally approach a subject from so many different perspectives allowed for a creative freedom that inspired more much investigation and a lot more writing. A series 14 sonnets in which the last line of one poem becomes the first line of the next, is called a “crown of sonnets.” Each one has different viewpoint and each one able to stand alone. Good lesson.

Connect with Yvonne Estrada on Facebook.