Tag: contemporary

BALLAD OF A HOMESICK TRAVELER by Ezra Lewis

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Abroad I sought a nearer truth
To lay up in my heart,
Employing newness ever-new,
& Indigence’s arts,

Whose wages are but further Need:
Fond thoughts of Home, & Spring!
As if they still awaited me,
With June, & Berrying—

But I was gone & far away
When Peonies blew, & drooped;
I’d fled before the full of May,
while Noon yet struggled, stooped;

& when my serviceberries fell
Untasted to the earth,
I had but vain Cathedral Bells
To solace me the dearth.

I never shade sought from those leaves
That redden now at home;
Now apples toss from rustled trees
When chill winds blow.

The Eye should ripen with the Year,
The Mind with Grape, & Grain,
But I have purchased, dear as dear,
Only fallowness again,

& shall return to meet a Fall
As strange & cold to me
As any hill or lake of Gaul,
& lie some while, and weep.

Ezra Lewis is a poet and mosaic artist working in the Spokane region. This is his second published poem; his first appeared in RiverLit.

AUTUMN TANKA POEMS by Robert Hunter

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     I
You are annoyed
our drawers are full of rocks,
our books of pressed flowers;
but I know what you really think,
and besides, I will never stop.

     II
Waiting by yellow woods
I held the weak sun on my palms:
warm and light,
like your socks you threw me
going to swim.

     III
We reconciled
by a clear meadow stream, though
after embracing
you caught your balance
pulling on my ear.

Robert Hunter is the editor for Detroit Lit Mag.

THE WILD BOARS AT EPHESUS by Shawn Pham

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Their paths would choke up in a season
Without the constant use, which surely wears
The boar-flesh worse than the cruel brambles.

(The startled keepers speak a language deep,
An instant communication with bone,
Like a glimpse of serpent or betrayal).

Androklos followed a boar here. The descendants
Of that boar now snuffle and nose old figs.
Athena came and went, and Christ,

But that which has endured and shall endure is
The boar who snorts and nuzzles rotting figs—
That is, the more persistent affliction.

Shawn Pham is a travel photographer from San Francisco. While his health is good he spends the greater part of his years WWOOFing, camping, Couchsurfing, and photographing through Europe, Brazil, Angola, and Mozambique. His poetry has been published recently in The Ocotillo Review and Polyphony Lit.

ANALOGOUS MOTIONS OF A GUSTY NIGHT by Jeffrey Grey

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As the river’s roiling darkles streams of light across it,

The damp brown leaves blow over trunks of birch;

As wet snowflakes seethe in streetlamps’ yellow light,

So, flurries of old syllables consume a silent watcher.

Jeffery Grey is an undergraduate student at Northern Michigan University. He was formerly attending the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, but has now turned instead to secular literature, and the frigid north, to breathe some fresh air.

covers 46 merry christmas

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covers 45

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LOVE POEM FOR MY WIFE by Tim Myhrberg

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May my desire
grow old with you—
May it tire—
and gutter, when your pupils do—
and snuff its little fire
in your irises’ chill pools.

May we go calmly where we must,
and gracefully descend;
As when a fire attains its end
and ashen twigs to ashes fall:
so let us gently lay our dust
upon the dust of all.

Tim Myhrberg is a computer programmer living in northern New York state close to Montreal. He and his wife have always loved reading poetry together, and writing it for one another.

covers 44

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NOTES FOR A POEM, ENTITLED: BLUE SHELLS by Diaana Afanaseva

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You dried your coat a third time
and went out, again, in the rain.
It doesn’t make any sense.

You stood there bent,
collecting the dark blue shells
while the rain came down hard!

Even though, already, with your things,
there is a whole bag of blue shells.
You said it yourself, out loud:

they are only so beautiful because
they’re lying on the black sand, rain-
pressed and rinsed, unhandled.

Diaana Afanaseva is a poet born in Yakutsk and raised in Brooklyn. She is pursuing postdoctoral studies at NYU and works as a translator and editor. Her poetry and translations have been featured widely in anthologies and journals such as The Art of Poetry, BOMB, The Nation, and others.

covers 43

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