Tag: poetry

ICE STORM by Jeffrey Grey

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If only Being settled over Earth
Meticulously as this freezing rain!

(Alas, all things supply their own boundaries
in mutable, permitting space).

For every bough today is numbered,
their harried demarcations tap and clatter—

Today! The law of Heaven is with us,
that what would touch, must first be shattered.

Jeffrey 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.

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GREAT COINS OF ALPINE SNOW by Shawn Pham

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A few great, self-wrought wheels of snow lie still.
The leaping chamois sent them rolling away,
leaping along the narrow buried ledge.
May this rubble wildly accumulated
serve as reminder: drop that hunk of snow;
spit it out, unslump you, stumble not;
o poet, self-styled, how you have forgotten
in your crunchy footsteps, in your munching snow,
your heavy childish pant amid wet sucks
and grunts that silence must be helped.
after chamois, the world is pierced with silence
to the core, and all things’ cores are pierced—
but you sing, suck snow and yawp, servant of sound!

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.

THE TREATISE ON MY BEING MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN THE FALL by Roman Bartos

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    I – Argument the First
The color question is solved very easily.
I will have them bury my pale body
In my fire-bright silk pajamas,
With a mouthful of wildflower seeds.

    II – The Second
A crowd of stiff brown leaves emits
A faint and earthy musk. But I!—
I will stink enormously.

    III – Argument The Third
I’ll molder in the ground. The leaves
Will waft their moldering about,
In air, where tree-roots cannot suck them:
But I shall be bound about with many roots.

    IV – The Boundless Fourth
It’s easy to forget the drifting leaves.
If bodies weren’t too heavy for the breeze,
Oh, we would not forget them! Though
We’d think less of our several mortalities.    

V – A Conclusive Argument
The aspen leaves tremble in wind,
As frisking with the sun. Mine tremble with age;
And when my fingers fail, at last,
That fall is final, final, final, final.

Roman Bartos is a retired fireman, trying on a second life as a poet and teacher of English for refugees in St. Louis, MO. His greatest influences are Kafka, Rilke, and Yeats.

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AN ESSAIE, UPONN THE NATURELE HISTORIE, AND THE FALLE, OF MAN by Robert Kicinski

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     I
Manie Milleons of Yeres owr ancesters satte, in Peltyng Rayn, wi their Handes upon theyr heddes or houlding Branches overhedde: Wherforre the Hayr of owr Forre-Armes Backs hath beyne trayned to ly towrd the Elbowe in threwing off the Rayn

     II
Oer the frozen Laik I skayted wi som Vigour and sich Speede that whan I reched the Swannes the whiche I had soght to turne into the Skie I had perforse to skayt the Othere waie at the laste lest I Clippe the Wynges of them whiche stumbleth oer the slipping ice moust Pitiablie. Tho the Wynge Beaten Ayr hesitaitd and chernd as Desyrd I felt the streng ourge uponne me to sitte and wheepe withoute ende

     III
For that owr Grettist Grandfauther the Whorm was one hundreid Milleons of Yeres the Tidal Creatchure whouse every funxion dictaited was bye the Moonth the Forthnight and the Weeke so too owr own Vertebrett processis of Biologie too the saym and the Moone is with us Aye and Aye she lifteth at the bloud withinne the fleish as at the See or the Chorde of the Harpe

     IV
Walkt I Earlie outside for I saw the Sonne upounne the Froste in all colouring and where the Froste hadde wroght Exessivelie upounne the Boughes there blewwe I that the Cristalles shoud melt and Why I do not knoue but in this I found I bore sich a Senseles Heft and Prik of Wrongdooing as I hadde beyne plicking Unripe Fruyte from anotheres Orcherd and Taistyng Why I Do Not Knoue

Robert Kicinski (CHRISTIAN POET writing to glorify God and Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit first and foremost! Holy Holy Holy! I sing it every day!)

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#14 from THIRTY-SIX VIEWS OF THE LENA RIVER by Diaana Afanaseva

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     #14
(its drunkenness)


the rain starts with such a
sweetly falling sound of return:
like fingertips drumming skin—
all up and down the river up and down it
this faint, universal drumming
of likes, of like returned to like,
new rain to the old river, the endless,
the endless endless drinker of

touch!

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.

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