POEMS BY MEMBERS:
ALLITERATION
Bev Conklin
alliteration always asks for ancillary adjectives,
but with brevity being the best betrayer of boredom,
can conniving conjugationalists be considered cannily correct
doing diversionary didos, directional dashes, dots, diminishing
effects, thereby excising excessive extras by . . . ENOUGH!
MAN AT HIS BEST STATE IS BUT VAPOR
Psalm 39:5
Nancy Powell
A scorching
thirsty sun draws silver dew drops,
and misty frothing fog parches river beds
and burps out clouds.
At first they float, innocent as dust balls
until multiplied. Then they fight for space,
twisting, rolling, bruising blue-black.
Sparks of conflict fly. Perspiration,
chilled to stone, plummets a path
for a whirling funnel of fury.
At last, sun pushes through,
spreading a healing balm of prisms.
Once life was cloudless,
now I pray for rainbows.
THE PLEASURE OF YOUR LIGHT
Valerie Esker
Christmas Eve,
while we sipped eggnog,
I drank-in your eyes,
your eyes that in the dim-lit room,
reflected twinkling tree lights.
Your smile lit the room too,
but your eyes, my year-round friend,
your eyes brightened my mood,
lit my heart's season,
light up all my dark soul-corners
yet radiant from that optic love-shine,
since Christmas Eve.
O’KEEFE MEETS FROST
Judy Young
Georgia lived in this sky.
She had brought her colors north,
Glazing this massive canvas raw and rich
With the azure of her startling southwestern skies,
Turquoise descending, replacing the deepening gray
Of the quickening evening
Until converging with an orange glow,
A thin strip the color of burning
As she set the sun.
Remembering blazing fire of desert heat
And warmth of stark adobe,
She painted on my horizon
a backdrop of complimentary colors behind
The tangle of impervious black branches
Etched dark and deep in winter woods
Frost visited before he slept.
ADAM'S CURSES
Mark Tappmeyer
“Only
much later,
and
hesitantly at first,
they
thought to plant
another
garden.”
--Linda Pastan
Wearing the town’s gardens
on his boots and cuffs,
the old man
nicks at the hardpan
of what he thinks is
my bedeviled yard.
His three-horse tiller
grinds and bumps
the unrepentant sod,
over which he grunts
I’ll
fight on till kingdom come
though these arms fall limp, then numb.
But if this dirt won't free, it’s no
big loss.
Last year's got nipped by
killing frost.
Tomatoes rotted.
Beets went pithy.
Sweet corn scabbed into a pity!
I suppose that in
a year that's lean
you'll eat even a shriveled bean
and soon you'll cherish the misfit
because you've grown a taste for it.
which, over time, I can
seem to understand.
STOPPING BY WOODS ON A
SNOWY DAWN
Todd Sukany
Whose cakes these are I
think I know.
His bakers? Artists in
dough,
He will not see me hesitate
To walk his Woods with cart
in tow.
My little lug must find me
smart
To navigate these aisles
with other hearts
Searching the Woods
For the richest Bavarian
and quart.
I glaze a nod past some cheesecake,
Avoiding eye contact and hollow handshake.
The only other sound's the
squeak
And grunt of the cart
pusher’s snake.
Though Woods is Christmas,
crimson and jade,
I have meetings to attend
but delay,
With more donuts to meet
before I pray,
More donuts to eat before I
pray.
PROFANITY
Tom Padgett
Sidewalk glazed with icicle drip,
down goes no-gentleman who slipped
cursive as flourishing penmanship.
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CULINARY FAILURES CONTINUED
Pat Laster
Fiasco number nine
resulted from an egoistic need
to prove a point
Some forty years before,
I’d been selected
Girl-Most-Likely-to-Succeed.
We classmates still alive and well
were celebrating once again.
I found a recipe for “Tuna-Dilly Dip,”
prepared it in a fish-shaped mold.
All night it languished,
placed amid the open bags of chips
and store-bought cans of dip and nuts,
moon pies and Oreos and candy bars.
Successful? You decide.
By party’s end, the squirmy, jellied mass
lay limply on the soggy lettuce leaves,
caressed by pale and bloated
Harvest Thins.
Please turn the page
for failure number ten.
METAMORPHOSIS
Tania Gray
One-half "Mojave," half "Safari,"
hybrid color hair takes years away.
The face is blessed by genes—
her aging lines erase,
dissimulating truth with smiles that lie.
Hydroxy-acid skin renewal cream
religiously peels off the liver spots.
She visits higher stratospheres of thoughts:
"become the woman featured in your dream."
But it's the body mass that trips progress,
the body used to having its own way
will not surrender cellulite today.
Advance up Sans Salt Hill!
Sustain the press, step over drop-outs,
keep momentum up. Think thin!
Drink Evian from a silver cup.
WATER DROPS
Jean Even
Water drops on the way,
Sparkles in the sun with display
Like diamonds in a ring.
Small are they, clinging tightly to bring
About some hope of lingering.
The last drop to fall is the weakest.
The weakling is disappearing
Into the unseen, vaporizing,
So they can come another day
As liquid diamonds on display.
WRETCH TO DUST
Harding Stedler
Like skeletal remains,
that old Ford truck,
abandoned back there
in the Dust Bowl,
sets hapless now.
One rusted fender reads "FOR,"
the other "SALE."
Its headlight sockets empty,
and the chrome grill missing,
it fades in a jagged field
of sedge.
Yet, the driver's door
stands open as if in welcome.
A mirror image of myself,
zeroing in on seventy,
with fading vision
and arthritic joints,
barely hobbling along.
No more races to run
for either of us,
no hospitality left.
Just an open door
for folks to wander in,
though no one ever does.
ANOTHER CHANCE
Velvet Fackeldey
Jerry built a fire
in the fireplace Christmas day
and I didn't stop to notice,
didn't really look.
If I could go back now
I'd soak up the warmth
and let the light fill my eyes
and listen to the crackles
and think nice thoughts.
If I could go back now . . .
MOTHER-DAUGHTER DANCE
Phyllis Moutray
Last night I dreamed
I had a mouse in my refrigerator.
My precocious three-year-old daughter
dreamed a bear was in our pantry.
Her bear and my mouse
will dance tonight in my dream
just as we dance in our play
following her day care and my work.
We enclose each other in the warmth
of our mother-daughter embrace as we
play Candyland, cook spaghetti for dinner,
welcome her father home from his day.
Then I enforce her evening bath and bedtime.
Am I her bear and she my mouse?
VISIT WORKSHOP FOR AN ASSIGNMENT.
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