Category Archives: Poetry

A Further Response from the Hornet’s Nest

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A Further Response from the Hornet’s Nest

Even the sturdiest door unhinges
at the slenderest idea of your approach,
and I, fascinated with locks and
the mechanisms of biological
pumps, with spiders and the inhabited
self, can’t help but wonder
what I might hear in your heartbeat,
whether forests or a distant surf
would whisper at my resolve, too
late, too late, old man, or simply
laugh at this awkward attempt
to merge and taste the benefits
of your strong limbs and foliage,
your precious resources, your salt.

 

My poem “A Further Response from the Hornet’s Nest,” was published in Issue 11 in January 2019.

 

Self-Portrait with W

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Self Portrait with W

One might claim a double victory, or after the Roman Empire’s fall, a reclamation
from the slurred “b” and its subsequent reduction.

Survival of the rarely heard, of the occipital’s impulse.

The oak’s crook performs a similar function.

Shielding myself from adjuration, I contemplate the second family
root, weighted in weapons, in Woden, in wood.

Not rejection, but acceptance in avoidance.

The Japanese homophone, daburu, bears a negative connotation.

Original language was thought to be based on a natural
relation between objects and things.

Baudelaire’s alphabet existed without “W,” as does the Italian.

The recovery of lost perfection is no longer our aim.

When following another, I often remain silent.
As in two, as in answer, as in reluctance, reticence.

We share halves – one light, one shadowed, but both of water.

Overlapped or barely touching, still we complete.

 

* * *

“Self-Portrait with W” originally appeared in the Silver Birch Press Self-Portrait series in 2014, and was reprinted in my chapbook, The Circumference of Other, included in Ides, a one-volume collection of fifteen chapbooks published by Silver Birch Press and available on Amazon.com.

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Still Life with Silence

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stump 


Still Life with Silence

Not two, but one,
invisible

and stretched between
stump and fence,

filled with
time, defining

implication. Empty
the pitcher. Accept

its limitations.
Listen to what is not.

 

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“Still Life with Silence” first appeared here in October 2016.

 

 

Dilated

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One of my favorite poems by one of my favorite poets!

stephanielharper's avatarSLHARPERPOETRY

Dilated

To think that we see them so often    yet so rarely
consider how those piebald songbirds     so at home
on a snow-scape in their portable parkas     are made of
the exact same stuff we use to fill up our electric sky & neon
watermelon nylon winter coats     which must be designed
expressly for us to go out there looking ridiculous
not to mention callous (clothed     as it were     in outright exploitation)—
is the thing I’m pondering as I observe through the window
a little house finch     all feathery & poofed with his flushed cheeks
flitting over the snowy patio     pecking among the abandoned
bench-feet for invisible     if not entirely non-existent morsels
& hawking an air of self-possession that is obvious even to me
in my current     incapacitated state 

As for whether the red-crowned retina specialist
who conducted my examination was young &/or fetching
the prospect was murky (his brisk…

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Flowers

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Flowers

How they share our
desires, shape
our days.

Passion to hope,
fingertips to
lips. Some bud

easily, others
struggle. A little
water, light, a kind

voice. Sometimes so
little achieves
so much. Yesterday’s

sunflower droops on
the sill. Today’s promise
arrives with rain.

 

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Threes

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Threes

Difficulties arrive in waves,
lending weight to the theory of threes,

the plunging fund, a failed engagement, the self’s
doubt, all combined to inflict the particular

misery of the ongoing, the continued, inelegant fate
that declares us human. Look,

she says, the hummingbird flits from leaf to
flower, its wings beating 58 times a second,

a fact not to be trifled with, for what may we duplicate,
contemplate, even, at that pace?

Say the hedge gets clipped, the ring whirs off the finger
and back to the jeweler, and all you know for certain

is that you don’t know. There is no why, no how. No
way. Or life’s reel unwinds and plays only in

reverse. Where do you stop and splice it, forming new,
uncharted worries? And what about that damned

bird, buzzing around your head in territorial fury? Yes,
yes, I know. These things are not my concern. Not really.

But they arrive in unending repetition, one after
the other, in clumps of three – lovely, lonely,

triple-threaded lines of vicissitude lapping at our ankles,
saying nothing, saying everything, saying it used to be so easy.

 

* * *

“Threes” was riginally published in Eclectica in July 2014, and first appeared on this blog in July 2015.

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Dictionary of Dreams

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Dictionary of Dreams

You do not know their secret names.
Mine is the music of metal and wood.

Human voices behind walls.
Trapped in reds, in chiseled words.

And silence. Always silence.
Or the filtered woodwinds at dawn.

How to describe her body?
The quickness of night. Year’s demise.

A family of ghosts hidden in these halls.

 

* * *

“Dictionary of Dreams” was published in Kingdoms in the Wild in April 2018.

 

Memorial Day

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Memorial Day

Arriving at this point
without knowledge of the journey,

the slow collapse and internal
dampening – the shutting down, the closing in – lost

in the shadowed veil, my eyes flutter open to find
everything in its place, yet

altered, as if viewed from a single step
closer at a different height, offering a disturbing

clarity. Looking up, I wonder that she wakes me
from a dream of dogs on this, of all days,

only to detect under me linoleum in place of the bed,
my glasses skewed from the impact,

the floor and left side of my head wet. You looked
like you were reaching for something, she says,

and perhaps I was, though with hand outstretched
I found nothing to hold but the darkness.

 

 

“Memorial Day” was first published in Eclectica in July 2014, and was, much to my delight, subsequently included in Eclectica Magazine’s 20th Anniversary Best Poetry Anthology.

Through Layered Limestone: an anthology

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A great publication benefitting a worthy cause!

dellisphelps's avatarformidable Woman sanctuary

a Texas Hill Country Anthology of Place

It’s out & it’s wonderful! We had our launch reading this morning in Boerne, Texas on Main Plaza. Eleven contributors, family and friends where in attendance. It was cool and inviting under the tent by the gazebo. I hope you enjoy this little video (on FB) I put together of the performances. Be sure to turn the sound on the FB video on to hear the cool music that goes with the video…

I’m very pleased to have served as managing editor for this fine piece of history. If you’re a Facebook user, please do follow my artist/author page there for info about all that’s happening in my literary/artistic world & follow me here, for sure!

The book is a tribute to the pioneers who settled the Texas Hill Country, many of whom endured arduous journeys by ship across the ocean to Texas…

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Simplify, as in Forget

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Simplify, as in Forget

To turn off the stove
or close the refrigerator door,

such brazen attempts to win
the aging contest or blur the mirror

of clarity — you won’t say
which to blame or praise

or whether intent is implicit in
action or if I should hold my breath.

What is the freezing point of love?
When you were cold, whose

belly did you curl into, whose ear
gathered your breath and returned it

warm and with the promise of bees
producing honey? Your name floats

above my outstretched hand,
and unable to grab it, I blink and turn

away. Nothing works as it should.
I exhale. You push the door shut.

 

* * *

“Simplify, as in Forget” first appeared in the print journal Good Works Review in February 2018, and is included in the anthology Lost & Found: Tales of Things Gone Missing, Wagon Bridge Publishing, 2019.