Poets Page 1

CHOICES
By Sunny Cook

Shrill screams dart out your kitchen window
Another crazy night at your treacherous abode
Bottles shatter and evil threats damage the night
Usually someone calls 911
When morning comes, the same dry, cottony
mouth greets you, head throbbing

You yell for aspirin and juice
But even Bacchus himself would opt
for serotonin and therapy.

Bio:  Sunny Cook is a retired Language Arts Teacher from the Pennsylvania Public School System. She also served as a columnist on two papers in Pennsylvania.  Her recent work appears in ANGELIC DYNAMO, FUSELIT, TIME of SINGING and various education journals.

 

Haiku Poems:  A.J. Huffman

 
Color by numbers.
Hesitant thoughts breaking out.
A child's first display.

Chiffon and garters.
Silk and lace. One more
secret will ruin the dress.

Dropping stones
through an hourglass
still takes time.

 

A.J. Huffman is a poet and freelance writer in Daytona Beach, Florida. She has previously published four collections of poetry: The Difference Between Shadows and Stars, Carrying Yesterday, Cognitive Distortion, and . . . And Other Such Nonsense. She has also published her work in national and international literary journals such as Avon Literary Intelligencer, Writer's Gazette, and The Penwood Review. Find more about A.J. Huffman, including additional information and links to her work at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000191382454 and https://twitter.com/#!/poetess222.


Joanna M. Weston 4 Haiku (Canadian Poet)

full moon -
our bedroom
in black and white

heavy dew ...
the cat walks
on tip-toes

rose petals
on a tray -
poetry class

whitecaps -
lakeside cabin
with open windows


JOANNA M. WESTON. Born in England, lives in Western Canada; married, 3 sons, two cats. A writer, knitter, and gardener, deer-herder, raccoon-watcher. Is a full-time writer of poetry, short-stories, children's books and reviews. Has published internationally for many years in journals and anthologies. Has a middle-reader, ‘Those Blue Shoes’, published; also poetry, ‘A Summer Father’, the latter published by Frontenac House of Calgary.

 

Barney's Haiku David M. Harris
Fierce and proud, mighty
hunter stands over dead prey;
dog has caught a mouse.
 

At Greening By David L. Harris

lilac buds open
cow shit on vegetable beds
tomatoes redden
water and sunlight marry--
culminate on plates
 

Love

By David L. Harris

One of the things I hate about this town is the VFW hall. It's where there is to go, and everyone goes there. The same damn people all the time, with the same damn histories.

Even Doreen, whom I love right now, is the same. We go to a dance at the VFW and she's been married to or in love with or in bed with half the guys there. So even though I love her, right now, I keep an eye on her.

She dances with other guys--I'm not some Paleolithic male chauvinist--but I keep an eye on her. And sometimes, like this time, when she's letting herself be kissed and groped by one of the local petty hoodlums, she forgets herself, and I have to take her out and explain again, forcefully, about us, and how it is between us, and how I love her. Right now.

It's just too bad that she bruises so easily.

 

Note: Love was published at Creative Writing Now, and won their flash fiction contest, in June 2010; it also won first prize at this year's Cheatham County (TN) Fair.)

Bio:
Since David M. Harris got his MFA in fiction, he has been writing mostly poetry. Go know. His poem "Ever After" appeared in Gargoyle, and he has had several poems at Pirene's Fountain and Slow Trains, as well as other places.


Around the CornerBy Holly Day

Pythagoras did his best work
in the dark, setting up his experiments
in the equivalent to
an isolation tank, eyes wide open
circles and triangles and the number 12
all spinning around in his head.

Down the street from Pythagoras, Archimedes
stacked squares and rectangles on top of each other
gave lectures to star-struck pupils
of levers that could move the world.

in between the two of them lived a woman
whose husband had been killed in Sparta.
He left her a map
of where he buried his share of the spoils of war
but she had never learned to read
and he had barely learned to write.
It would have been enough money
to move her to a better neighborhood.

Size 8
By Holly Day

I will know I have lived a good life
when everything I own
at the time of my death
can fit into a shoebox
you can slip under the bed

so when you want to talk
or just remember
you can reach down beneath the covers
and pull all of me out
the poems, our rings the last good photographs
of the two of us together

we can always be together.
I won't take up much room.


Where It Comes From
By Holly Day

I watch my cat try to play my guitar
and it's easy to see the cognitive leap
australopithecines made in crafting harps
out of sinew-strung turtle shells
tuned to chance

I watch my daughter crawling along the floor
to bat at the door stop spring, again and again
her eyes alight with joy at the sudden noise
her first musical composition

outside, birds sing the same song, again and again
four notes placed perfect against one another
frogs and crickets expand in harmony
the things I hear on the radio are just a poor imitation
of all the songs that are already there.

Bio: Holly Day is a housewife and mother of two living in Minneapolis,
Minnesota who teaches needlepoint classes in the Minneapolis school
district. Her poetry has recently appeared in Hawai'i Pacific Review, The
Oxford American, and Slipstream. Her book publications include The Book Of,
A Bright Patch of Sunlight, Music Composition for Dummies, Guitar-All-in-One
for Dummies, and Music Theory for Dummies, which has recently been
translated into French, Dutch, Spanish, Russian, and Portuguese.

 

Editor Comments:  I must admit to spending twenty minutes looking up scientific and historical terms for the 1st poem; after this minor struggle, I gave into quality and decided to publish all three of these poems.

Secrets, Secrets

By Kathleen Hennessey

My head is a madhouse.

With voices all vying to take

Control of my mouth,

My body,

My mind.

All the voices scream.

Dear voices, I plead,

Please leave me.

Voices tell me things,

Horrible things;

They take over me,

Convince me to

Kill,

Burn,

Sin.

Set fire to the buildings,

Burn them all to Hell.

Kill every last one,

We promise not to tell. 

Over and over they in unison chant:

Secrets, secrets are so fun,

Secrets, secrets kill someone.

Bio:  Kathleen Hennessey has been writing for several years, and recently has had a story published in Down in the Dirt magazine.  She is currently studying at Southeast Missouri State University and hopes to make a career out of creative writing.

Editor Comments:  I've made a few revisions here, but Kathleen Hennessey's poem initially scared me.  It was a bite overboard.  Then I realized fiction, realism, and the practical weren't that far apart.