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Curt Vevang is a Chicago native and a product of the Chicago Public Schools and the University of Illinois. He has self published two full length poetry books, a scant bagatelle and the nature of things. His books are available at Amazon, keyword Vevang or can be downloaded for free from his website, curtvevang.com
I feel for those with less,
I feel for those with more.
From my perch half way up the mountain
I can see the very peak.
I can look down and see the foothills at the base.
The bottom can’t be seen by those at the top.
Many there have no concept
the bottom even exists.
Some arrive at the top
after a long, arduous climb,
others are born there.
Days at the top are spent amassing more and more,
worried they will lose what they have,
struggling to maintain their footing on the slippery slopes.
Those at the base search for a foothold,
a pathway up the mountain.
Many languish in repeated failure,
unable to climb very far before being stymied,
forced to try a different trail.
Some try hard,
others don’t try at all.
Some are successful,
a few haven't the tools to even begin.
From my perch half way up the mountain
I watch climbers trekking by.
Those seeking wealth, nod and stay their course.
Those seeking happiness rest here a while
... and for some reason never seem to leave.
Notice how the light washes this building blond, how the brickwork neatly frames each closed window. The appointed rooms, elegant in their simplicity, seem emptied, except for these ghosts on weightless feet who hover above the blooms. Rare orchids, with purple thoughts, perfume in green pots while fronds feather no Mediterranean sky. A shade of blue splashes everything pale as pool tiles; a kind of violence lives here, a hush. Rooms float in brine like formaldehyde fetuses with one open eye. Mirrors flash. The owner is gone. The Siamese cat sharpens her claws.
Jenene Ravesloot
First Published in Sad Girl Review, 2018
Tom Roby IV is President and critique leader of The Poets’ Club of Chicago. He has taught poetry at every educational level from high school to graduate school. His poems have appeared in journals, at libraries, and on public transportation. Tom Roby IV has published three books of poetry.
Somewhere, sometime, someone delivers
a letter to a graveyard, pushes it through
a mailbox slot in the fence where it waits
until the breeze carries it to mausoleum,
to tomb, to graveside, to tomb, for the dead
to read to find out what’s in it for them.
No one knows why anyone writes such a letter,
puts it into an envelope addressed to whom
it may concern, and drops it off at the graveyard
gate at sundown. No one that is, except
the dead, who will be pleased at the concern
that someone still shows for them.
Everyone, except the dead, must think it
useless to write a letter to anyone who
no longer exists. Yet some things are so
important that they must be written down
even if they are never read because
if everyone were to see themselves
as dead—smaller and clearer as through
the opposite end of a telescope—then
we would all understand the importance
of writing and hand delivering our letters
to a graveyard gate and for patience
to await the favor of a reply.
Tom Roby IV
scantily clad nouns
make for the barest reactions
when verbs are chasing after
and adjectives missed the bus
giving adverbs no work for the day
naked sentences wear grim expressions
and punctuation finds itself huddling
on street corners, fingers wrapped around
prepositional bottles, swigging articles
to forget
why do titles matter in a world
of abandoned theses
we could come up with a plan of development
to make things better.
but the essay will still not reach
the required wordage,
and those nouns will still shiver
even when the hottest conclusions
are reached.
--after James Wright
The sun is shining
and spills onto the leaf-covered lawn
this late afternoon. The near empty trees,
gaunt like used toothpicks, foreshadow
winter and death. Outside the window I see
a green ladder leaning on the house like a sentinel
guarding the sun. Earlier, my husband had climbed
it, shaky like the autumn leaves littering
our gutter. He tried to empty the gutters,
but the ladder was not tall enough.
There is a trick to it. It is not rickety
and he did not fall, but still, like my cancer,
there was the fear.
A plane flies overhead, ferrying passengers
to the next life. I have wasted time
worrying about death and killing flies.
A dog barks from a nearby house.
At the end of the yard, a pipe pours
rainwater from our gutters into a muddy ravine.
I lean back onto the sofa, listen to the silence
and remind myself that he did not fall.
Published in 2018 Encore
Hated, hated, hated my Buster Brown shoes.
Thick heeled, horseshoe-toed and the color of a Hershey Bar.
Buster Browns on my first day of kindergarten,
for church, birthday parties, field trips, funerals, school pictures,
anytime I wore my brown, clip-on tie and brown corduroys.
I wore my Buster Browns stuffed with pages
of the Milwaukee Journal for a year.
“You’ll grow into them,” my parsimonious mother said.
“Stop complaining. Good shoes are expensive these days.”
A soupy coating of brown Kiwi Shoe Polish
every Saturday night kept my Buster Browns
looking like they did when in the Boy’s Shoe Department at Gimbels.
And did I mention that my father put taps on the heels?
After forty years, the house that put its loving, wooden arms
around a family of six, succumbed to ruin and decay.
Down the fifteen rachitic stairs to the wrecked basement,
dusty cobwebs hung in eerie strands, somber furniture relics,
naked, dismembered dolls with matted hair,
my rusted Radio Flyer, abandoned bikes
and outdated, mildewed clothes in boxes scattered here and there.
On the chipped, buckled tiles
behind the water-damaged encyclopedias,
between the forgotten wringer washer
that nearly crushed my right arm when I was six
and the hulking boiler that banged and hissed
during wintry, Milwaukee nights,
mangled, withered, laceless but still whole,
my size-eight Buster Brown shoes.
A mighty ship on course. A tortoise, he moves steady,
dives into projects few would tackle. Blessed with skills
to embarrass pony-tailed handymen: changing tires,
rewiring electrical misbehaviors, building sheds.
He exudes how-to, bookkeeper – holding budget wolves
at bay. Computer problems, banes to my existence,
sizzle his brain, a burbling coffeepot of ideas
and “try this” possibilities.
Steam pours out his ears. He attacks kinks, “won’t work”
apparatus – Ahab on the sea chasing monstrous white
whales of modern life. TV hook-ups, sink stoppage, toilet
parts disintegrating in mid-flush – putty in his grasp;
molding them, pliable dough in hands that seek solutions.
Life flows again, for a time, without spasmodic eruption.
And yet, when restless grandchild climbs on long-legged
Levi lap, together they pursue words connected with book
pictures, a find and capture chase.
Grandchild calms to lean against raggy-armed denim shirt,
a worn-out declaration of tractor repair, car valve replacements,
splitting seasoned wood; wood – that guardian against
temperatures dropping relentless cavalcades of cold
on our home, the freeze – wood fire repelled each morning.
Calm wonder, balm of Gilead to my soul. Silver-lined help.
Dozing, open mouthed in recliner each evening, brave protector
against mean winds that ever beat at windows, challenging
“aging” threats, forays of world pressure; bullet trains
of fear not stopping at our station this day.
My eyelashes fluttered, became butterflies,
cerulean and gold. They smelled like blueberries
so I plucked and ate them. The tortilla
I dropped tattooed a Mayan sun disk on my right ankle.
Drops of my blood splattered on the stripped floor,
became notes on a treble clef and sang La Bomba.
I leapt up, clicked my knuckles like castanets.
My blue jeans became a scarlet skirt.
I spun out into the night to the rhythm
of a painting by Frieda Kahlo,
whirled into El Jardin.
When I paid a pigeon cinco pesos
for three boxes of Clorets, it offered me wings
instead. I flew into the tower of La Parroquia,
pulled the ropes of all four bells. They were heavy
as Diego Rivera. When the bells rang, I jumped
onto the horse behind General Allende,
circling the park in his blue uniform.
Startled, the horse galloped fast
as the bite of a jalapeño. Francisco’s laugh,
an octave higher than bougainvillea,
turned his cigarette into a stick, his teeth,
to corn-on-the-cob. I smeared butter
and chili powder on them and sold his mouth
in the north-east corner of El Jardin.
I clapped. Skin dropped off my arms and legs.
My face became a candy skull. I hobbled home alone,
now a Katrina on skeletal feet.
A slow afternoon,
I walk past river pines
and bowing poplars,
crinkling leaves
on hard earth.
Sun touches cumulus clouds
glinting amber.
In and out of shadows,
I trail a schoolboy with
knapsack full of autumn.
My worn loafers veer off
the even path.
Buried in wildflowers,
I meditate in whirring wind,
invisible.
Muffled cries of crows
traveling eastward
become silent.
I settle in distant woods
laden with winter.
This poem was originally published in East on Central, 2018-2019.
I know an enchanted place
where bouquets of words
grow wild and profuse.
I can choose as many as I like
in any color or fragrance
even some that do not really exist.
The collecting is effortless
as if done for me;
All I have to do is think myself there
a self-hypnosis
that takes me nowhere
and everywhere…
It might be the same place
where Keats heard “unheard melodies”
or El Greco had a vision of Toledo…
Reflection causes my feet to tremble
at the garden’s gate
I feel as blind and awestruck
as Paul on the way to Damascus
Happiness-
The crown prince of acquisitions,
More sought after than
Rubies and pearls
Gold and platinum
Park Place and Boardwalk
Diamonds, a girl’s best friend…
Happiness-
An elusive being,
Slipping in and out of captivity
A high stakes game of peek-a-boo
Someday, somewhere, that special someone
Never quite matching the job description…
Happiness-
The stuff of dreams come true,
Among the stars and in the tea leaves
Over the rainbow and through looking glass
Greener grass and better homes and gardens
Beauty without the beast…
Happiness-
Is everybody happy?
Therapists and self-help books
Make someone happy, perhaps even yourself
Pills and booze for all occasions
A grand obsession, grand illusion
The popular Harvard course. Happiness 101…
Joy-
A whisper, a soft evening breeze
Radiant love and undulating peace
Connected to the Universe, inside and out
A steady smile and quiet optimism
A resident from birth, ready to serve
A constant companion, wherever happiness might be or not.
David Nekimken, June 2006
I wake to loose threads
dangling in my head.
From the bay window,
barely visible limbs of
a solitary poplar fan the air.
A train rumbles through the blur.
In my prairie town,
coffee percolates
black and white moments.
I walk out into the chill
stumbling through twigs
and crusty leaves.
Through the maze of day,
I touch shoulders with tall shadows,
hear invisible robins.
With the maple leaves,
street lights change from
green to yellow to red.
Home at night,
I destroy pesky cobwebs
with my feather duster,
settle into my armchair.
Beating time in waning lamplight
to folk songs playing
in my childhood,
I drift into another dawn.
Published in After Hours Journal, Winter 2017
Nine holes near Krakow,
laid out in the countryside
like soft pieces of cloth,
far away from the hustle & bustle of
the Rynek Glowny,
a quiet gift of barely rustling
grass, trees and sunlight,
filled with no-one but
the sleepy golf-pro and
the talkative young cab driver
who drove you to this
Nirvana-like place
in the little village of Ochmanow,
nine holes of the sweetest
solitude as you trudge from
shot to shot, up steep hills
and down the backsides of
others, following the swoops
and curves like a map of your life,
contemplating each shot
like a poem, or a lover’s sigh,
surrounded by gorgeous
farmland, red-tile roofed houses,
and occasional distant puffs of
chimney smoke, you swing
and feel in harmony with
the earth and the birds cawin
“dzien dobry” (good morning)
overhead, while the groundskeeper
mows the fairway grass at a steady
humming pace, you look at
the clouds and the horizon
and think of your family
and wish you could share this
magnificent inner moment
when time stands still
and it’s just you and the ball
in a manicured Garden of Eden,
thankful for all you have
and hoping you can pass on
this passion for a sport
and the outdoors to your
sons, so they, too, can
feel the joy of one-ness
in places like this,
where Kings once hunted
and deer roam free, baffled
by the man who smiles
and stares at the ever-lightening sky.
You have to walk the property
to get a feel for the shape of it,
a trapezoid filled with dozens
of trees. Along one sloping side
rises a low ridge. A two-lane
macadam fronts the longest side.
A farm field edges the shortest.
I dress in old clothes to mow
because the Yazoo is dirty
and greasy, its red paint faded
and peeling, the deck piled
with musty dried grass cuttings.
Filling gas tanks that look like
two saddlebags, I check the oil.
Then swing a leg over the center
post as I start up the engine,
which turns over with a snort
of smoke and an uncertain shudder
before settling into a mechanical roar.
Engaging the blades, I mindfully
settle into the task ahead of me,
starting a circuit of the property that
follows the bordering perimeter.
At each tree encountered, I swing
around its circumference, outside
leg hung out for balance as the
zero-turning-radius mower
makes its tight circle.
Daring the length of the slope,
I lean into its height as I travel
the angling hillside. I follow
the edge of each mowed swath
pass-by-pass as I continue to circle
the perimeter, slowly arcing inward.
Pass after pass. Round and round I
mow, letting my mind wander as I go.
“thank you for your submission, unfortunately, we will not be using any of your poems at
this
time”
wrote the editor, gagging on his own laughter---
knowing the discouraged poet will feel like
slitting his tedious throat, or blowing up his cacophonous computer
(riotous sounds of stonewalled words)
the power of the rejection,
like a discounted advance
asking to dance and getting a coldly polite
“no thank you”
(you're too short, not Robert Redford enough or
dressed well enough to indicate status)
and your words as well, poor panhandling prosy pitiful and plain Jane
“We read your submission carefully” ( ha ha, yes, he will believe this---)
“we get so many poems, it is impossible to publish all of them”
(chortling, as the editor thinks “i love slamming doors in their pesky little
faces—) “oh do please submit in future, we would love to read more of your
work" (even though we didn’t actually read these, we just pretended)
and now your poetic ego is upended
and Sylvia Plath has company—she is wherever she is now, still trying to get accepted into
Frank O'Conner's short story, writing class—her embarrassed kids grown up without a mother, one of them
unliving in the same dimension where she found her peace, at last—“Good God Almighty,
peace at last”
a damsel of tragically unfinished business—
editors have the power to elate and the power to deflate—
and some writers undevelop
as if lacking fortuitous film
they are a photo finished
in flux
critics weigh in so heavily they smother the druthers
to poem.
to live
to poem
suicide syllables
put their mouths into ego's sheet
and no morning comes,
while others gloat over their dawn coffee
never sleeping,
just keeping
would be wordsmiths
from ever becoming.
erin-cilberto
9/16/17
For years he [the Nantucketer] knows not the land; so that when he comes to it at last,
it smells like another world, more strangely than the moon would be to an Earthsman.
Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chapter 14
Moon dust has no salty scent,
no fishy smell, no reminder
of brine or earthly shoreline.
It does not smell like Kansas soil
awakening in spring,
or windblown Sahara sand.
Moon dust, the dust of broken molecules
smashed by eons of meteorite collisions
left with unsatisfied electron bonds
seeking partners, has no smell at all
when left in place as it was
for billions of years, dry and destitute,
but comes alive when touched by moisture
in a lunar lander or the mucus membrane
of an astronaut’s nose.
It smells something like fireplace ashes
sprinkled with water or the Indianapolis 500,
something like spent gunpowder
but unlike the smell of land or sea
on earth, our home. We only know
from the word of astronauts
who kicked up dust, who picked up dust
on space suits, helmets and boots,
who bottled dust and brought it back
to answer questions of the curious,
their fellow sailors on this little speck
in the vast sea of space.
~ Wilda Morris
[Originally published in Journal of Modern Poetry]
I walked to the lake tonight,
casting the first footprints in the snow.
Out of breath from the cold,
and from my grief,
I sit on the bench and gaze at the lake,
now frozen, like my heart.
You are not here to comfort me.
The cold wind laps around my face,
and I am a tiny boat tossed about in the sea.
I welcome the cold.
It is sobering.
I know death is forever,
but you never died before.
How do I fill this massive void?
I wear your red coat and it warms me
as the bitter wind whispers your name,
and calls me back to an emptier home.
I must go now.
Trudging back home I think of God.
I do not blame Him.
Death is hardest on those still living.
There’s something about the Japanese,
forever striving for beauty
and perfection.
Stretching minds beyond the natural.
They carefully prune and primp and prop a tree,
supporting its exploring arms
across generations.
Taking years, decades, centuries even.
Coaxing limbs in new directions,
growing surreal shapes
of gremlins dancing.
In a fantasy of strange contortions.
We wonder at a tree transcendent,
unbound from self,
imbued with art.
Evoking old dreams and new reflections.
And we must struggle to remember that this magic is created
by the same people who fought us
in wide deep war.
With ferocity that knew few bounds.
These engaging people so perfectly polite to visitors,
thoughtful and friendly and helpful
beyond expectations.
Now picnicking peacefully under cascades of cherry blossoms.
And lovingly preserved at the Peace Museum for Kamikaze Pilots
hang winsome portraits of brave young men
with their poetic letters.
Sensitively bidding family a last farewell.
© Joe Glaser, April 2008
Published in 2008/9 Vol 17 of "The Journal" of Northwestern University's OLLI program.
Poets & Patrons © 2017
For information contact Caroline Johnson