Category: Poetry

A refusal:
burnt and grounded,
blunt, unfounded, to set
aggression alight.
Breakfast is deserved.

Are you going to
bring it back to the kitchen
before you dismantle your nearest orifice of
all bored holes;
burrowing bacteria in those empty sockets?

After last week’s surgery, it’s
best we
buy our deaths from the government.
Accepted, though only apathetically, amazingly.
But still, we stopped at a Wendy’s…

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I find myself
stepping on ants
just because I can—
something I haven’t done
since I was seven.

There is a “For Sale” sign
in the manicured lawn
belonging to the maroon house
on 347 Maroon Court.

There are moving boxes
stacked neatly in the garage,
strangers trampling down the white carpet
with their shoes still on,
strawberries growing in garden beds
that will ripen in time
for fresh lips,
and lights being flicked
on and off
by the hands of those
who have no idea
that the hallway light
only turns on
when the garbage disposal is off.…

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‘I would love to be able to be in the bathroom alone’ I remember musing
when she was small and always in my arms and on my hip that first July in the yellow house. 
Those days went by so fast and while my lens was wide open and all I have now are blurred
images
of seedless green grapes cut in small pieces on a tray,
a blue kiddie pool with cold water left out on a summer morning to warm in the sun under a
cotton clothesline as I held her and hung laundry with wooden clips, while baby frogs on the side
of the garage hopped under a leaky brass garden hose spigot into moss below
and onto the meandering slate path
that kept fleeting prints
of their small
wet feet
that evaporated
into mist.…

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Catching the tall cylinders of wood on the
back of the chair, a skein of thin wool was
held in place so I could wind it into a ball
suitable for knitting a sweater, or socks,
hat, or mittens. Why didn’t any stores
have knitting-ready spheres rather than
coils of yarn?  What if my chair’s back
didn’t have tall projections above the seat?
Round and round the fibers changed from
long strands to what resembled a child’s
plaything.  Ready.  I can begin.  Begin.
This long-sentenced piece is what
pleases a literary editor who sees words
in run-on, and it’s designed to extend
as a skein.  For me?  I usually write
with a period placed
after a short line
as if I were
typing
dot.com.     

– Lois Greene Stone

Note: This piece was originally published in June 2016 by The Lake and reprinted in the Nov/Dec 2021 issue of Scarlet Leaf Review.…

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A white gull cuts across a snowfield
turns up the coast and is gone
sea and sky cry achromatic blues
neatly punctuated
by a full lunar face at the point of exclamation!

– Edward Sheehy…

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I was leery about teaching Lear
wondering what my students
might understand about dynamics
of family life.  Young faces found
dreams and fairy dust appealing but
“Midsummer Night’s Dream”
seemed silly as a Puck, to them,
is a hockey item.  And Hero
definitely would be “Much Ado
About Nothing” since comedy
has four-letter words spouted by
jeans-clad entertainers.  “Hamlet”
tragedy isn’t as terrible as a broken
cell-phone or wondering where is
a wi-fi hookup.  1603.  Sounds like
a zip code with missing numbers.
“O, blood, blood, blood!”, “Othello”
more suited to students television
preferences.  “To be or not to be”
teaching Shakespeare, “that is
the question.”

– Lois Greene Stone

Note: This piece was originally published by The Lake in May 2016 and reprinted by Scarlet Leaf Review in June 2020.…

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A crescent moon smiles over Big Piney Ridge
frozen above the black cross-stitching of the forest canopy
chilling anatomy of arteries veins and capillaries
endlessly branching from trunk and stem
with roots groping for my boots
through the crusty snow.

– Edward Sheehy…

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