These are the babies that I bore.
These are the breasts that nursed the babies that I bore.
These are the arms that hug the breasts
That nursed the babies that I bore.
This is the belly that sags under the arms
That hug the breasts that nursed the babies that I bore.
These are two wounds – small, pink and sore -
That scar the belly that sags under the arms,
That hug the breasts that nursed the babies that I bore.
This is the pain pulsing through two wounds
- small, pink and sore -
That scar the belly that sags under the arms,
That hug the breasts, that nursed the babies that I bore.
For…
there will be no babies,
anymore.
S.J. Higbee is currently busy working on her science fiction novel “Dying for Space” — in between writing poems and almost anything else she can think of…
Ice cold
Prickly
Burning under lukewarm water
She can’t feel her face but she knows it’s there
She’s never dressed quite warmly enough
So wind shivers across her skin ever so slightly
Like a caress
An awakening
She tosses her head like a dog
To shake slush from the long strings of her hair
Everything has that musty smell of wet wool
Her gloves, hats, and scarves
Make her happy
Lia Molly Deromedi grew up in Chico, Northern California. She graduated with a degree in Literature/Writing from the University of California, San Diego. Lia is currently in the process of completing her Master’s in English from Brooklyn College. She lives and writes in New York.
Waldy Ens is a high school English teacher in Manitoba, Canada. http://www.one-hundredpoems.blogspot.com
Jeff Jeppesen has had work published in Potpourri, Strange Horizons, and Everyday Weirdness. He has work forthcoming in Illumen.
EDP: Tell us about your first memory of encountering poetry?
My memory is pretty poor. It will have been at school though. I’ve always enjoyed reading poems. When we learnt poetry we were always told to just look at the words. I wanted to know more about the context of the poems. I remember being relieved when doing my OU degree in Literature that finally we were allowed to acknowledge the potential influence of context.
EDP: How, when and why you started to write poetry?
I’m not sure exactly why I started writing poetry but I remember writing a Haiku about a cuddly toy I own – it’s still one of my favourite poems and I still own the toy (he’s pretty threadbare now).
I also remember being too scared to put my name down for a school trip to a house that was reportedly haunted so those of us that were left behind wrote some poetry.
I got very cathartic with my poetry writing at University. I was having a tough time with peer pressure and the need to conform – I didn’t – I remained a geek – but I felt I had to write about it to stop from imploding.
EDP: When and where do you write and where do you find your inspiration?
I’m a night owl. I am usually far too exhausted from work to write regularly.
I write in my bedroom – I share a house with my sister but I need ‘my space’ to write.
I was most prolific during my creative writing courses with the Open University, deadlines give me discipline. A number of the poetry modules made me examine poetic form. I always wrote free verse before and unusually never rhymed but I’ve challenged myself to write in a number of forms and feel I’ve written some good poems that way (I still can’t write meter well though).
As for inspiration – often just something that is on my mind, a line from a song I’ve heard, a newspaper story, something I’ve seen.
EDP: Which poet/s do you particularly admire and why?
Sylvia Plath – I think her ability to paint pictures with words was inspiring. I still see ‘Miss Drake’ stepping on eggshells. Because of my background in Occupational Therapy I enjoy poems that look at the human condition, including issues around mental health. Sylvia did this so well and so vividly but also managed to avoid over sentimentality.
EDP: What for you constitutes a ‘good poem’?
Whatever speaks to me as a reader. I enjoy layers of meaning. Rhyme and form don’t matter – it just has to sound ‘right’ when I read it aloud and mean something to me, enlighten me or help me make sense out of something, or make me feel.
EDP: Have you an outright favourite poem or collection either of your own or by another writer?
I love Seamus Heaney’s ‘Digging’. I’m not sure I read into it everything he put there but it gives me shivers to read it. He sees his father digging and is proud of him and his heritage. He also acknowledges the changes between the generations and that though his talents lie in writing he will be making a contribution and ‘digging’ with his pen. I probably haven’t explained that well but go have a read and see what it means to you.
EDP: Tell us about your ‘most read’ poem specifically. How did it come into being and take shape and what does it mean to you personally? Did the views or our readers make you see it in a new light?
A slight twist on a villanelle entitled Read the rest of this entry »
when the astronomy professor came up to him
at the faculty mixer, he in his awkwardness trying
desperately to make conversation: Al Gore on 30 Rock
smoking cigarettes without filters in the southland where it
never gets this cold or during the winter we’ve never sweat
frozen bullets before this
cold warming.
J.ClaytonL.Jones is a professor of English and creative writing at Georgia
Highlands College in Rome, GA. He has an MFA in poetry from Georgia State University. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Shoots and Vines, Calliope Nerve, The Still Point, The Albatross, The Cortland Review, Clockwise Cat, and a book by Jason Carter titled Power Lines: Two Years on South Africa’s Borders (National Geographic Press, 2001). He is a songwriter with one lost dog and one given away, and a performing musician who plays most frequently with his bluegrass band, The Groundhawgs. http://www.highlands.edu/faculty/cjones/Home
taken his lies into its keeping
and left exposed the insecurities
that I had not the life to see, not then.
He walked without belief in gravity,
upsidedown with his hands open, feet bare.
Don’t know when youth died, when I saw the man
I could have loved, had I the courage.
He crumbled into the sidewalk one day,
into the cracks I skipped over, past
regret.
Jenny Schwartz lives in Perth, Western Australia. Some people say the place is remote, but that all depends where you’re starting from.
Rock a banana
On a green stalk
When the wind blows
They sway and they rock
When the bough breaks
Tarantulas fall
Let’s move baby’s cradle
Away from the wall
Josephine Orta lives in San Antonio, TX with her husband and medicine cat Peep. She does website technical support during the day and free-form research at all hours. Her internal artist is emerging from its cocoon, ready to stretch its wings.
We wake before the break of dawn,
Just grab some coffee; head on out
And toil until the daylight’s gone.
Each day we face what is foregone,
Some days fight floods, and others drought
We wake before the break of dawn.
Though strong young men, we ache and yawn.
Rough fists must rub the tired out,
And toil until the daylight’s gone.
Come Sunday, God trumps earthly brawn.
On fire to hear the preacher shout,
We wake before the break of dawn.
But Monday comes, and faith withdrawn
We strive and work to conquer doubt
And toil until the daylight’s gone.
By fate our lots in life are drawn,
Yet still by will must stay devout.
We wake before the break of dawn
And toil until the daylight’s gone.
Ben Langhinrichs is a 47 year-old software designer living in Shaker Heights, Ohio with his lovely wife, two cats, and one of three children still at home. When he is not writing software, he tends to write narrative poetry and lyrical fiction. http://www.writing.com/authors/blanghinrichs/blog
Those Early Girls, piled upon tables,
pert pyramids of cheerleaders
vied for my attention, shining in
the too- bright glare of compact fluorescents.
My fingers trailed over their
ripe roundness and I squeezed a few
toward points of pain,
plucking the best for my basket
before last call, closing time,
and ambled up to the cashier,
who eyed the remaining customers
with practiced boredom.
She weighed my bounty,
a red harem
and I watched them roll and tumble,
now cloistered in clear plastic.
I proffered my twenty, still crisp from the machine
and she unfolded her thin white fingers to receive my offering
as a ribbon of pale flesh peeked from her sleeve
marked with ridges of scars:
contoured farming of pain fissures, crevices,
fault lines.
Once home, I lined those
Early Girls, plump and pure, under my poised knife.
The fibrous scars, like ladder rungs up her arm, climbed to my brain,
cutting through thoughts of dinner as I sliced my tomatoes,
with perfect, thin lines.
Darcy McMurtery is a reference librarian in the Seattle area. When she’s not slinging information, she likes to play with words, and on rare occasions, fire. Her works can be found in Shoots and Vines and tinfoildresses poetry journal
