New work from IPM contributor anonymous 20th century poet:
Author: bonniemcclellan
Mother, poet, american ex-pat from Texas living in Northern Italy.
What Bird – National Poetry Month Day 3 with Bonnie McClellan
To help Sonyarehn celebrate National Poetry Month (Inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets in 1996 to celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture) I offered this poem, there will be new poems every day throughout April so if you’re feeling deprived after the end of IPM, please visit sonyarhen.wordpress.com to enjoy what her blog has to offer.
Welcome to day three of National Poetry Month. Today I am pleased to present fellow WordPress blogger and poet Bonnie McClellan. Her blog contains many of her expressive poems as well as poems from other participants in International Poetry Month in February. Check those out on her link below. Enjoy!
The locust tree begins:
scarlet thorns, greening branches.
Impatient spring slips wetly
the van der Waals bonds
of this weak winter.
Time, time, time,
wasted in blank tasks:
showers, flossing, the recycling of newspapers.
I forget what bird I saw this morning.
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Bardiglio
mineral time crushed into
kitchen counter
grey slab of bardiglio
shard/scarto/scarred
the knife-blade print
the oil stain
the lemon that left
a star-shaped etching
compressed calcium
soft grey
just cooler
than a dove’s back
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Mary, : by Bonnie McClellan
Since you died,
……….I slip sideways through
……….the plastic flow of ice,
………………..resigned,
……….to the eventuality of burial.
The glacial blocks and till
……….of time,
………………..regained.
Not quietly like Proust with
……….tisane and madelines,
but open-mouthed,
into unanchored fear.
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IPM 2014: Where are they now?
Poets are charged with throwing their works into the breach, paving the unseeable future with words that transform the painful, the splendid and the ordinary of where we are now and where we have been, into where we are going…making the leap, perhaps of faith or perhaps of desperation or even of joy. The future is there: blindingly dark, spattered with patches of dense brightness. We’re on the precipice, hanging above the clouds, now….LEAP
That was the call to arms with which we began International Poetry Month 2014. I hope that both Readers and Poets have enjoyed the trip. Today is the seventeenth of March, we are on the brink of spring and the newly opened leaves of these poems are scattering to the four winds, disappearing a few at a time and leaving only the voices behind. Some you will still be able to find on the web, or in a book. Some will be gone for good. Following is an alphabetical list of the participating poets; each name is also a link to the poet’s work posted at IPM. My deepest thanks to all of you who have participated in IPM 2014 through reading or writing or both.
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AUTUMN LEAVES: By Jill K. Sayre
This poem has disappeared from this website. A reading of it may be found below:
To find more work by Jill K. Sayre, click HERE.
To listen to a reading of Jill’s poem “Chicken Paprikash” from IPM 2013 click HERE.
Autumn Leaves by Jill K. Sayre is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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In Late Winter: by Lee Elsesser
This poem has disappeared from this website. To hear a reading by the author, click on the player below:
Copyright 19 January 2014 Lee Elsesser – All rights reserved
To hear Lee Elsesser’s reading of his poem “Distant Signal” from IPM 2012, click HERE.
To hear To hear Lee Elsesser’s reading of his poem “Quantam Leap” from IPM 2012, click HERE.
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Red Rain: by Chris Fillebrown
This poem has disappeared from this website!
Find this poem along with fiction by Chris Fillebrown at his website, Frame of Reference Listen to readings of Chris Fillebrown’s poetry on this website HERE.
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Wings Over the Silk Road: by John Stevens
Sestina for Eva: by Adina Richman
Eva is like a crane
Regal, erect, a flag leaning into the wind
Wrapped warm in snow feathers
Eager eyes chasing gold sparks on waves
Charting flight paths in a ceramic sky, dodging the clouds
Seeking patterns in swirls and lines
Seeking pattern’s swirls and lines, she finds the beauty in a print.
Her fingers etch delicate bones, the one-legged stance of a crane
on the clay skin of a ceramic tile, the moment before the crane swoops into flight, aiming at clouds.
She won’t stop, until, exhausted, she droops, a flag without a wind.
Behind closed lids, her eyes chase the bird plunging from the sky, spotting something gold, far beneath the waves.
The couch has become an island, with pebble pill beaches and jagged pillow peaks, mountains of feathers.
As cells split and Poison Root blooms, Eva, wrapped in a snow white sweater,
watches the pattern of chemicals swirling, coursing down the PICC line.
Her bird eyes stop the nurse. She smiles, tries to wave, imagining her hand not limp and pale, but cutting air high above, remembering, beyond the spires of La Sagrada Familia, swinging free, dropping bits of heaven and earth, flocks of construction cranes.
Regal still, leaning back, resting her bald head in a panda-eared hat, she is worn, weary, but unflagging.
She reads words on hospital charts and watches the swirl in a ceramic teacup, imagining how it would feel to fly beyond the clouds.
When she tells me the cancer’s everywhere, my eyes cloud.
Eva wraps me tightly in her wings. I feel each white feather.
We’re in the backyard, a clear day with a silver wind
She shows me the garden planted by loving friends; neat rows, paths and lines.
In the window, a curtain of one thousand origami cranes.
“How can I thank them for all of this? It’s too much, there’s no way…” Her voice is echoing waves.
Later: “My doctor’s from China. Ah, their wood block prints: the carving, precision, the detail in a wave!
Dr. Chen’s like that – makes me think about things, like a mountain peak breaking through a cloud.
On her wrist she has a tattoo, a symbol of luck, longevity – a red-headed crane.
I like that. I like them all here. Interesting people, so kind, supportive…” her voice flutters, feathers.
“Shame you have to be sick to be here. It’s different in China. So many people! They wait in lines that stretch for miles! The anger, desperation! A man stabbed a doctor, and the queues still twist and wind…”
In the garden, a fading day with a silver wind.
“I know you,” she says, and the words are gold sparks, floating on dark waves.
I think about rows and paths, patterns etched, and radical swirls, out of control. I think about our lines –
How some things – no matter how clear, hoped for, inevitable – blur; raindrops lost in a cloud.
A crane, graceful and strong, is shot as it stands one-legged in a marsh, hot blood on snow feathers,
and the print is ruined, the line flattens, the prayer flags fray, the pattern explodes.
As the world spirals and waves roil to rail at clouds
An arrow slices the wind and strikes deep, nested up to the feathers
Her bird eyes are already in flight. I follow their line. I see gold sparks of sun, as my head cranes ever upward.
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copyright 2013 Adina Richman, all rights reserved
To hear more poems by Adina Richman, click HERE.
Bonnie McClellan-Broussard 