The written poem has disappeared. To hear Lee’s reading of this poem, click the arrow on the player below:
To hear readings of more poetry by Lee Elsesser, click HERE.
Category: Poetry and Translation
Water Under the Bridge: IPM 2015 is open for Submissions
Jump right in, the water is full of poetry…
Splash! Throw the poems out with the bath water and see what you can fish up; IPM 2015 is open for submissions. I’m late with posting the call for submissions because I’ve been immersed in reading Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames a series of entrancing social and political observations of turn of the century Paris and the rise of the department store in the guise of a romance novel. His mesmerizing descriptions of the ‘new’ architecture captures the theme of this year’s IPM perfectly:
“The iron staircases developed bold curves, multiplying the landings; the iron bridges suspended in space, ran straight along, very high up; and all this iron formed, beneath the white light of the windows, an excessively light architecture, a complicated lace-work through which the daylight penetrated, the modern realisation of a dreamed-of palace, of a Babel-like heaping up of the storeys, enlarging the rooms, opening up glimpses on to other floors and into other rooms without end.”
It’s all water under the bridge
Poetry gives us the opportunity to offer our observations to present and future readers, be they from the perspective of one standing on the bridge watching events or of one standing below and taking on the current. I’m looking forward to a month of editing and I know that my IPM readers are standing on the bridge waiting for the flow of poems to begin.
Find the submission guidelines and info about IPM HERE.
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The Glassmen: by Bonnie McClellan
The glassmen run reconnaissance
like fluorescent-vested spiders
through the web of night streets;
lacing the village tightly
from downhill church to up.
Dawn crashing they come
green reflections
of wined evenings upended
echoing through the fog.
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Horizontal Clock: for Robin Kay – by Bonnie McClellan
What counter-force
turns you like a clock
telling only horizontal
time?
Eternal quarter-to-three,
your sleeping frame
crosses the deserted
rectangle of my bed.
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Piedmont: by Bonnie McClellan
Nude summer feet
on sheepish boulders falling,
……….through peasant ices’ glacial tread
floe following light, tripping
roll, down running fleet
……….biting toes with
………………..ever-glancing snows
………………………..green-moistened lisp.
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Blink: cadence
Where The Lost Things Are
A poem that’s just right for summer from IPM contributor John Stevens:
At the back of the west wind,
where the evening sun wakens a bird-rich isle:
that’s where the lost things are.
Where the hummingbird
quivers at a trumpet dripping with nectar
and clouds of scent rise over a turquoise sea,
that’s where they are, the things that can’t be found.
The golden sovereign that slipped between
the boards in the Tudor Hall; the Hall itself lost at cards
in Venice on the long Grand Tour;
they’re here; this is the spot.
Even the daughter, forswearing carriages and
pianoforte, who was carried away in steam and smoke
for love; and the son gone surfing in foreign lands;
they too are here. They all come here.
And therefore you.
You’ve raced across the foot-burning sand
to float like a starfish in the clear lagoon,
your tequila-on-ice waiting you back in the shade.
If only mine were too.
…….If only I were…
View original post 18 more words
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What’s New? A literary “Gathering”
Author Chris Fillebrown, a long-time IPM contributor, has been working on the third book in his short fiction series about the character Phillip Young. Published in weekly installments, he has now arrived at the halfway point of his newest work exploring the touchy terrain of marriage, grief, loss and the mesmerizing mazes the central character’s internal monologue can construct and deconstruct. Below is an excerpt from Part 6 – Gathering: Early Arrival
He turned the radio off, rolled his window down. The early morning air. Smells of oil and gasoline. The sickly sweet nectar of antifreeze rising up from green puddles on the vast expanse of concrete, dripped from hissing engines. Sharp metal sounds. Highway construction. The beep of garbage truck backing up behind a shuttered restaurant. The clank of its tusks, the whine of its motor lifting, toss rotted dumpster smells onto its back.
It is this density of description that brings the reader not only fully into the realm of Phillip Young but also into an awareness of his or her own environment, re-observing a mundane activity – such as waiting for an oil-change – through the tone poems of Young’s internal monologues.
If you’d like to read more, you can begin at the beginning – in the midst of a dream – by clicking at the link below:
Gathering – Part 1 – The dream of ascending
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Impending: by Bonnie McClellan
We awake to the muffled chaff of rain
as the grey down of clouds roundly tussle
for the pleasure of concealing dawn.
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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
Bonnie McClellan-Broussard 