ALL RESPONSES |
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| I'd like to congratulate Regina Barros for winning the recent Summer Broadside Competition for her poem "Fearless." I'd also like to thank our members for the great turn-out. There were so many potential winners! Also, special thanks to Ama St. John, Gina Kelly and Dana Hoeschen for making it possible. I look forward to doing more with red Bird Chapbooks in the future. |
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The tailored clothing, the carriage,
Cost more than a peasant earns in a year.
Not a trace of pain. It’s the family wealth.
Grandpa made good in the fur trade.
Father, with the ministerial post,
Married a baroness from the south.
And that’s not the look of a wife.
Never been hurt. If there’s a broken heart
Behind those eyes, it’s well dressed.
More likely, broke a few with
Those eyes. Dark, warm, self-assured.
But study the woman beneath,
To view a subterranean sadness.
The smile only serves to cloak
The only one who knows her. |
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When Koozy Hamilton made her daily face,
She drew an eye suggestive of a thought,
A mouth so red it bordered on disgrace,
Two eyebrow lines that God had never wrought.
When Koozy, armed and fitted, stormed the mall,
Its citadels and ramparts to assail,
She saw the topless towers of Nielman fall,
Laid waste to Tiffany and Bloomingdale.
When Koozy made her bath, all warm and scented
To soothe and medicate fatigue away,
She thanked what gods there were who had prevented
Lust or wrath from ruining her day. |
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In days of furs
and feather plumes
of leather to sit upon or astride
An expensive child
who thinks little of you
apart from your rubles
challenges you with hauty invitation
Are you good enough
to mount the carriage and sit beside
such an obvious young woman
who makes room for you
Can you hold your own
against the stature she pervades
through St. Petersburg's frigid air? |
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I was the only Roosevelt fifth grader
who owned a muff
to supplement mittens
for the cold Minnesota winter.
Sewed by Mother, gray fur
with red flannel lining,
a crocheted corner loop,
open both sides,
to keep hands and heart warm.
Fingering the fur
brought visions
of elegant Victorian ladies in long skirts
and feather-plumed hats
or little girls in red velvet coats
with hat and muff to match,
somewhat supercilious.
It was difficult to carry books
and wear the muff at the same time,
so I would hang it from a jacket button
and rely on mittens.
A far cry from Victorian splendor.
But I was
the only Roosevelt fifth grader
who owned a muff. |
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It’s hard to ignore
a woman whom
you never knew
the last time you
might have noticed,
she was seated
in her carriage;
when the wind called,
she had to leave before
you had a chance to interrupt
the rest of her life
You really wish you would have
had the opportunity to impress
the pompous bitch |
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The sloping back of the woman,
the touched snow,
the name dark as a gateway,
a way of being in which less happens.
The position of her lips, willow coals.
The hatched reflections of her eyelashes.
In the whites of her eye’s white amber
a somber jewel—clay green, caviar grey,
false blue, the essence of lavender?
Because she just sits like that all day
not showing interest in anything
I want to fuse her to the city,
one short little street of it,
by light colored bands of moonlight.
Keep her fireplace filled till the evenings
stretch warm and comfortable
through her hair.
No punishment for laughing
or looking into other people’s roses. |
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The unknown wears fur and leather gloves.
It may be a woman you don’t play with
unless you pay. It may be young,
the fortune that predicts a rosy year.
The unknown is falling even now
as a mass, an hour of dark hair.
It has been known to smother.
It has been known to regard
everything else as inferior,
and rides its carriage
over the Anichkov Bridge.
As far as calamity, the unknown
ignores humans'.. The unknown is
somewhat interested
in falling snow, the palace’s
architecture and a road named Money.
The Passer-By is worse off than ever
if the Unknown’s look back is defiant. |
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