7. Things (Better) Left Unsaid with James Coats
Seattle, 1:04 p.m.
it happened that second
in time, after much pushing
groaning and sweating
the world grew by one
and I knew reality
would never be the same
another life
another personality
our family has grown
the world has grown
then I held you as your
bright eyes gleamed
and I was a new person
a grammy first
6. Photographic Poem with Katrina Morris
Your
Grammy
Holds on, but
Your dimples dance,
Feasting on freedom,
Sipping steep grades, your joy.
Restrain your rapture? Never!
When you summit this stony slant
You’ll keep going, for you carry stars
5. Friday Date Night with Leilya Pietre
We went to that park in Long Beach
With the beautiful walking path around a lake
I thought a break-up was imminent
We walked and then sat looking at the water
And you asked me to marry you
It took me awhile to say, Not yet.
Seven years later, I crawled into a safe yes.
4. Alphabeticals with Jennifer Guyor-Jowett
a’s bobbed tail
b’s oft flip fail
c’s open quote
d’s half note
e’s toothy grin
f’s shelf built in
g’s beckoning
h’s reckoning
i’s reaching
j’s leaching
k’s a kicker
l’s a licker
m’s a mountain
n’s spilled fountain
o’s looking round
p’s feeling proud
q’s dainty
r’s fainty
s’s slither’s slow
t’s a compass rose
u’s embrace
v’s a vase
w’s two vases
x’s holding spaces
y’s the wise owl
z’s zigzag scowl
3. Inspirational Places with Wendy Everard
Pittsburgh’s in Jack Gilbert
As we rode Duquesne Incline,
he already was old and in Berkeley. Steel City
watches over the growing of knowing,
for heirlooms of progeny. But this
morning, the three rivers backdrop
for thunderstorms, Andy Warhol and
the bridges of a city bring light to our
dark, pathways of connections.
To this city we came just to
give our kids a taste of Primati Bros.
(way too much cole slaw),
and the Pirates, and Randyland, a
show of hue saturation and celebration.
His hometown was the
landfall of his view from Paris,
the eye of his childhood, always
new. As each of us have our own past, in city or
country, we are products of our nurturing.
His lifetime weaving carried the thread of his
native city, coloring the world, his poetry with
land-roots of comfort and claiming.
Golden shovel striking line is “As he watches for morning, for the dark to give way and show his landfall, the new country, his native land.” By Jack Gilbert in “Looking at Pittsburgh from Paris”
2. The Magic Box with Bryan Ripley Crandall
List of ten that started this Magic Box poem: a green thumb, “beam me up” travel, lie detector machine, ointment to remove the pain in my right hand, reading and reducing and replacing tsundoku, Colin Kaepernick protest redo, Palestinians having their own homeland again with a good and fair government, connection with others, an organized email with an inbox that gets emptied daily, peace on earth really.
A Redo of Kneeling
My visitor today is a green thumb–
my plants clothed in need
now fed and watered with a hum
The smooth slander spotter,
reviler revealer, lifts
the weight of the world
and clears out the system
Beaming to Pennsylvania on
the wings of hearing,
really hearing you this time,
better beside the blooms,
not a long way from heaven,
not killing time,
but living and breathing freedom
Freedom tastes gentle
It’s never-ending relief
instantaneous sustenance
of hope and release
Transporting success
on the creaking knees of the old
and the knowing knees of the young
A redo please
of a quiet anthem
that hears
listens
and finds
justice
1. #hashtagacrostics with Kim Johnson
#Deliberatelydiligentdiscerner
#Eternallyemergingevolver
#Nonsensicallynaiveniceness
#Inherentlyimprobableindependence
#Solidsecondhandskeptic
#Especiallyeagerentrant
