“We like the way your use of personalized grammar encourages an associative leaping response in the reader. You put the “free” in “free verse” and we are happy to publish Talk When You Can, Tell the Truth in our Contemporary Poetry Series”
Roseanne Ritzema, Presa Press
The Horsendale Overpass
Remembering Karen Zentner, 1991
The Hosendale overpass is caged now
over the NY State thruway
Its curved steel mesh protecting us
from the sky over the busy highway
Over the NY State thruway
a boulder was tossed by those teens
from the sky over the busy highway
only they were protected
A Boulder was tossed by those teens
I shiver each time I drive there
Only they were protected
Karen killed in an instant going home
I shiver each time I drive there
I think of her though I didn’t know her
Karen killed in an instant preparing for marriage
Elsa, who sold her mother eggs, told the story
I don’t forget her though I didn’t know her
on her way back with the wedding dress
Elsa, who sold her mother eggs, told the story
Karen killed in an instant preparing for marriage
On her way back with the wedding dress
she was fun for three killers who didn’t mean it
Karen killed in an instant preparing for marriage
their 52 pound rock smashed her through the windshield
Published BLUE STEM Dec. 2016
Poetry Week
Reading New Poems
Inquiring Mind Books
7 Church Street
New Paltz N.Y.
Thursday, April 20, 7 PM
Remembering Karen Zentner, 1991
The Hosendale overpass is caged now
over the NY State thruway
Its curved steel mesh protecting us
from the sky over the busy highway
Over the NY State thruway
a boulder was tossed by those teens
from the sky over the busy highway
only they were protected
A Boulder was tossed by those teens
I shiver each time I drive there
Only they were protected
Karen killed in an instant going home
I shiver each time I drive there
I think of her though I didn’t know her
Karen killed in an instant preparing for marriage
Elsa, who sold her mother eggs, told the story
I don’t forget her though I didn’t know her
on her way back with the wedding dress
Elsa, who sold her mother eggs, told the story
Karen killed in an instant preparing for marriage
On her way back with the wedding dress
she was fun for three killers who didn’t mean it
Karen killed in an instant preparing for marriage
their 52 pound rock smashed her through the windshield
Published Blue Stem Dec. 2016
Tom is dull
He doesn’t know
dirty gasoline can’t clean very well
He washed his grease stained pants
in a plastic pail filled with dregs
from an oil can
You can’t say he was wrong
The pants lost their stains
Perhaps he knew
the results
before wanting our advice
and getting it
like the time he asked
eight times
how to roast a chicken
and gave up
To place it in the oven
and wait two hours
overwhelmed him
He even paid Carol to do it
though he was nearly broke
Perhaps that’s normal behavior
for a man trained to be cooked for
Still, something was wrong
The way he vanished,
made us suspect it wasn’t
simply a matter of low intelligence
We recalled, then, his friend Jack
who never looked you in the eye
as he pumped for information
acting drunker than he was
and Tom’s wide eyed adulation
when he spoke of his hero
a brother who was in jail
Still, we didn’t think it strange
that he lost his job
the day after moving in with us
Like the money he didn’t have to fix his teeth
and how he planned to burglarize a house
so that he’d be sent to prison
“They had good dentists there,” he said
Published Naugatuck Review August 2016
“A collection of poems in grateful homage to the animals in our lives with original photos of dogs, present and mythological, that express an enduring intimacy between human and animal and the world they share.”…K.B. Burgin, Editor Metro Midwives
Best Friend
She follows me around
and I give her the meat from my mouth
to keep her happy
She gives much relief
from freedom’s space
so you could say she earns it
And there’s more than enough for both of us
It’s not a question of starving
Still, at times, I do it grudgingly
confusing myself with the truly hungry
mired, as I am, in a pond of delight
with all refinements
yet calling myself generous
as I give her a tidbit…
gone to the dogs
“At first glance I was skeptical that a whole collection about dogs and cats would work, but you give us poems that succeed and go deep. Many readers to you!”….X.J. Kennedy, distinguished poet, translator, widely anthologized, recipient Frost Medal Life Time Service to Poetry
Landscape
Ride that protozoan
horse through the forest
Jockey in your South
American dream
Whether or not the stones
resemble skies
the train’s exhalation
underlines the mountain
One eyed trees
peer through their fans
do not blink
The molten river flows
beneath an unclouded blue
Scream to the impending storm
capture it with your breath
cheeks puffed to bursting
ready to deflate to nothing
nourishing nothing but notions
a desire to prove
you are bigger
than the sky
the sky
your impediment
Word Craft
The words are dozing
resting from work
at the nuance factory
to regain their original nature
after a life time of time and a half
Outside flocks of poets lurk
nets in hand, ready to flick
wrists and capture
the brightest, the starkest, the most subtle,
to compose poems with them,
if life doesn’t intervene
If it does, there are always butterflies
and flotillas of clouds drifting by