on parting
the bottom of your water bucket broke
mother earth drank the last drops
the moon’s reflection is now heard
in the nightingale’s song
on parting
deep in the worn turquoise chair on the pining knotholed porch
as the sweet mountain song of gently harped rain on green tin roof
as wild white rose petals waltz in twilight’s last breeze
with half closed [...]
Filed under: Ron Whitehead
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THE RIVER ROAD HOUSE
I think it was Marquez who said that, because of nostalgia,
when you go back to where you lived as a child you face
the disappointment of everything looking smaller.
I found this to be true when one day I went back
to my childhood house on River Road, and I found
myself sitting in the car [...]
Filed under: Ronald Baatz
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first edition * 300 copies * August 2009
Note: the headwaters of the Niger River are not technically at Timbuktu — at Timbuktu is a tributary that eons ago was the beginning of the Niger but over the time the rivers (the Niger is comprised of two ancient rivers) switched course.
textural advice: Todd Moore
author photo [...]
Filed under: Mark Weber, Ronald Baatz
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Mark Weber | 26apr09 | Photo by Janet Simon
Filed under: Mark Weber
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John Macker
lives in a fabled old roadhouse on the Santa Fe Trail. His back yard is a labyrinth of boulders, cactus, sagebrush, blown sticks, scorpions, and rattlesnakes. In fact, there is a story that a monster rattlesnake guards an old conquistador horse path leading from the edge of Macker’s yard right up into [...]
Filed under: John Macker, Todd Moore
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Someone had another birthday yesterday, not that someone ever counted them much or found cause to celebrate–after the age of twelve. It was a date someone tried his best to keep to himself most of his life, though a few greeting cards and phone calls inevitably found their way to him precisely on the twenty-third [...]
Filed under: Curtis Dunlap
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Todd Moore | Photo: Roy Manzanares
I work the shattered line
in american poetry because it is damaged because it is wounded because it is T boned and splattered all over the street. I work the shattered line in american poetry because the four beat, five beat, six beat line in american poetry are all dead [...]
Filed under: Todd Moore
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THE FALL OF BAGHDAD
Today a statue in Baghdad was toppled.
The Dow closed down 400 points.
The ghosts of Johnson and Nixon howl
down Wall Street, trailing shredded documents.
The boy sitting on the head of Saddam
slapped the bronze nose with his sandal
all the way to his village square.
The Jackal of the Desert
finds hole after hole to hide in,
and [...]
Filed under: Michael Koehler
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Love Song
In how many rooms
have I thought about you
in fifteen years?
In how many states?
In how many moods?
Knowing all the while
that you were still the same
and that I was the one
who left and the past
is past and not dead
but living and unretrievable.
Actually, you were
a shit most of the time
but so beautiful.
Sullen and unapproachable.
So was I.
You said [...]
Filed under: Albert Huffstickler
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WEET ANORSO
rignu condorsay hadnogno antawanta
por wee token eally boken fweetonko
apom sh’d brake tree frozeen tea between
betwixt, crosswise shokan, be-all
…a poem should break
the frozen sea between us…
bring home the bacon
takes us for a ride in its new cadillac
knick knack paddywack give the dog a bone
rignu condorsay hadnogno antawanta be-home
be alone, begone, be lightning struck
jet-propelled word vortex
kaleidoscopic [...]
Filed under: Mark Weber
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