Next Regular Open Reading
Bring your work
March 18, 2002, 7:30PM Special Reading • Victoria Edwards Tester First poet to be published by new UNM poetry series
Palacios in Old Mesilla on Route 28 for details call 521-7311Poetry*Fiction*Nonfiction
Read Stuff from Writers on the Web
Check out the Branigan Library Site!
the next time you are bored
take a bath in the dark
and you will find that
there's no part of you
that you can't find
and that the moonlit night
sneaks into the house
and tricks you
into believing
that you can write poetry
when you thought you were stuck
and that electricity
is just an excuse
the rain t t t t's
and the grass grows noisily
pushing aside the earthworms
sniffing the rain fresh air
and the waterbed
shivers the bare skin
as thunder
shakes the house
A River
Joe Somoza
For more poems by Joe Somoza click on his name
Trusting Pluto
Michelle Holland
More of this poem and others by Michelle Holland to come.
Desert Triptych
Keith Wilson
Shameless
Terry Song
These red leaves are bad,
flaunt themselves worse than I would
ever think of doing!
Where's my red shoes?
Give me that lipstick!
Just you wait till I
dye my hair wineredwine
with a little infusion of
gold. You make me
mad, Autumn, make me want
the slip of yellow
silk on my tits, a crush of
leaves beneath my back. See
how my skirt of many colors whirls
wild in the wind when I spin.
Check out these legs!
I can blaze like
you, you flaming
hussie. Your dance
has got
nothing on me.
© 1997 mmandel@zianet.com
powerless
by katie mclane
Untitled
Ruben Abeyta
a white haired grandma hugged
a peace officer
at smokey bear restaurant
in capitan n m
it was just
an ordinary hug
the kitchen variety
and love moved
in both of them
Earlier, as I was driving Jill to work, it poured.
When I got home, the cat
was meowing from inside
the old Juarez dog house
no one uses any more
since Nanny was terminated
by a motorcyclist. Ah,
rain! Always the same
old melancholy. No matter
if it's spring in Cincinnati
or winter rain atop your
graying head. Maybe
it's a river that goes
underground from time
to place. But you can
dig it up. Like Vine Street
black and glistening
in a drizzle as you're
waiting cold under an awning
for the bus. To where?
You can't go there
again. Everyone you knew
has aged or left
and you're not interested
in science fiction. Downriver
is where you are. Your kids
following their own tributaries
away from center, which
is to say, from you,
whose river grew
and its current can't
reverse itself.
The sky finally
begins clearing. A few
drippings from the pyracantha
in the front.
Then underground again.
I rely on that last little planet,
energetic in cold, dark, out there
in its awkward orbit around our mediocre sun.
Pacing itself, passing as a planet,
learned by schhool children
in the mnenomic word play of elementary science:
My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pickles.
That one one can leave, well almost leave,
the solar system and still belong
in the lesson of Pluto. So, I can waver
outside the rings of Saturn, past Uranus,
cold, in want of orbit or stability,
out of my family of planets, away
from any sense of gravity-
my commitment to mind over body
becomes as tenuous as Pluto's to the sun-
and come back, know the warp
of my spin will return me to the family of planets,
mnemonics, the warmth of the sun.
Our Small Boy Has Come Home
Finches on the patio.
The tortoise has escaped again
but no matter she usually returns
as does my grandson, he comes back
and all of Spring is in his eyes
Specifically
This tortoise
shows up in
my yard
and I look
down at her
she looks up at me
as if to say
what are you
doing here?
This Tortoise
has been in two
of my poems already
and here she is again
after a year's absence.
She checks me out
here eye slowly
opens to yellow, closes,
neck partly extended.
I'm sure she can't see
any change in me
except I'm older.
I see a cracked shell
and one eye blinded
by a cat or a dog, I pet
her, us both elder animals
who love the desert,
occupy this small space
together.
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