marching towards the light, erasure poem by Rachael Stanford (Half New Year Poetry Series)

marching towards the light
by Rachael Stanford

My dream — wearing a wedding dress
it didn’t fit, the hem was caked
with dried mud, a tattered veil

he, a dank cave,
an old fashioned white cloth
half woven

and he was staring right at me,
like I was a TV program,
he’d been waiting for.

My dream-self was slow
taking in the stalactite ceiling,
the stench of growling
bleating sounds that echo from behind
blocking the room’s only exit — a cavern
beyond.

“please I don’t have the strength,
you have to hear me!”

SOURCE:  Percy Jackson and the Olympians Book Two : The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan (Hyperion Books, 2006).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem is based on a page from a Percy Jackson YA novel. In writing the poem, I wanted to retain the original feel of the page but change and tweak it to elicit emotions not normally associated with YA. I wanted the source material to play off the found poetry, so that a reader could build a multilayered experience in reading the original piece, the new piece, and the piece without reference.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Rachael Stanford is an essayist, poet, and playwright from Central Illinois. Her work has appeared in journals such as BlazeVox, Euphemism, and Cool. Her plays and monologues have appeared on stages throughout the Midwest. You can follow her at rachaelstanford.wordpress.com.

Midsummer’s Eve, poem by Tamara Madison (Half New Year Poetry Series)

MIDSUMMER’S EVE
by Tamara Madison 

Now what must we do?
We have bathed in the dew
of the honey-eyed moon
run naked through
the glistening branches
to stir our seed and fill
our arms with life.
We have sought that rare plant
that none will tell the name of
nor its look – all that we
might learn thereby the secret
sacred language of trees.

IMAGE: “A Blue Tree” by René Magritte (1962).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Tamara Madison teaches English and French at a public high school in Los Angeles. Raised on a citrus farm in the California desert, Tamara’s life has taken her many places, including Europe and the former Soviet Union, where she spent fifteen months in the 1970s. A swimmer and dog lover, Tamara says, “All I ever wanted to do with my life was write, and I mostly write poetry because it suits my lifestyle. I like the way one can say so much in the economical space of a poem.”

Half Year Being Half a Man, poem by Christopher P.P. White (Half New Year Poetry Series)

HALF YEAR BEING HALF A MAN
by Christopher P.P. White 

In the night’s most embarrassing moments—
I am flat out and full of booze.
The garden furniture is soaked and muddy,
Covered in dead leaves
And empty champagne glasses that haven’t been washed.
Formally full of bubbles—
Now full of rain water and austerity.

Luckily I lie in my warm bed,
With the girl that shared the night
And the laughs with me,
Looking back on half a year of nothing
And looking forward to half a year
And more
Of everything.

I’ve never proposed before
And thanks to her,
I’ll never have to again.
The Beatles were right:
All you need is love.

IMAGE: “The Beatles enjoy champagne” (1960s).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Christopher P. P. White is a poet that explores every facet of this mortal coil with a mind doused in cynicism and hope. He lives in Derby, England, with his wife and two daughters, with dreams of writing for a living because he can’t do anything else. He already has two poetry collections out there called The Bare Bones of a Melancholy Life and Higher Powers and Moments of Weakness and hopes that you’ll hunt them down and read them until your full of joy and pain. Find him on Facebook and Twitter.

My “Middle” Blue Earth, poem by Jacque Stukowski (Half New Year Poetry Series)

MY “MIDDLE” BLUE EARTH
by Jacque Stukowski

In the middle of me
you’ll find my “middle” blue earth

Silent and cool like the calm crystal clear indigo blue waters of the seas in my mind

White wispy clouds float against a sapphire sky

Calm and quiet i sit here alone in my mind—in the eye of my storm

The rest of me swirling and spinning
in a whirlwind of daily routines and hurricane of chaos that is my life

When I need a reprieve from the days
thunderclaps and driving rains

I often retreat to the indigo space of my “middle” blue earth

A place where It’s ok to feel the blueness in me

Where cool jazz of Chet Baker, Stan Getz, or Dave Brubeck’s “Blue Moon” often play

Swaying in a dream-like trance
to the rhythms of jazz and the sweet, intoxicating smells from my fields of grape hyacinths wafting through the air

Flying carefree through the swirling midnight blue skies of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”

Past the twinkling yellow stars and reflections as they dance playfully on waters below.

Other days, I may just sit, somber and silent like the sad, gunmetal blue man from Picasso’s “Blue guitar.”

Or curled up on my chaise longue
grinning like a Cheshire cat, as I read Emily Dickinson’s “The Moon” for the millionth time.

It’s in this “middle” you’ll find me,
The me that lives inside. The me I don’t let others see but once in a blue moon.

Robed in all the shades of blue, from royal, to peacock, and to indigo.

Here in the coolness of my hues
is where you’ll find the real me

Wrapped up safe and sound and
surrounded in the blues of the flowers, writing, music, and artwork that I love so much

Here is where you’ll find me, in the world of my “middle” blue earth.

IMAGE: “Meditation” by Odilon Redon (1840-1916).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jacque Stukowski‘s blog God[isms] is her personal space to vent and share stories of growth through life’s ups and downs living with BP and ADHD. It’s a place where her writing and photos collide with spirituality, a dash of 12 steps, and a sprinkle of the daily trials of being a Christian wife, mother of two boys, and a full-time graphic designer. She frequently uses metaphors and symbolism to connect the reader to real life things in nature to convey the message she’s writing about. Her poem “Grey (doesn’t always) Matter” appeared in the Silver Birch Press May Poetry Anthology (2014).

Though a Little Out of Fashion, poem by Deborah Herman (Half New Year Poetry Series)

THOUGH A LITTLE OUT OF FASHION
by Deborah Herman

Though a little out of fashion,
There is much care and valor in the morning

I think we have no great cause to desire
the approach of day.

We see the beginning of the day, but I think we shall
never see the end of it.

A friend
Under you

A good and kind gentleman.
I pray, think of our estate
as men wracked upon a sand,
that look to be washed off the next tide.

I speak to you, but a man,
as I am.

The violet smells; the element shows;
all his senses have human conditions.

Laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man;
his affections are higher mounted,
when they stoop, they stoop with the wing.

Therefore, his fears relish in reason.

He, by showing it, should dishearten.

He may show outward courage;
but I believe, as cold a night as he could wish.

AUTHOR’S NOTE:. I have chosen for my Half New Year Poetry submission page 72 [for July 2nd, Half New Year] of Henry V. I have taken the dialogue between men out of context — they are speaking of rumours they have heard about what kind of man the king may be, without knowing he is present. I have instead turned the prose into a love poem, rather than a dialogue that takes place on the eve of war. The play as a whole is about sexual conquest — Henry must “woo” Catherine of France before forcefully taking over the country to make his leadership (and his offspring) legitimate. The play is also rife with “homosocial” male companionship: the “band of brothers” speech, and even the Harfleur speech, when Henry threatens that his army will kill all the babies and rape all of the girls of the city. So I have taken liberties with page 72 of the play and have tried to make it into something beautiful (and sexually ambiguous).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Deborah Herman is an emerging poet with previous publications in Existere, Rhythm, Transverse, and Vallum. Her poem, “Endurance,” will be published in the upcoming water-themed issue of the Motif Anthology (Vol. 4).

Venus on the Half Year, poem by Mary-Marcia Casoly (Half New Year Poetry Series)

VENUS ON THE HALF YEAR
(For Mary)

by Mary-Marcia Casoly

She is surpassingly lovely throughout the whole of July,
emerging from the sea. Her northern declination
rapidly decreases

in direct proportion to our increased inclinations.
Divine love twists the torso
but does not prevent Venus from being

the most attractive bewitching grace
in our starlit sky, surfing
her way through our fallibility.

Infinite are summer nights.
Her appointed calendar so full to about
3 o’clock on the half-shell,

Improbably balanced, point ahead naked
or with the naked eye an opera starlet
that dares not collapse. Her transparent skin

so like the moon at last quarter.
Her linear passion takes place 1˚14’
north of the erudite. Sir Regulus takes the handle

of the sickle. Sir Leonis takes her spoon.
Witness this celestial meeting to know
what passes between them.

Nothing less than our failings converge
as tasks and loves yet to be. No reluctance
to become as we once were. Endless summer has

no perspective. Our dreams contrapposto,
at the very same time our principal actors dis-
appear from the scene; and we slip

beneath her horizon. An interesting phenomenon.
The bright moonlight may dim Regulus’s luster,
to no effect on Venus.

The ball keeps moving. Venus on the move and growing
more brilliant night after night in conjunctivitis
cahoots with Gamma Leonis,

following closely convivial conjecture with Rho Leonis.
It may be helpful to have some little knowledge
of opera, when our fairest star reaches

her greatest elongation. She’ll stick her neck out
for us, 45 ˚33’ – no contest.
Venus’s lessons will lengthen

our stay against destiny, drawing from
Kilgore Trout; being one with St. Bridget of Kildare,
thus proving her course changes as butter churns.

Twisting her torso left, she flips her head upside-down,
waterfalls of hair ripple above Rollingstone.
Figures cast no shadows

On the 31^st of July she will sit little more than
an hour and a half after the sun. Venus’s right
ascension was the 2^nd of July: 9 hrs 50 min long.

She cannot be defined by GPS. The bodies and poses
of the wind, even harder to figure out.
Her eyes are the color of the sea.

Rose petals skim air. She is surpassingly lovely.
Waves ease back and forth, challenge conventional
memory. The constellation of Leo rises.

IMAGE: “The Birth of Violet Venus,” based on “The Birth of Venus” by Sandro Botticelli (1486). Prints available at fineartamerica.com.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I found an old newspaper astronomy column dated July 1887. The quaint phrasings brought to mind some midnight social intrigue, and then Botticelli’s Venus arrived on the scene. While writing “Venus on the Half Year” I was told my birth mother had recently died. I was struck how beautiful she looked in her obituary photo. The poem became a kind of elegy, in which I send her onward to mythic rebirth.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mary-Marcia Casoly is the author of Run to Tenderness (Pantograph&Goldfish Press 2002) and the editor of Fresh Hot Bread, a local zine for Waverley Writers, an open poetry forum based in the San Francisco Bay area. Her chapbook Lost Pages of Bird Lore was published by Small Change Series, WordTemple Press (2011) Her chapbook “Austrailia Dreaming” is included in the The Ahadada Reader 3, published by Ahadada Press (2010) Her poem “Song of Mayhem” appears in the Silver Birch Press May Poetry Anthology (2014).

where the grass grows, poem by Mark Erickson (Half New Year Poetry Series)

where the grass grows
by Mark Erickson

forever starling in the darkness
soaring high and settling for the low hills
fortunes eyes on the farthest
lands off the western slopes
in the gallery of the windmills,
five days spent in the wilds
almost half way there
lost in the savage memory of the sun
where she walks the streets
still graceful in her beauty,
along the shadowed light
it’s always been the same old story
in the coolness of the gray
and the frightful coming of night,
the last time I saw the birds
they were circling above
scratching for the words
that I could never think of

IMAGE: “Bird City,” mixed media on canvas (24″ x 24″) by Mark Erickson (2008), ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  Artist/author Mark Erickson was born in Hollywood, California, and lives along the West Coast of United States. After growing up in Hollywood, his family moved to Germany and then onto Italy. Living in Europe for almost six years opened his eyes to art and words. On his return to the States, he settled in the Bay Area to study painting at the San Francisco Art Institute and the San Francisco Art Academy. Mark paints in his studio in Oakland and exhibits in galleries around the U.S. He continues writing poetry and short stories that often provide inspiration for his paintings. Mark has self-published numerous books on painting, photography and poetry in collaboration with Katy Zartl of Katworks Graphics in Vienna, Austria. He is presently working on a book, An Aviator’s Dream–The Man From Painted Woods, a tribute to his father’s Air Corp exploits in World War II. You can view Mark’s work at  markerickson.com.

IMAGE: Self-portrait by Mark Erickson, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Happy Half New Year, poem by D.A. Pratt (Half New Year Poetry Series)

HAPPY HALF NEW YEAR
by D.A. Pratt

Having essentially nothing better
to do on the night of December 31,
we celebrate the change to
the new calendar year . . . we
might even sing some parts of a song
we don’t really understand . . . we’ll
hug people around us and this
might be the highlight of the evening . . .
Some of us will use the occasion to make
New Year’s Resolutions but we all know
perfectly well that we can resolve
to change our lives at any time
and not just at the beginning
of a new calendar year . . .

In complete contrast to all of this,
the beginning of the second half of the year
is notoriously nebulous . . . it’s either
at noon hour on July 2 or it makes us
wait until midnight every fourth year . . . and
it’s not on the first of the month, soooo
the occasion doesn’t involve flipping the page
of the kitchen calendar, if we even have one . . .
there’s no silly song to sing (not yet) and
we’re probably preoccupied by summer plans
or maybe just weekend plans . . . and,
for some of us, school has just ended
with September still seemingly
far, far away (for better or worse) . . .

For me, with a later-in-June birthday,
the “New Half Year” de facto sees
the beginning of my personal new year,
very inexactly observed, of course, but
everything about the season of summer
is inexactly observed, when you think about it . . .
after all, summer officially begins with
the Solstice in June, which doesn’t occur
on the same date every time . . . and
most of us really don’t notice when it
happens anyway . . . but I do, for my own reasons:
I base my so-called “notebooks” on the seasons –
I fill two of them with my various musings
when the nights are getting longer,
and I create two when the nights
are generally getting shorter . . . soooo,
the Solstice near the “New Half Year”
sees me close one and open another . . .

However, from now on, I’m going to
raise a glass of my favourite brew on July 2
in the spirit of “Happy New Half Year”
and I’ve already decided to do this at noon
every year, even on leap years, because
I can’t promise myself that I’ll be
awake at midnight, sad to say . . .

AUTHOR’S NOTE: As noted in the poem I created in response to call for “July 2” poems by Silver Birch Press, my late-in-June birthday has long made me aware that my own personal “new year” begins essentially half way through the calendar year . . . over the years, the significance of my own birthday has slipped away . . . now I prefer to ignore the occasion completely . . . once I started basing my “notebooks” on the four seasons, I started putting more emphasis on each Solstice and Equinox . . . however, all of this has made me aware of the nebulousness of the “new half year”  . . .  too many of us have too many other things on our minds . . .  this I’ve attempted to relate in my poem . . . however, I feel that we ought to be aware of such occasions (new year, new half years), since they give us a chance to reflect . . . we can do this at any time, of course, but how many of us do? With this in mind, I applaud Silver Birch Press for attempting to celebrate
“July 2” . . .

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Within the context that he knows why he continues to live in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, D.A. (David) Pratt continuously wonders why he’s continues to live in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.

Year of the Horse (in two halves), poem by Jack Foley (Half New Year Poetry Series)

YEAR OF THE HORSE
(in two halves)

by Jack Foley

Which half of the horse are you?
              The jockey
Front or back?
              Whose name was Little Johnny Jones
Do you stick to the past like glue
              Was accused of throwing the race
Or are you the leader of the pack?
               Of course this was untrue
Sometimes I ask, What’s new?
              He was a Yankee
As I step out of the sack
             And his blood was blue
Are you red? Are you blue?
            Father fought in the “Spanish War”
Are you whole or halfway through?
            Mother was a Yankee too
Are you stern or tempt-y?
             And his name was really
Half full? Half empty?
            George
The year is halfway up the flue
            And he danced
But:
           And he danced
Which half which half which half
          And he danced—
Which half of the horse are you?
          And—

*
The tigers of the sun are perched on their tails
dear one,
the tigers of the sun are perched on their tails
Time has passed,
the night clear,

a window opens on my head.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jack Foley is a widely-published, innovative California poet. He has published 13 books of poetry, five books of criticism, and Visions and Affiliations, a chronoencyclopedia of California poetry from 1940 to 2005. His radio show, Cover to Cover, is heard on Berkeley, California radio station KPFA every Wednesday at 3; his column, “Foley’s Books,” appears in the online magazine Alsop Review. In 2010, Foley was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Berkeley Poetry Festival, and June 5, 2010 was proclaimed “Jack Foley Day” in Berkeley. With poet Clara Hsu, Foley is co-publisher of Poetry Hotel Press. EYES, Foley’s Selected Poems, has appeared from Poetry Hotel Press and a chapbook, LIFE, has appeared from Word Palace Press. With his wife Adelle, Foley performs his work (often “multivoiced” pieces) frequently in the San Francisco Bay Area. Their performances can be found on YouTube. Read more at wikipedia.org and on his website.

Psalm 11.5, poem by Patrick T. Reardon (Half New Year Poetry Series)

PSALM 11.5
by Patrick T. Reardon

The LORD is mine.
I shall not want.

He maketh me.
He leadeth me.

He restoreth me.
He leadeth me.

Yea, though I walk,
I will fear no evil:
for thou art with
thy rod and thy staff.

Thou preparest.
Thou anointest.
My cup runneth over.

Surely goodness
and I will dwell.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Is there a poem, maybe half-good, in half a great psalm?

IMAGE: “Andean Good Shepherd” by Father John Guiliani, an icon artist known for depicting God and the saints in the faces of Native American peoples. Father Giuliani states, “My intent in depicting Christian saints as Native Americans is to honor them and to acknowledge their original presence on this land.” For more about Father John Guiliani, visit hillstream.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Patrick T. Reardon is the author of the recently published Catholic and Starting Out, available from actapublications. Visit him at patricktreardon.com.