teenagers down the shore, poem by win harms

teenagers down the shore
by win harms

memories of the ocean
sweet spring sweat trickles down my forehead
the sand stings my legs, as a crosswind
creeps up from behind
the salty sea is cold, numbing my bare feet
i hear my friends giggling ahead
and i laugh for no reason at all
you look at me and smile that secret smile
and for one moment we are alone in this
i can’t remember the taste of you
but i know i’ll understand you again
i get higher with the thoughts of days to come
we are sleepy with excitement
last night is so incredibly far away
we were older then, parading like sophisticates
we are young again, spinning in the sun
the past doesn’t matter and
the skeletons don’t feel like dancing
i am mapping out my life
and i want to see you there
with your eyes sparkling like the sea
we walk the boardwalk with the wind in our hair
creating everlasting impressions in time

Photo: “Summer Down the Shore” by funflash, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. (16×20 metallic prints available at etsy.com)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: win harms is a poet living in France with her professor husband. She hails from the state of the cowboy poetry contest, but she has lived pretty much everywhere, including many psych wards, and considers herself a survivor of the struggle. The chaos has ceased and now she spends her time doing needlepoint and laundry, but longs to share her words with the world. As of last year, she left her roaring twenties, and is now feeling fecund and free. “Teenagers Down the Shore” and other poetry by win harms appears in the Silver Birch Press Summer Anthology, available at Amazon.com.

Pink Lemonade, poem by Juan Olivarez

PINK LEMONADE
poem by Juan Olivarez

In the shade of my live oak tree, 

Drinking pink lemonade.

Just about as laid back as can be, 

Oh boy, I really got it made.

 
A little tart, a little sweet,
Best batch Elvira’s ever made.

Time to get off my tired feet, 

With a cold glass of lemonade.


 
I could use a cookie, I suppose, 

But I don’t want to leave this shade.

Maybe later, after I repose, 

Right now I’ll sip my lemonade.

ABOUT POET JUAN OLIVAREZ (in his own words): I was born in Nyssa, Oregon, while my parents who were farm workers were picking cherries and working in the potato fields in Idaho. I grew up in Mission, Texas, and attended Mission High, scool where I first attempted to write poetry. While in high school, I had two poems published in Focus magazine, “What is War” in 1972 and “The Clouds” in 1973. I have been in public service in my home town of Alton, Texas, as city alderman, police commissioner, and mayor pro tem. I love to play chess, play the guitar, cook, and my other true love — fishing. My first love has and always will be my wife Elvira McAllen, who against her better judgement decided to say yes when I asked her to marry me in 1973. We have six children, two marines, two musicians, a teacher, and my youngest who is currently in California in the place I love so much, the Mojave Desert. 

For more poems by Juan Olivarez, visit poemhunter.com.

Illustration: “Pink Lemonade” by Ranger Kat, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

teenagers down the shore, poem by win harms

teenagers down the shore
by win harms

memories of the ocean
sweet spring sweat trickles down my forehead
the sand stings my legs, as a crosswind
creeps up from behind
the salty sea is cold, numbing my bare feet
i hear my friends giggling ahead
and i laugh for no reason at all
you look at me and smile that secret smile
and for one moment we are alone in this
i can’t remember the taste of you
but i know i’ll understand you again
i get higher with the thoughts of days to come
we are sleepy with excitement
last night is so incredibly far away
we were older then, parading like sophisticates
we are young again, spinning in the sun
the past doesn’t matter and
the skeletons don’t feel like dancing
i am mapping out my life
and i want to see you there
with your eyes sparkling like the sea
we walk the boardwalk with the wind in our hair
creating everlasting impressions in time

Photo: “Summer Down the Shore” by funflash, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. (16×20 metallic prints available at etsy.com)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: win harms is a poet living in France with her professor husband. She hails from the state of the cowboy poetry contest, but she has lived pretty much everywhere, including many psych wards, and considers herself a survivor of the struggle. The chaos has ceased and now she spends her time doing needlepoint and laundry, but longs to share her words with the world. As of last year, she left her roaring twenties, and is now feeling fecund and free. “Teenagers Down the Shore” and other poetry by win harms appears in the Silver Birch Press Summer Anthology, available at Amazon.com.

Summer Haiku by Virginie Colline

Summer Haiku 
by Virginie Colline

Your meridian muse
hidden away from the sun
violin-shaped dreams

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Virginie Colline is a French translator living in Paris. Her poems have appeared in The Scrambler, Notes from the Gean, Prune Juice, Frostwriting, Haiku Journal, Prick of the Spindle, Mouse Tales Press, StepAway Magazine, BRICKrhetoric, Seltzer, Overpass Books, Dagda Publishing, The Four Quarters Magazine, Yes, and Poetry. Her poetry also appears in the Silver Birch Press SUMMER ANTHOLOGY, available at Amazon.com. 

PAINTING: “Interior with a violin” (Room at the Hôtel Beau-Rivage),1918, by Henri Matisse

Happy Birthday, Paul Laurence Dunbar

June 27, 2013 marks the 141st anniversary of the birth of Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906), a poet, novelist, and playwright—and the first African American writer to gain national prominence. Born in Dayton, Ohio, the son of ex-slaves, Dunbar lived only to age thirty-three, but in his short life created a large body of work—writing short stories, novels, librettos, plays, songs, essays, and poetry. Maya Angelou took the title of her book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings after a line from Dunbar’s poem “Sympathy.”

The just-released Silver Birch Press SUMMER ANTHOLOGY features three summer-themed poems by Paul Laurence Dunbar. Find the book at Amazon.com.

IN SUMMER
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Oh, summer has clothed the earth
In a cloak from the loom of the sun!
And a mantle, too, of the skies’ soft blue,
And a belt where the rivers run.
And now for the kiss of the wind,
And the touch of the air’s soft hands,
With the rest from strife and the heat of life,
With the freedom of lakes and lands.
I envy the farmer’s boy
Who sings as he follows the plow;
While the shining green of the young blades lean
To the breezes that cool his brow.
He sings to the dewy morn,
No thought of another’s ear;
But the song he sings is a chant for kings
And the whole wide world to hear.
He sings of the joys of life,
Of the pleasures of work and rest,
From an o’erfull heart, without aim or art;
’Tis a song of the merriest.
O ye who toil in the town,
And ye who moil in the mart,
Hear the artless song, and your faith made strong
Shall renew your joy of heart.
Oh, poor were the worth of the world
If never a song were heard —
If the sting of grief had no relief,
And never a heart were stirred.
So, long as the streams run down,
And as long as the robins trill,
Let us taunt old Care with a merry air,
And sing in the face of ill.

Summer, poem by Tamara Madison

SUMMER
by Tamara Madison

June is Friday:  weary of winter
exhausted by spring, brightened
by hope of rest and warmth
and green things stretching
toward the dear sun of summer.
 
July, then, is Saturday:
brown-limbed, easy, moving slow
through the long hours
of sand, of fish lifted
by clear waves with the light
shining through, of warm
nights with Mars glowing
gold near the rocking moon.
 
August, alas, must be Sunday: 
there’s still time, the days
still balmy and long
the sun still hot, Mars still
bright in the warm night sky,
the sea still glittering
with the coins of the sun.
But the shadow at the end
looms longer every day.
 
And then it’s September:
a cheap and painful parody
of summer:  hotter than August
but the days grow shorter
and we are stuck wherever
we have to be as wild fires
devour the hills of spring
leaving us pining for July
 
when time stretched out
on a blanket before us,
naked and smiling.

“Summer” and other poems by Tamara Madison — along with poetry and prose from over 70 authors around the world — are featured in the 220-page Silver Birch Press SUMMER ANTHOLOGY, available at Amazon.com.

Painting: “La Cape Rose” (watercolor on paper) by French Symbolist painter Odilon Redon (1840-1916).

Summer Stars, poem by Carl Sandburg

SUMMER STARS
by Carl Sandburg

Bend low again, night of summer stars.
So near you are, sky of summer stars,
So near, a long-arm man can pick off stars, 

Pick off what he wants in the sky bowl, 

So near you are, summer stars, 

So near, strumming, strumming, 

So lazy and hum-strumming.

On the Grasshopper and the Cricket, poem by John Keats

ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND THE CRICKET
By John Keats (1795-1821)

The poetry of earth is never dead:
   When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
   And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper’s — he takes the lead
   In summer luxury, — he has never done
   With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
   On a lone winter evening, when the frost
      Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,
   And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
      The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.

Illustration: “Grasshopper” (mixed media) by ShulmanArts, available at etsy.com.

Apricots, poem by Larry D. Thomas

APRICOTS
by Larry D. Thomas

A few blocks off the plaza,
in the Santa Fe evening light
the color of brandy,
on the street below the branches

of the tree, they glowed in rosy,
yellow hues as if a god
had ripped the sundown, rolled it
into fuzzy, dimpled balls,

and flung them to the ground.
Fast as we could, deep
into the fabric of our shorts,
we crammed them till our pockets

sagged, and lumbered down
the darkening street
like lumpy angels, holy
with the light of apricots.

From Larry D. Thomas: New and Selected Poems (TCU Press, 2008)

“Apricots” will appear in the Silver Birch Press SUMMER ANTHOLOGY, a collection of poetry, prose poems, short stories, novel excerpts, memoirs, and essays by over 70 established, up-and-coming, and classic writers from the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Europe, and Africa — available by June 21, 2013.

Photo: “Apricot tree at sunset” by Rik Neethling

June Moon, Poem by Daniel McGinn

JUNE MOON
by Daniel McGinn

Today was sheltered
in a marine layer, we waded through
a sea without shadows.

Today I made a donation
for the funeral of a friend
killed by a drunk driver.

Tonight I watched a mouse escape from my dog.
I watched pink feet and black fur blur across concrete.
Tonight I saw the moon
poke its head out from the clouds
a black mist began rising up like a cape
to cover the chin, the lips, the teeth…

Lori asked me,
Does the moon always show us the same face
or does it sometimes show us other faces?
I don’t know, I said and we marveled
at how clouds had misshapen the moon’s skull.
It looked dented and pockmarked.
It looked like it had been kicked
and kicked repeatedly.

Feral kittens under my house began to yowl.
My dog ran zigzags
and barked and barked and barked.
A mouse squeezed her body into a hole in a brick wall,
a tight passage, small as a pencil spine,
then the mouse was gone.

No lights twinkled.
The moon turned dark as a dime
dropped down a slot.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Daniel McGinn’s work has appeared in the OC Weekly, Next Magazine, and other publications. His full-length collection of poems, 1000 Black Umbrellas, is available from Write Bloody Press. He is currently a student in the low-residency MFA program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. He and his wife are natives of Southern California. They have three children, five grandchildren, and a very good dog. “June Moon” and other writing by Daniel McGinn will appear in the Silver Birch Press SUMMER ANTHOLOGY — a collection of poetry and prose by over 70 authors from around the world — available in June 2013.

PAINTING: “Under the Silver Moon,” Chinese ink and color on Korean paper by James Tan. Find the painting online at artincanada.com.