TRIOLET THURSDAY: Three by Kate Bernadette Benedict

Dreamscape Triolets

Empty Confessional

Cellar, attic, I’ve searched everywhere.
Where is the child I conceived in Nonce Garden?
Eras ago, it was; memories harden.
Cellar, attic, I’ve searched everywhere,
the abandoned tavern, the deserted square,
this sterile church where I’ve come for pardon.
Cellar, attic, I’ve searched everywhere.
Where is the child I conceived in Nonce Garden?


Occlusion

Police have blocked with barricades.
We the people cannot break through
the yellow ties of these blockades.
Police have blocked with barricades
the shock victims, the nurses’ aides,
the amputees, the able few.
Police have blocked with barricades.
We the people cannot break through.


U. S. of E.

Without war, without deliberations
the nations unify, the borders thaw.
It’s the free-for-all of the destinations
without war, without deliberations!
Passports burn at massive celebrations,
matches light up effigies of straw.
Without war, without deliberations,
the nations unify, the borders thaw.

Originally published in, respectively, The Barefoot Muse, Poemeleon and thanal online

BIO: Kate Bernadette Benedict is the editor and publisher of Umbrella: A Journal of Poetry and Kindred Prose. Her collection Here from Away was published in November of 2003 by CustomWords. Her poetry has been appearing in literary magazines and anthologies since 1980. Kate has served as a moderator at Eratosphere, the on-line poetry forum. She lives with her husband John Leahy on New York City’s upper west side. Visit her website at Kate Benedict

TRIOLET THURSDAY: Two by Heidi Czerwiec

DETRITUS

We shed a lot while making love.
Yet what we gain, by what is lost
along with all the hair and skin we slough
(and we shed a lot while making love!):
our inhibitions at being in the buff,
the weight of failed loves past—
We shed a lot while making love,
yet what we gain by what is lost!


TRIOLET

I praise the circumference of thy shaft!
All night long, O my Evan,
I praise it lowered, half-, and fully-staffed.
I praise the circumference of thy shaft,
but most of all I praise the craft
with which you work its inches seven.
I praise the circumference of thy shaft
all night long – O my! Evan!


Heidi Czerwiec is assistant professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of North Dakota, where she is the Director of the annual UND Writers Conference. She is the author of Hiking the Maze (Finishing Line Press, 2009) and has poems and translations published or forthcoming in Measure, Nimrod, Evansville Review, Southern Indiana Review, Hunger Mountain, and International Poetry Review.

SPOTLIGHT: A Rondeau and a Rondel by Anna Evans

Tea Ceremonies

       for MP

We drink our tea and leave unsaid
the hungry words which once misled
our friendship. Nowadays we weigh
each phrase’s power to betray;
you tell me of a book you’ve read.

Your lips press kisses in my head;
your fingers tremble as you shred
the crumpled tag from your Earl Grey;
we drink our tea.

I want to slake our thirsts in bed,
be steeped in you; I break the thread
of what I’d been about to say.
We lock eyes over china, sway
an instant in silk sheets; instead
we drink our tea.

Originally appeared in The Formalist



Indian Summer Rondel

The leaves aren’t falling this September.
Truth’s at least as odd as fiction;
nature reels in contradictions—
snow in June, a warm December.

All old people can remember
times the sky defied prediction.
The leaves aren’t falling this September.
Truth’s at least as odd as fiction.

If you’re human, you’re a member
of a race with an addiction
to routine. A source of friction
in the months before November—
the leaves aren’t falling. This September,
truth’s at least as odd as fiction.



Anna Evans’ poems have appeared in the Harvard Review, Atlanta Review, Rattle, and Measure. She gained her MFA from Bennington College, and is the Editor of the Raintown Review. Her chapbooks Swimming and Selected Sonnets are available from Maverick Duck Press.

TRIOLET THURSDAY: Two by Mary Meriam

Red Kiss

Who will miss me when I’m dead?
Maybe someone reading this
is just the sort of daisy head
who will miss me when I’m dead
and planted in a tulip bed.
To her, I offer this red kiss.
Who will miss me when I’m dead?
Maybe someone reading this.

(first published in Light Quarterly)


Daylight Losing Time

I dread turning clocks back an hour.
I’m scared of the turning of leaves.
I’m sorry my mood turns so sour.
I dread turning clocks back an hour.
Can I spring up ahead like a flower?
In fall my clock withers and grieves.
I dread turning clocks back an hour.
I’m scared of the turning of leaves.

(first published in Snakeskin)

BIO Mary Meriam's chapbook of poems, The Countess of Flatbroke (afterword by Lillian Faderman), was published in 2006 by Modern Metrics. Her poems and essays have been published in Literary Imagination, Light, Windy City Times, Umbrella, The Lyric, OCHO, Soundzine, A Prairie Home Companion, and The Gay & Lesbian Review, among others.

TEACH THIS POEM: Marilyn Taylor's "Rondeau: Old Woman with Cat"

I'm not the only fan of Marilyn Taylor's wonderful rondeau, which has one of the best rentrements ever--Edward Byrne is featuring the poem as the VPR Poem of the Week!

One Poet's Notes

TRIOLET TUESDAY: Two by Marybeth Rua-Larsen

Hanging the Wreath

I nail it to the door. It doesn't swing
or fall or blow away. I make it stick,
unlike our holidays, your latest fling,
I nail it to the door. It doesn't swing,
like you, proposing with a diamond ring
and then surprised by No. I learned the trick:
I nail it to the door. It doesn't swing
or fall or blow away. I make it stick.

(first appeared in Lucid Rhythms)


My Early Spring

Another rainy day has turned to snow.
You sip your cabernet and turn the page
of a book you love, pretending not to know
another rainy day has turned to snow
and frozen everything I’d hoped would grow…
but me; I grab my boots and skip the rage
as another rainy day has turned to snow.
You sip your cabernet and turn the page.

(first appeared in Snakeskin)


BIO: Marybeth Rua-Larsen teaches English, Reading and ESL in the South Coast of Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in Measure, The Barefoot Muse, 14 by 14, Soundzine and The Worcester Review, among others.

SPOTLIGHT: A Rondeau Redouble and a Rondel by Ned Balbo

Rescuing the Voices

The story of the Langley sessions is...part of the mystique--
how a young rock guitarist, needing a job, became a gypsy
music teacher in a Canadian farm region and created timeless
recordings that were never intended to be heard beyond
the school community’s perimeter.
--Irwin Chusid, liner notes to the CD Innocence and Despair:
The Langley School Music Project

You know the songs--“Space Oddity,” “Good Vibrations,”
“The Long and Winding Road,” a dozen more--
arranged for voice, percussion, xylophones,
performed by untrained children near Vancouver

during the ’70’s, gathered together
from different rural schools to take positions
on the risers, facing the young conductor
who led them through “Space Oddity,” “Good Vibrations,”

captured in Spector-sized echo, young musicians
filling the school gymnasium with fervor,
missing their notes in unison, expressions
rapt for “The Long and Winding Road,” and more,

classics and corn, “Mandy” and “Wildfire”
sung into empty space: ideal conditions,
strangely, for making a record, the teacher’s guitar
steadying voices, percussion, xylophones

pinging, mostly on cue, throughout the sessions
no audience but the children and their director
witnessed, caught in one take, the imperfections
of voices from the outskirts of Vancouver

pressed onto vinyl, forgotten. But their renditions,
rediscovered, survive. You ain't gettin' no younger

chorus gone silent, a soloist, past all questions,
sings to every desperate listener
who needs her song.


Note: In “Rescuing the Voices,” nine-year-old soloist Sheila Behman sings Don Henley and Glenn Frey’s “Desperado”; Hans Louis Fenger is conductor/arranger (as well as guitarist/pianist) for the Langley Schools recordings. The CD Innocence and Despair: The Langley School Music Project is available from Bar/None Records.

Rondel for a Timepiece Not Yet Obsolete

  In an age awash with digital devices from cell phones to PDAs, plugged-in people of all    ages are opting to leave their old timepiece at home.

--Susan Lee, “Are wristwatches becoming obsolete?”

 Columbia News Service, December 27, 2005

Analog watch--wrist-worn circle of time,
ticking the days away in symmetries
Swiss-made and sleepless, tireless mysteries
concealed by stainless steel--your hours rhyme

in sets of twelve. Essential in your prime,
object of habit now, set me at ease,
analog wristwatch, worn circle of time.
Keep ticking away the days in symmetries

that call to mind the past: sleek hands that climb,
pointing across a face that’s not a face,
as if in search of lost simplicities….
Earth’s orbit round the sun your paradigm,
how soon will you run down, worn-out? Circle of time.

BIO: Ned Balbo's books are Lives of the Sleepers (University of Notre Dame Press, 2005) and Galileo's Banquet (WWPH, 1998). A chapbook of new poems, Something Must Happen, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. He is recipient of three Maryland Arts Council grants, the Robert Frost Foundation Poetry Award, Ernest Sandeen Poetry Prize, and a ForeWord magazine Book of the Year Award. He teaches at Loyola University and lives in Baltimore with his wife, poet Jane Satterfield, and stepdaughter Catherine.