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WELCOME
to
The River Poets
Journal
Based in Lambertville, NJ
A Journal of Poetry/Prose
Art & Photography
Flight of Two Owls
From Windsor to Claremont the farms
between the river and railroad
hold their ground so firmly we doubt
realtors will ever dislodge them.
One square Federalist masterwork
stands on cribwork, foot-square timbers.
Foundation work, the old brick
crumbled by two hundred years
of overflowing river. We sway
down the road like swans on a current.
Over on the Vermont shore
the knotty mass of Ascutney
rises like a thunderhead. We climbed
the north slope one August day,
rising through sheep pastures, past
the rubble of the Norcross Quarry,
emerging three thousand feet above
the river. Whatever we earned
on that hike we spent long ago,
wasting that expansive landscape.
We reach a crossroads. This way
under the black steel railroad truss
to Claremont, that way across
the silver bridge back to Vermont,
and straight ahead to Charlestown.
These days, even our weekend drives
feel like the Flight of Two Owls.
We agree it’s best to stay home
and plunge into books we didn’t read
while young enough to understand them.
The road curves away from the river
and past a modern factory
in yellow metal siding. The day
peels away like sunburned flesh
to expose a pink tenderness
we once thought expressed that love
Wordsworth trusted, but now know
is only a parsing of spectrums
crass as snowfall but intended
to flatter the ignorant eye.
©William Doreski
River Poets Spring 2009 Poetry Selections
Poems, Prose, Art/Photography by River Poets and Journal Contributors
All future rights to material published on this web site are retained
by the individual Authors and Artists/Photographers
Music by Sandy Bender
"Trinidad to Tobago"
"Washington Crossing Bridge"
Painting by Rick Hasney
Painting by Rick Hasneyhttp://www.hasney.com/
Portrait of a Charmer
In the cracked summer gloom you sit
with your sidewalk café mob
and explain that the bobolink
is our only bird that’s black
underneath and white on top.
As I approach, swinging my bookbag,
the creases in your forehead slot
to reveal your stainless mind.
Well-oiled clockwork glows with pride,
As you greet me I feel as much
as hear your powerful clutch
disengage, re-engage the small talk
sputtering around the table
as people compete for approval.
The whirr of your gears suggests
some Rube Goldberg contraption
but you emit a violet aura
so vivid legends found themselves
in your wake. When you note me
noting your friends’ admiration
you gesture as if going under
in genuine Stevie Smith style.
Of course I confirm your description
of the bobolink and share your concern
that suburban fools mow hayfields
too early, before the hay ripens,
and destroy the bobolink nests
honest farmers never disturbed.
Yes, I’m impressed by your grasp
of natural imperatives; but no,
I won’t sit among your groupies
and nod as you strut your stuff.
The marbled sky is congealing
into storm, and besides, the shine
of your half-exposed machinery
dazzles me against my will
by bending the light to embellish
your otherwise idiot grin.
©William Doreski
Flesh and Blood
None of us is ready when the wafers are passed
over the gum-chewing boy, eyes following indifferently.
Nevertheless, we each take one,
let it grow soggy and disintegrate
on the tongue,
wash it down with a shot of Welch’s.
Both crackers and juice are reserved for
those who’ve braved the pool
behind the pulpit, who’ve trusted
the preacher’s plump, soft hands
to lift them before they’ve gulped
too much of the fetid water.
With the hint of grapes
clinging to tongues,
the collection plate circles,
gathering what it’s all about
while the boy who loves Juicy Fruit
now dozes, head rested against his grandmother,
content to let god take care of itself.
©C.S. Fuqua
Constant Exploration
Our search is not only for
lands unseen, deserts, forests,
ancient ruins,
but the places we have not found,
or will find
that exist within our conscious sphere,
the limits to which
we are willing to expand experiences
or the conflict,
the war within ourselves,
far more courageous
than those who pined for gold
and wealth everlasting,
their ships should have sailed inward
along the liquid meniscus
and took port in any sulcus,
unfold layers to feel neurons
in expansion continuous.
© S. P. Flannery
Pink Moon
April
The sunburned sky slides
behind the mountain, shadows
stretch toward night. Violets
and bleeding hearts’ dark
petals sweeten grass. Crocus
and snowdrop flicker like pearls,
phlox crawls from wood to lawn.
Clouds crack the moon, an egg
suspended in a bowl of stars.
©KB Ballentine
Punctuation
A sparrow dashes
from its nest in the impatiens
hanging on our front porch,
raids nearby trees for food.
When she returns,
her chicks squeal
like wrong notes on a flute.
Then she pops out again like a hyphen-
ated word. All falls silent as a page.
Quick as wit, she fetches
a worm from the lawn. Wedged in her beak,
the blind crawler hangs like a comma,
flies on another’s wings, like a human,
not knowing this is it, the end of its dark
and meandering life, not knowing it will fall
back to earth, hours from now, in one flowing
purple period.
©Julie L. Moore
This page was last updated: May 18, 2009
Disquiet
I thought I cast you
out of my thoughts
years ago…except for
every now and then,
in the middle of
a nothing special day,
when the mind idly ponders
what might have been?
But here we are again
these few hundred haunted days,
stirring up old plots and schemes,
dubious actors in one act dramas
starring in nocturnal dreams,
wrapped in mysticism and irony.
It’s much too late for you and I.
Life goes on…and too soon,
we are humbled
by who we’ve become,
in contrast to who we were.
Even in our finest hours,
we somehow blundered
toward our destination.
And there is no room now
for your intrusion,
in dreams or reality.
This disquiet you torment me with
in my closing chapters
confounds me,
as if something vitally important
has been left un-attended to,
though what was left behind
was surely your choice.
It’s said,
there are no second acts in life,
yet here I am again
in last night’s sequence,
staged in the illusionist
tangle of dreams,
strangely alone at an airport,
gazing out a panoramic window,
the blue empty sky and I
peering down
on your lone suitcase
parked in the middle of
a plane-less field,
and you, missing,
from the landscape.
© Judith A. Lawrence
Surviving Jakarta 1998
It's been ten years since Jakarta 1998.
Never forgetting, not always remembering
That otherworldly flee. Never questioning
Nor knowing when to say 'farewell'. I had
A hero and a heroine quite ordinary – a
Driver and my mother who wore black,
Drove speedily in and out of fumes and
Promised that I would soon be home safe.
Tucked into bed with a spanner and a bat,
Me and my sisters were kept in a great
White house bubble wrapped in black
Garbage bags. In hiding, we were protected
By flickering sounds of Cartoon Network and
MTV lullabies. Sleepily, we boarded that last
Cathay flight back to Hong Kong with one stack
Of the new ten thousand Rupiah bills worth
One bowl of wanton noodles each. One bowl
Each, one bowl each day times three. Five
Of us each to our naivety; we were safe but never
Home. Each of us still dreaming ten years alone
This May. Ten years this May, we fled far away
From barbed wired fences and tales no one believes.
Ten years this May, I revisit ten years away. Ten
Years this May, I am still surviving Jakarta 1998.
© Marina Ma
"New Hope" - Painting by Rick Hasney
Lady of Eturia
- for Laura
I wanted to send a white rose
when they told me how your skin
had been opened to the dark stones
growing in your prized sensations.
But I knew how you pitied roses
once their fragrance left the stem
and decided to send a special tune -
something small that would soothe you.
I was going to sing of purple flowers
somersaulting on the lawn,
the beautiful poets of Lauralhurst
breathing life into you through their hands.
But I remembered how you reproached
the pumice of my darker poems when
their secrets wrinkled in your brow
and that one Christmas without wisemen.
So I’ve kept the tune to myself,
knowing that once the room grows silent
you will walk through the house
filling it, as always, like summer season.
© Fredrick Zydek
I’m a Genius!
Remember all the things
You read
All the things someone, somewhere,
At some point thought clever enough
To share, to drag to the save file and
Back up on society’s external hard drive
The thrill of a well put statement
I used to feel the same way
Intoxicated by my own sheer genius
Back when spirits and cigarettes
Were still a novelty
But now I wake up and read
What I jotted the night before
And it questions itself in ways
I can’t defend I don’t know
What to say anymore
I’ve already forgot what I’ve been writing
You’ve already forgot what you’ve been reading.
© Nathan Madsen
Contact: Judith A. Lawrence
judithlawrence@comcast.net
