She carried the fire in her pockets
and tapped shards of magma
like cigarette ash onto the passing trees.
She was beautiful and courteous
to the other scholars of nature.
She’d make space for the squirrels,
twitching like tweakers, to pass unobstructed;
she’d lift the hedgehogs, doleful as skin-poppers,
over the screeching train tracks.
But her face was dark and mournful
even when she lifted her blazing palms
to rub her leaking eyes,
to caress the hissing trees.
Hair cropped by fire,
they stand black and naked now
damned sentinels wreathed in shame.
She has gone, dragging the sun down
beneath horizon’s brittle crust,
its final cry turning the cloud
into a sprawling bruise, as the
sunlight gently bleeds away
into night’s quilted pockets.
by Steven Nash
Steve Nash should currently be doing research for his Ph.D he is a qualified teacher but despite this earns his keep (sort of) as a musician playing to anyone foolish enough to stay in the bar.
Steven's blog is Starlight to Casual Moths.
SUBMISSION POLICY
Poetry (any form or style) and Micro or Flash Fictions wanted for an anthology on SMOKE. Not just the black clouds rising from the five-alarm fire next door, or the billowing plumes of smoke warning us of a forest fire, or the emissions from factory smoke stacks, apartment house incinerators, and crematoriums, smoke rings rise from cigarettes, smoke pours out of headshops, pipe shops & cigar stores--see that purple haze rising over the fields of poppies and marijuana we just planted--we've used it to communicate via smoke signals and skywriting, to cover our tracks and disappear with and without mirrors, combat the enemy on and off the battlefield, kill bugs, flavor food, cure illness, declare peace treaties, and fragrance our homes. Got the idea? Release it onto the page.
Guidelines: Submit up to three poems/micro fictions or two flash fictions at a time with a fascinating bio of 35 words or less, not just limited to publication credits, copy/pasted in the body of an e-mail (no attachments, please) to roxy533 at yahoo dot com & violetwrites at nyc dot rr dot com. We will also entertain up to six one-liners or 2 short stand up routines at time. Previously published work is OK as long as authors have retained the copyright, which will be returned to them after publication. Simultaneous submissions are encouraged. If your work is accepted elsewhere, and you still have obtained rights to republish, just let us know where and we'll be happy to acknowledge the other publication.
If you do not receive a response from us within a month of your submission considered it rejected and feel free to submit again. Due to the volume of submissions we cannot respond to each and every individual submission. Selection for the on-line edition are made on a ongoing basis as we receive your submissions. However, final selections for the print edition will made after the October 31st deadline. (In otherwords not everything that made the cut for the online edition will appear in print.) Please do not query. When in doubt, send the submission to roxy533 at yahoo dot com & violetwrites at nyc dot rr dot com.
Friday, April 10, 2009
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My favourite contemporary poet!!!
ReplyDeleteI love this piece so much, the sorrow and fragility of growth is beautifully visualised in the drug/pastoral metaphors.
Love it love it love it!!!
Thanks for this Smoke xxx
The imagery in this poem is terrific, I particularly like:
ReplyDeleteShe’d make space for the squirrels,
twitching like tweakers, to pass unobstructed;
she’d lift the hedgehogs, doleful as skin-poppers
as the previous commenter has suggested the entire piece is wrapped in fragility like smoke itself.
This is a great work of contemporary poetry isn' it?
ReplyDeleteI'm impressed by the way it knits together through the alliterative repetition and keeps you rolling along so pleasently despite the subject matter.
I look forward to ploughing through all of the contributors' poems from your right-hand list Roxanne, you have a great eye for a poem.
Not sure my critical faculty'll ever be quite so fine tuned
This was the firstpoem of this poets I'd come across but checked out hisblogthanks to your link and it's great. Thanks for the link Smoking Book.x
ReplyDelete