A Late Supper but a Perfect View - by Linda Price (aka Willow)

[mirmusing.livejournal.com]

A stray dust mote captured
and turned to gold, as if by alchemy;
how it blazed– so bright, so brief
caught in the rays of the setting sun.

She gazed through the open door,
distracted for a moment by the river;
A spangled snood holding back the grey
then a last gleam of gold,
as if the clock chimed midnight,
and some fairy tale princess was spirited away.

How Virginia loved this cottage! The cheery kitchen,
her vegetable garden out back. The flamenco dance
of color from the fragrant flowers; passersby would point,
those that knew what she was best known for;
what she grew best; never noticing her mis-matched shoes,
the button missed, the stocking torn, her haunted eyes,lids
dark and heavy with her need to rest.

The water on its second boil, Virginia Woolf bustled about;
choosing six carrots still clumped with clots of earth,
the smooth potatoes, rinsing, and slicing; onion and garlic
mingling—-bleeding the pungent essence already wafting
from her hands.

Just a woman preparing a dinner she will not eat;
aromatic, cheery kitchen and homemade stew,
what a scene of domestic bliss
for a husband to walk into.
Hanging her apron on its old hook,
She smooths the folds of her skirt and bends down–
picks up a piece of straw as if it matters now.

Moments later, clad in her old, shabby cloak;
her favorite.
She blends into the dusk, cool and gray now.
A ferryman passes, she has her fare and she takes
her first steps into the Thames, feeling the the water swirling,
mud sucking at the soles of her shoes. Or souls she thinks
smiling-then a chuckle-and the shore is distant now.
The chill pushes a breath out with one bony hand.

Too late to turn back,
weighed down by everything and nothing.
She slips silent as a secret, pockets full of heavy stones,
large and smooth and rounded
as the potatoes bubbling merrily away in the stew left behind;
fragrant, orderly, and dark now
in an empty kitchen.

Eclipse - by Pamela Rossow

[mirmusing.livejournal.com]

it was not enough to be
drenched in your sun
showers; to have your
fingers trail moonlight
through my hair; for your
blazing lips to lock noon
heat between us;

I needed more than
galaxies between my
thighs; day breaks in
your smiles starlight
in your eyes; I tasted
forever on your tongue;
heard always in your
heartbeat; outlined we
on your chest

It was enough to be cast
in shadow; to have my
sundial blotted out by your
clouds; to see the negligible
pebbles in the hourglass; to
know the darkened cemetery
in your mouth was too much.

Poems about Chicago?

[pyreneeees.livejournal.com]

A friend asked if I know any poems about Chicago. Apart from Carl Sandburg, I don't. Do you? In return, here is a great one about Boston.

Boston
by Aaron Smith

I've been meaning to tell
you how the sky is pink
here sometimes like the roof
of a mouth that's about to chomp
down on the crooked steel teeth
of the city,

I remember the desperate 
things we did
                and that I stumble
down sidewalks listening
to the buzz of street lamps
at dusk and the crush
of leaves on the pavement,

Without you here I'm viciously lonely

and I can't remember 
the last time I felt holy,
the last time I offered
myself as sanctuary

*

I watched two men 
press hard into
each other, their bodies
caught in the club’s
bass drum swell,
and I couldn’t remember
when I knew I’d never
be beautiful, but it must 
have been quick
and subtle, the way
the holy ghost can pass
in and out of a room.
I want so desperately
to be finished with desire,
the rushing wind, the still
small voice.