Featured Poet, Steve Mueske

Allan Peterson's chapbook of poems, Any Given Moment

Sam Hamill's Almost Paradise New & Selected Poems-Translations

Two Pines

1. Yung Chia Reconsidered

A wind in the pines,
moonlight trembling on the stream
at deepest midnight
on the coldest evening:
what does it mean.

2. Hakutsu's Pine

A great pine stands alone
beside the old stone house.
Examined in detail:
like meeting ancient sages
face-to-face.

Little Epic Elegy

Denise Levertov (1923-1997)

She is gone who brought
us closer to what we are,
who brought us a world—
a passion for the garden,
a heaven of moons and stars.

And now she attends
our days with the salts of truth
and all the honeys
of conviction. Her vision
returns us into a world

of mystery, awe,
all compassion and delight,
to joy in the work
of being fully human,
always picking up the torch,

passing on the light.

Beckian Fritz Goldberg's Lie Awake Lake

Eye

It was not by accident the eye
was attracted to the water,
the eater of doubles: the good
cattail and the bad cattail, one
rising from the other like the memory—the gnat
and the gnat, the sycamore reaching up
to heaven...So the dizziness
that beauty is, losing
is.  And with this bark-colored eye,
this eye that was a father's and
a mother's, I drank
back the helpless world—the one
that is all body, not spirit, not
a bit—that is silt, sex, and germ
and the Temple of Being Beside.  I was
young beside you, water, and my father and I
were on your face, there were willows, and this
was in early summer or at least
it has become early summer,
that double of once.

Flying In

Here I am, the last
place on earth...

The city has everything.  It has

more windows
with more lights on
in them

than any
homecoming.

Father,
you're the far away lake

the far away lake

the lie awake lake.

Fred Moramarco

Talking to My Doctor

I need to ask my doctor about Lipitor,
whether it's right for me, whether I need it,
and I have to ask him if Cialis or Viagra
is best to do the job I need them to do.

I should talk with my doctor about
why Zoloft might make me happier,
or if I need something better,
like Lithium; that is, whether my disorder

is situational or chronic, just plain depression,
or if it's bi-polar, moving from manic actions
like writing this poem, to moments of absolute
despair, when nothing matters, not even food.

I must talk to my doctor tomorrow and ask him if
over-the-counter Claritin is just as good as prescription Claritin was,
or whether I need to take two over-the-counter pills
for every single prescription pill I've taken.

I ought to talk to my doctor about whether I should continue
to take low-doses of aspirin each night
or if I should back off that regimen
but keep up the Zantac at 300 mg twice daily

or try to lighten up with the Extra Strength
over-the-counter size at 150 in the bright new gold package.
I'll ask my doctor if we're beyond wine and booze now, beyond even
     beer.
If we now require the serious stuff only doctors can prescribe.

Will Allegra clear up my allergies best, or do I need Flonase?
I know Nexium will heal the damage, but what about Prilosec?
And I'm forgetting things lately, so I'll query him about Aricept,
ask if it can really slow down the onset of Alzheimer's.

I think I'm forgetting who it is I am,
where I've been, and what I believe.
I'll ask my doctor.  He'll tell me, won't he?

The City of Eden

You mean Garden, don’t you?


No, city, although there are apple trees there,
and snakes, lots of them, those you can see

and those you can’t. Adam names streets
as well as animals, and the bridges that surge over rivers.

Eve is there as well, sitting on a restaurant stool,
eating ribs. And somewhere there’s a scowling Satan,

angry as Ahab shaking his fist at God,
watching Adam and Eve making innocent love

before the fall, hissing and moaning
because he can’t stand seeing two people so happy,

here miles from their forest glen,
in the city of Eden, the city of now, and then.

More

More, she asks more,
can you write me another poem,
as if poems were as free as leaves on a branch,

Just growing there for anyone to pluck as needed.
But poems are not like that.
They ripen in the soul, and can only be given

As they allow themselves to be given.
And so here is this poem, in response to what you ask for.
Take it. Let it circulate around your body like blood.

Then tell me what it feels like to have my words
Dancing in the circuit of your being.
Let me know what it’s like to have my life in yours.

Ken Pobo

Gerard Manly Hopkins Visits

I'm tongue-tied before Gerard,
a mentor.  He shies away
when I blurt how I admire

his work.  Stan suggests
a back yard walk.  Raspberries
redden at the edge.  Gerard
follows us, timidly at first,

starts devouring berries,
one after another, mouth runny,
shirt red.  He praises weeds
and bugs, says even

the peskiest has a place,
slaps a mosquito,
looks guilty.



In the Wildlife Center

Through the screen door
of their cage, we stare in—
both owls stare back,
make no sound:

pollen falling gently
on birch branches
in depths of a forest.



Murdoch Lust

He sneaks his entire news team
into the elevator, stops it

between floors.  One after another
they service him.  He starts

the elevator again—when it opens,
everyone gets out,

takes their places
before a camera,

swallows,
gives news.

Contributors' Notes

Sam Hamill is the award-winning author of over forty books of poetry, essays and translations from classical Chinese, Japanese, ancient Greek, Latin, and other languages.  He is Founding Editor of Copper Canyon Press.

Beckian Fritz Goldberg is the author of three previous books, of poetry, Body Betrayer, In the Badlands of Desire, and Never Be the Horse.  She teaches in the MFA Program at Arizona State University in Tempe. 

Fred Moramarco: click here to read about Fred Moramarco and more poems.  He is co-editor of The Poetry of Men's Lives: An International Anthology.  He is also the editor Poetry International.

Kenneth Pobo is a regular contributor to ForPoetry.com.  Click here to read about Ken Pobo's books and publications. His most recent collection, INTRODUCTIONS, is published by Pearl's Book'Em Press in Atlanta.  His upcoming chapbook from Peshekee River Press is called TEA ON BURNING GRASS.  He is the featured poet in the inaugural issue of the online journal CENTRIFUGAL EYE.  He likes to garden and do his radio show which you can hear Saturdays from 6-8 pm EDT called "Obscure Oldies with Ken Pobo at WDNR.com.

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