Tag Archives: New Mexico Poet

“Thoughts While Reading Kierkegaard (The Cupboard, 1841)” by Katherine DeBlassie

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His coat hangs, Regine,
like a cassock and hides his wooden leg.
The clock sounds; the sign of his father
he carries on his back—

He loved the cupboard. Wanted your
body inside it more than you did.
Acknowledge the things inside it (agony, pseudonyms . . .)
but have the opposite in mind.

He quakes underneath his umbrella,
pushing against the tic-toc, the daily
calendar, the other darker days.
The little hand goes up the body.

The big great big hand is paralyzed.
He is the earth, you give him a glance, a nod,
at Vespers on Easter Sunday,
and he is struck by losing you (by looking at you),

weighted by the gravity that pulls him to a higher order—
sun, moon, planets, palisander box with no shelves;
precursor to a casket. Vellum manuscript: one for him and
one for you. Let him turn you into something else—

—

Katherine DeBlassie’s work has appeared in or is forthcoming in B O D Y, Inch, Zone 3, Tidal Basin, Court Green, Boxcar Poetry Review, Verse Daily and Cutthroat among others. She earned her MFA from the University of Maryland. She received an honorable mention for the 2011 Rita Dove Poetry Prize, was a finalist for the 2009 Joy Harjo Poetry Prize and received Work-Study Scholarships for the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.

 

Inception by Joanne Bodin

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It’s a tiny drop of dew on a blade of grass after a rainstorm
that won’t let you shift your focus until it burrows into your subconscious
with tangled images that call out to you
then it disappears for awhile
but you know it’s still there,  the melancholy thoughts
still disjointed pulling at you to give them life
to tell their story untill they weigh you down with abandon
you try to convince yourself that it’s not your story
but then the tidal wave, no longer a tiny drop of dew
envelopes your subconscious and debris of human suffering wash along
the shore of your mind and interrupt your every day routine
then it disappears for awhile
until you are sitting at the Sixth Street Cafe with your writing pad, pen
cup of Moroccan dark roast coffee
the sound of rain pellets on the picture window
in the corner of your wooden booth
the drone of a train whistle tunnels into your subconscious
and synapses begin firing away
a train roars by
rain mixed with snow blurs your vision and you look out of the window
see the ghostly shadow of the red caboose as it disappears into the mist
suddenly the fog lifts
you see distant sun drenched fields of poppies and columbine
the entire story now unfolds and you know everyone so well
their stature, their favorite foods, their deepest secrets
and your hand begins to write- you dribble words onto
paper like creamy butterscotch candy in metaphors of longing
of pain and  euphoria that dance with you in a
tango of sentences and the floodgates open
you stay with them until the finish, not to win the race
but to honor their presence, and the heaviness lifts
your muse gives you a creative wink
and runs off to romp in her fields of glory.

—

Joanne Bodin is a retired teacher of the gifted in New Mexico. She received her Ph.D. in Curriculum Instruction and Multi-Cultural Teacher Education. Her latest novel, ORCHID OF THE NIGHT is a dark psychological thriller about a man running from his troubled past who finds solace in the gay community of Ixtlan. It WON the 2017 New York City Big Book Award as “distinguished favorite” in GBLT fiction. It also WON the 2017 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award in GBLT fiction and placed as “favorite” in three other categories.
Visit her website at http://www.joannebodin.com for updates

 

“viii” by Lisa Gill

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Red as a Lotus by Lisa Gill, La Alameda Press, Cover by J.B. Bryan

The third poem in my Poetry Picks Series, which celebrates poetry and honors poets, is from Lisa Gill’s first book of poetry titled “Red as a Lotus,” a collection of approximately 110  fourteen-lined epistolary poems addressed to Thomas Merton.

Many poems in this collection read as contemplative meditations while others provide voice to spiritual and existential questions whose answers are often ephemeral. Described by La Alameda press as a collection “with an eye which stays true to the bone,” and by others alternately as a mystery and a revelation, Lisa Gill’s first book of poetry is a worthy read and one every serious poet should have on his or her bookshelf.

viii

I watched the lunar eclipse. Ever so gradually the shadow

of the earth crept across the surface of the moon until nothing

but an infinitely fine sliver remained. And standing under

a street lamp, I realized I’m part of what blocks the light,

just another person on this planet spinning about, following

one dizzying pattern after another, rarely bothering to calculate

the ramifications of my orbit. Perhaps despite every attempt

to move in good faith, I’ll always end up coming between the sun

and the place it should shine. When the moon started waxing,

people spilled back into buildings. I held out, thinking how

fifteen minutes ago, the bars emptied onto the street an

for a while, we all stood still and looked up, past any neon,

to the moon — as if were new, as if it were last call. Heading

back into the bar I prayed my shadow sheds such light.

– – – – – –

“Red as  Lotus” is available from La Alameda Press, New Mexico (ISBN #1-888809-33-7)

Check back here for a future interview with Lisa Gill and learn about the many projects she has been, and continues to be, involved in since the publication of her first book.