Poetry III

Ronda Broatch

All I Want is the Morning

paper with its crossword
puzzles and funnies,
the tea in my cup
warm. All I want is sun
enough to dry the lawn,

the mower, asleep
these winter months, full
of fuel, an untamed
pasture before me, a solid
place on this hard earth.

All I want is another planet
besides this one, to know
there is life in a place
I don’t know, an ocean
deeper than this, or perhaps

just a lake
surrounded by trees, grass
waving in a breeze much like
here, a girl dipping
her toes beneath the surface

for the first time
on a spring day
after reading
her first love
poem.

Postcard From the Lighthouse

This is only to let you know I’ve arrived.
I’ve closed the holes on the shore with my foot-
steps, & left the sleeping pup to sun. Today
an eagle shed its quill & with it I write you that
I wrested an abalone ear from the many-
fingered kelp. That I’ve scrawled in sand
mustn’t alarm you – the Hunter’s Moon
erases all faults with its blood.

Maybe I’m seventeen,

the wild field, grass
high enough to hide

the landscape of your back,
rising, falling
above me. Your

skin is nimbus, cumulo-
stratus, chest and shoulder
I barely notice. So much

blue, the ocean’s
ah – hush
distant, crickets’

shh shh shh
to lull us. What if I were
to open, lunar, allow

the tides to fill me
conceive a universe
as yet wholly unnamed.

I am heavy
with craving, my skin
splintering into new

constellations.
Exhausted, you
drop beside me, all needs

sated. Sleep, and I will remain
wakeful, savor the salt
of emerging

stars on my tongue.
Slumber and I will quaver
at the edge of leaving -

the sea, these reeds,
your rhythmic breath and all
that spins without falling.

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Ronda Broatch is the author of Shedding Our Skins, (Finishing Line Press, 2008), and Some Other Eden (2005). Nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize, Ronda is the recipient of a 2007 Artist Trust GAP Grant, and is currently an assistant editor for Crab Creek Review.

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Tanya DeBuff

Cinquains

Shadie (Sunshine Girl)

About
That ebullient
light, replete to bursting
Small-toothed laugh; a startled unwish
fulfilled.

Boudreaux (Spotted Hawk)

Five days
brought my warrior
son; kindness cached in dark
skin. Tender and oh, beckoning
sweet lips.

LoLa (Blue Bird Sings)

She’s all
Reaching ringlets
Now capricious, quickly
exempting, mercurial riled
wild chick.

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Tanya DeBuff is a graduate student at Inland Northwest Center for Writers at Eastern Washington University. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Terri Kirby Erickson

At the Nursing Home

A man sits by a window in a hallway,
hands limp in his lap,
wheelchair turned away from the sun. A house
this rundown would be condemned—

eyes milky with cataracts, limbs so thin a breeze
could snap them, skin like sheets
of phyllo laid over bone. Yet, he’s smiling,
as if he’d drawn the curtains

and inside there are marvels—a Honus Wagner
baseball card, a humidor packed
with hand-rolled cigars—and the woman
he loves holding a wine glass, laughing.

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Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, Thread Count and Telling Tales of Dusk (Press 53). Her work has been published in numerous journals and anthologies, including A Prairie Journal, Blue Fifth Review, The Christian Science Monitor, Oak Bend Review, Pisgah Review, Wild Goose Poetry Review and many others. In 2009, she received a Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize nomination. She lives in North Carolina.

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Changming Yuan

Behind a Ballad

to bring this single word
into the mind, the cherry flower has prepared to bloom
for the whole spring

to bring this single line
onto the paper, the thunder has rolled
through the entire summer sky

to bring this single stanza
onto the mouth, the west wind has blown
over all the golden fields

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Changming Yuan authored several books before emigrating from China and currently teaches writing in Vancouver. Yuan's poems appear in Barrow Street, Best Canadian Poetry, Exquisite Corpse, London Magazine and over 200 other literary publications worldwide. His collection (Chansons of a Chinaman) and monograph (Politics and Poetics) both released recently, Yuan has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

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