The Word Ocean

Joe Milford's World

It's rare to read poems that really surprise me, that don't seem to fit into a mold of any kind, but that's a great attribute of Joe Milford. His images are vivid and fluid, and he writes with authority, wonder, and sometimes playfulness. There's a lot going on in his poetry; it's a feast.

Joseph Victor Milford was born in Alabama in 1972. He began writing poetry at an early age, and it eventually led him to the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa where he achieved his MFA in poetry. He has been published in dozens of print and online journals, and his first collection of poems, Cracked Altimeter, was published by BlazeVox books in 2010. He is also the host of the Joe Milford Poetry Show, a radio show featuring contemporary poets from Canada and America. He has also been a professor of English for over a decade.

 

Towards Dusk

 

Trying to own an afternoon

a snowglobe or watch

stopped and handed down

from a grandfather

an ex-girlfriend

the elusive afternoon

always shedding its scales

while clipping its toenails

in a sunlit attic room

while the machinery

gasps steam from across

the railroad tracks as this

afternoon crochets afghans

to be unraveled by other

machinations of time 

and each day unbuttoning

its waistcoat to spill out

radio shows and maps

of a country of strip-malls

and starvation as the cable

goes unpaid and lost transmissions

whittle at the roots of oaks

with a humid halitosis

as a Ferris Wheel crashes through

our houses and grinds 

our neighborhoods into clippings

of old news and then spins

like a coin losing its centrifugal 

force to finally fall to its side

making a crop circle, the signature

of the catastrophe and cornucopia

of the harvest and the chaff

of the mute scrapbooks webbed

together by spiders every afternoon.

 

 

Divorce Proceeding

 

You eat at the foot

of the tower because

that's the only place

in the city where you can't

see the tower.

 

I eat at the top

of the tower

because that's the only place

in the world

where I can't see you.

 

 

Excerpts from 23 Impressions of Cormac McCarthy

 

9.

Wading into the grey

Lake, every step pondering

What leviathan lies beneath

The still waters, what bracken

Skin will slither across ankles

 

10.

What does he mean

By “the autistic dark”?

I think I know when I hear

The howls over the stark

Flat plain dusted with the resin

Of flattened ancient kingdoms

 

16.

An hourglass in a sandstorm

A divining rod on the ocean floor

A flint frozen in an iceberg

A river under a burning bridge

A flower vulcanized and preserved in ash

A soul inside a man

 

Stan Galloway

I am proud to post some poems by Stan Galloway, who came to me through my friend Cliff. Stan is a teacher and longtime resident of the south.Connotation Press did an interview I found enlightening. Here is what Stan told me about himself:

"I have lived and taught in Virginia for more than 20 years, even though I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and have lived a number of places in between. My education took place in Idaho and Kansas. Additionally I have taught in Ohio and Missouri. I’ve come to love and respect the culture of the South as I interact with it and as it enters me. My first book of poems (after more than 100 published online) is Just Married, available from unbound CONTENT. I came to write from occupational hazard as well as a method of working through personal difficulties. I find I can create worlds to help me understand myself better in the form of a poem."

 

Skinny Dipping in the Back Forty

 

Water sings nine feet

deep where the creek dances

over folds of bedrock

and the push of the sun

brings sweat

and freckles

to the surface

of our skin.

No modesty,

no uncertainty

where we drop everything

to the red Georgia dirt,

hotfoot down the slope,

avoiding frog spawn,

and kiss

the pool

with our thighs

and shoulders,

touch relief and lack

with the same stroke.

 

The pool laughs back,

delight in troubling,

contentment in naked need.

 

 

Mobile in August

 

I look for libraries

Or other public buildings

Where the air might be cooler

 

Everyone is insomniac

Their sleep squashed

Breathing always as if one were

ten minutes into a workout

or working up anger at

someone close but wrong

 

The tunnel under the bay sounds appealing

But not for pedestrians

Shade keeps shimmering

Even under bridges

 

Air

Hot and long

Blankets even naked skin

Regardless of light

 

Dreams of rain

Make no difference.

 

 

When You Tell Me

After a statement by Frederick Douglass

 

When you tell me

it is for my own good,

you make your thoughts

more powerful than my own,

as if I were a child

who had not yet learned to reason,

but in failing to explain why,

you do not teach me to think,

merely provide corralling

for your own convenience and profit.

 

When you tell me

what is right and what is wrong

but teach me not to read

and I find contradiction,

you have taught me rules change

depending on the one in charge

and righteousness is defined

by the one who holds the whip.

 

When you tell me

I should see as you do

you make your vision

superior to mine

as if I cannot see the world

in the same colorblind manner

that you do,

calling yellow red

or condescension benefit

rape privilege:

two seriously different things.

Kathryn Stripling Byer

I recently discovered the amazing poetry of Kathryn Stripling Byer, who is originally from Georgia and was North Carolina's poet laureate for 5 years.

I absolutely love her poetry.

I contacted her recently and asked permission to post some of her poems and she graciously granted it. So without further ado, I will let her poems speak for themselves.

 

WEEP-WILLOW
       for Lee Smith


At night she watched the road
 and sang.  I’d sigh and settle on the floor
 beside her.  One song led
 to one more song.  Some unquiet grave.
 A bed of stone.  The ship that spun round
 three times ‘ere it sank,
 near ninety verses full of grief.
 She sang sad all night long


and smiled, as if she dared me
 shed a tear.  Sweet Lizzie Creek swung low 
 along the rocks, and dried beans rattled
 in the wind.  Sometimes her black dog howled 
 at fox or bear, but she’d not stop,
 no, not for God Himself, not even if He came
 astride a fine white horse and bore the Crown
 of Glory in His hands.  The dark was all 
 she had.  And sometimes moonlight
on the ceaseless water.  “Fill my cup,”

she’d say, and sip May moonshine
till her voice came back as strong as bullfrogs
in the sally grass.  You whippoorwills
keep silent, and you lonesome owls go haunt
another woman’s darkest hours.  Clear,
clear back I hear her singing me to sleep.
“Come down,” she trolls,
“Come down among the willow
shade and weep, you fair
and tender ladies left to lie alone,
the sheets so cold,
the nights so long.”

from Wildwood Flower, LSU Press

Legato

When the bell 

rang out noontime,

they lounged under oak trees
and drank from a mason jar

sweet tea    the taste

of a lemon slice lingering

at stovetops

and wash basins

cradles

and deathbeds

their voices kept

rising and falling 

like wind riffling 

cotton fields  

folding sheets

scrubbing floors,

spinning mayhaw juice

into a red thread

they were all the time

 singing

but we didn't listen

because it was backdrop

to what we sang

back ground

and ground back into

darkest leaf mold

that covered 

the root of our other

life     theirs

with which we never learned

how to harmonize.

 

first published in Pembroke Magazine

 

River Voices

 

           " ...  say the  past is a muddy

river"

                                       

                                                     -- Evie Shockley

 

When  she lowers her hands to the river

she feels many dead voices translating river.

 

Her fingers turn cold, but her lips part,

as if, like a hooked  fish, she longs for the river.

 

Don’t look down, her mother warned; shifting

the Ford into second gear, crossing the river.

 

The drawbridge’s rusty spine still rattles

memories she tries to dredge from the river.  

 

Old men cast their histories into the depths

she can’t reach.  Stories keep shape-shifting over the river.

 

The trees keep their roots to themselves;

but they let their reflections be stroked by the river. 

 

When she hears the cricket frogs singing,

she wants to lie down on the banks of the river.

 

Come night she hears voices.  A drunken brawl.  Somebody

cursing the day he was born.  Somebody trying to drown in the river.

 

The backwater nags at her.  Dare she strip 

down to the bone and walk barefooted into the river?

 

first published in Pembroke Magazine

Holly from North Georgia

One thing I love about Facebook is that I get to cyber meet a lot of cool and interesting folks, who are friends of my friends, or married to my friends, or friends or colleagues of some of my 5,698 cousins.  I recently "met" a young lady named Holly Holt and she has impressed me with her poetry and her dedication to higher education.

Holly helps adults get their GEDs, which is awesome. She lives in the mountains of North Georgia, a beautiful place.

I asked her to tell me a little about herself, and this is what she shared:

My journey with poetry started such a long time ago that I'm unsure what really got me started. Five out of six kids in my family write poetry, short stories, novellas, and novels. Our parents also write poetry and stories. When my Daddy attended UGA well back in the day, his English professors told him that he should pursue writing professionally. For this reason, I feel that writing has many nature/nurture aspects. Could I have inherited the drive to write? I'm unsure. I just know that I've written since I was eleven years old, and don't foresee stopping any time soon.

My sole poetic publication rests with Fjords Review as part of the Public Poetry Series, set to display later this year. I am a self-proclaimed hermit, and I enjoys my work in Adult Education, where I help others pursue their dreams of higher education.

 

Memories on Autumn's Doorstep

January’s sarcasm

and June’s fury

succumbed

to outsider dialog

on a one-way street

a mile between

hell and freedom,

then stopped

and cursed

the wind.

 

The love they had

died in silence,

severed

by differences,

and the suffocating

cloak of time,

invisible,

but felt in seasons

whose dirty secrets

are best kept by leaves

and birds.

 

Nothing I say,

do, or feel

can heal this,

 

nor can the memories

of a wild Bam-Bam

running around,

half wild,

half naked

before breasts

became an issue

 

or the tender touch

of a sweet little momma

who said and did everything

with a knowing smile

far too austere,

holding a broom

twice her size.

 

Memories aim to kill me

on autumn’s doorstep.

 

They'll bury me

with leaves

together.

 

First Poetry Reading

John Wayne smiles

from feet away,

where he can watch,

his face etched

by an artist

appreciating classics,

 

while her voice

is amplified,

not trembling

in the slightest,

though there’s pain,

and tender longing

for yesterdays

long gone.

Still, an understanding

of time’s passing

is swept into her words.

 

Baritone brother

sits beside

Mother Nature’s child.

I think about

introducing them,

but don’t.

 

The story of my life:

the feeble intentions;

the resounding ‘don’ts.’

 

I wonder if time

will ease my desire

to escape

when rough spots

find me.

 

What do you think, Cogburn?

 

An autumn breeze answers

from open doors leading

to a gentle garden

where I was inspired

too quickly—

too quickly to realize

it had rained all day.

 

My pants are still wet.

There’s a fly in here.

Applause is deafening.

 

My Heart is a Falling Leaf 

my heart is a falling leaf

as i step out tonight

winds whisper of winter

that will never see white

while arboreal backbone

plays staircase to time

(like squirrels in passage)

my blind two-step grind

falters, and I look back,

un-sweatering my grief—

she loves me, knowing

my heart is a falling leaf