Category / Poetry / Spring 2021 / Spring 2021 Poetry

Grounded I remove my shoes, lean back to watch the clouds converging. I miss cruising up there through vapor layers. I miss the sun, in blazes under a plane wing. Earthbound, I satisfy my distance hungers tracing a finch’s quick urges in the apple tree. The althea drops another spent blossom. A dandelion seed drifts…

The train took us back in time, traveling from snow-capped trees, frozen rivers, ice like spears— journeying into a sunset which burst on our cloud-worn eyes, spring-like, barely remembered. Here, the waters streaked with white were coloured by the wind, not ice. Bushes unburied themselves. Cold-mantled trees bared their arms, stretched frozen fingers sunward, dared…

First, decide if you are an ocean person— Highway 101— an inland person—Route 66— a person who needs to be somewhere fast—I-95— or a person with no place to go— U. S. 83, The Road to Nowhere The destination doesn’t matter, philosophers say. It’s how you get there that counts, there being death and right…

My lips, made of stars, will open eyes. Do not fear. I do not pick forgotten flowers nor mourn years, like apples, rotten on the ground. Look up, my love, there is no land, no forest left to burn. We are light and heat, the lightest dust, knitted into one Laine Derr holds an MFA…

Night reveals itself. I drenched the bed with fear and now through the open window, I let darkness dry skin of the fully woken, yet amazed body to the racket of aroused traffic and seagulls fishing in waste bins across the parking lot. It is the time when living things come back to life. It…

If you go to the Kalahari    try to arrive in the deep desert    well into the dark of night    when the black is an impenetrable    screen all around you when eyes are forced upward    to find light    to the thick blanket        of stars, so bright        you cannot…

Earthworms are the veins of the earth. The proof is their souls carved on the ground during drought. Ground Dragons, as they are called in the Far East. While dragons mean everything in China: The root of a mountain is a throbbing dragon pulse; The place where the emperor resides is where the dragon lies.…

If I could be anywhere, I would be sundrenched, On the beaches of the Mediterranean, Bordered by orange and lemon trees, Sprawling green leaves In vases of white and blue, Looking out on a terrace At the teal coverlets of ocean, Its long dress unspooling In waves onto the sand That cradles my toes, Without…

She was seven years old and with her was her ever-following imaginary friend A wisp It’s real she says Nobody believes her but I do Because I have seen the other side Nobody gives her any attention Because of this fantasy they say But I know what’s real I know she sees something Nobody understands…

Her father took her to the lake To fish for old, rusty coins that had sunk to the Bottom. She asked him if she could go for a swim, And he agreed, So she dived Down into the depths of the lake until she passed By her late brother—his body Swaddled by the green, filmy…

*** If you close my eyes, I’ll see eagles and eaglesses. I’ll see their highland nests, their heads, and the waltz of talons. They feed their fledglings; they fall down like sabers. I open my eyes – and all of them vanish. If you close my eyes, I’ll see a small house. I’ll see the…

Eight billion viruses move from one set of lips to another during a kiss. Twenty billion, if you use your tongue. His eight billions have been waiting for so long. They’ve already packed their luggage. They jump up and down, impatient. But his twenty billions have already lost all hope. No, they are not some…

I marvel at the sand spilling from your stitching years after I retired you to this back hall closet. No more taxis or jets or nights where my straining muscles kept your buffalo hide safe from icy salted streets. I ignored your heirloom worthiness, dragging you across uncounted borders. Remember Chiang Mai, Rome, Cape Town…

Swimming through the muggy air Shoes scraping concrete Cold brew taste on my tongue Stacked, rollercoaster highways “I wonder if it will feel like driving home” Words soaked in fear from my mother’s tongue What is home but memory? Is home what fills you with nostalgia? Or is nostalgia grief of a simpler past? My…

I am two years ten months old, beloved first-born: am told my face  is open as windows, my smiles gems of happiness, when baby sister is born.   I remember being taken to visit Amma and the wrinkly new baby  too in the hospital, in the morning, right  before I have to go to Mrs. Pinto’s…

Come with me                                     to where There is Here, the Eden we all once knew.                                     And no matter our errant ways sometime so unclear for every bat,                                     there is indeed me and you. Let it be…