the dreamed red sun of the morning – thus I get tender letters. On wings of the morning glow – I fly into lands of butterfly-like hearts. In my vans – the poesy is indeed fulfilled. I am looking at starry starlit moonlit night – each starlets enchanting me on ways into ontology. The silvery fantasy – heralds my ways to the dreamiest moon. I am seeking the brightest star – the philosophical as well as druidically poetical. I will become blissful and Apollonian. A meek elf showing me the moon full of comet dust – the ambrosia for dreaming souls. Long live my auntie – the sibyl with propitiously weird magic!
Paweł Markiewicz was born 1983 in Poland (Siemiatycze). His English haikus and short poems are published by Ginyu (Tokyo), Atlas Poetica (USA), The Cherita (UK), Tajmahal Review (India) and Better Than Starbucks (USA). More of Paweł ’s work can be found on Blog Nostics.
I have too much to eat I take food from the mouths of children from all over the globe I am gleeful as I fatten
I’m a trust fund baby so I don’t have to work I take up silly hobbies as past-times
I watch all the food shows on TV I am a virtual glutton I lick the screen clean
I masturbate to images of the food and the food show hosts
I like the chubby, spicy Sicilians I venture into homosexuality with the male chefs
I have too much to eat but I don’t eat it all A lot of it I throw out I get carnal pleasure from tossing food into the garbage I have servants to dispose of it but I like making expeditions into the alley to dispose of it myself I call this “Adventure Travel”
Glue
As a teenager in his bedroom retreat he built model airplanes got lightheaded on the glue listened to Odetta while he built listened to Ledbelly Muddy Waters
His schizophrenic sister skulked in the hall Her complexion was pitted and she wore thick glasses with black rims but I found her attractive an older woman with secret knowledge I feared I would never have
I wanted to be misled I wanted to be detoured by someone whose life was a detour I wanted to get high on airplane glue without ever building an airplane
God Created Fledglings
The neighbours across the street have seen the woman with the dead eyes in the tree and have called the police again How many times has it been this year the woman asks her husband He shrugs
They think she’s dangerous to herself or others They’re less concerned about her and more concerned about the others: them
The police stroll through the house of the woman with the dead eyes as if they have the right
The woman with the dead eyes doesn’t mind because she has a fantasy that she is having a threesome with these police officers They are so tough and virile
The red-headed officer sees the fledglings five of them laid on a board across her bed He says: What’s that?
Those are birds, she says God created them
What are you doing with them?
Teaching them, she says, indoctrinating them into the new morality leading them into the next stage of their evolution
In fact, she’s going to decapitate them because it will give her a thrill and make her feel better The neighbours don’t know that but they are afraid that she is dangerous to herself and others especially others: them
Winds of Santa Ana
The Santa Ana winds shaped me Their power snatched the cigarette from my fingers and drove it deep into dry chaparral The resulting fire was preordained I could have lived in Hoboken NJ and the fire still would have been preordained still my fault
The western winds overwhelmed me They blew my garage open sucked my tuba out into the pebbly road dragged it down the street Sparks flew from its brass I was trying to teach myself to play it so I could join a Mariachi band with my friends Pollo Murillo and Hector Delgadillo
My father was a half-Jewish Rumanian but passed as Mexican He knew all the love songs all the songs that started with Mi Amor and ended with Mi Corazon He never sang them to my mother I knew he was not singing to her though she was his wife She was as beautiful and upright as a statue of a Madonna carved from pinyon wood by a Colonial sculptor
When she was around, he shut his lips tight or twisted them like a bad ventriloquist
He sang his songs to someone else someone in a different country he hadn’t met yet someone he was preparing for like preparing for the Second Coming
My mother was a Christian woman though she didn’t love Jesus It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in Him She was merely indifferent
My cap flew from my head My grandfather’s fedora blew off his dead head his head a block of grey clay awaiting the pinching of my fingers to truncate the seven generations of suffering deemed necessary
by the Holy Book to wear down sin
I’d take it down to maybe four
My grandmother reclined on a tree limb holding a Russian ukulele and the eternal flame of youth It glowed orange like the eyes of a tabby cat The wind blew her out of her tree
The wind blew carom boards down Topanga Boulevard out to the ocean They skimmed across the surface like plywood torn from houses in a hurricane
I didn’t understand the meaning of youth or age All I understood was the wind
The wind would blow everything away everything of value or lacking value It would all end up stuck on the branches of some bush
I didn’t need to go to high school The wind was my teacher The wind was the wisest teacher The wind would get fiercer every year All human life would disappear
The wind blew like it never did in Patterson New Jersey like Dr. Poet William Carlos Williams never experienced But Dr. Williams kept his wooden tongue depressors locked in a glass jar anyway He never knew what might be coming
The wind blew out the windows of our stucco shanty the one Old Man Dengler allowed us to live in
The Electrical Engineer had come from New Jersey to remake the San Fernando Valley in the image of a Diode had come to cast Aerospace in the image of the Aztec gods with hordes of his self-replicating spawn who enrolled in my school and looked down on me
This engineer sat at his desk and the wind sucked open his drawers scattered his papers financial papers technical papers He had no idea wind could blow like that Those papers were his life
The wind turned coffee beans into bullets The Santa Ana winds stripped tomatoes from their vines the grapes from theirs
Italians and Jews cried together Tumbleweeds are weapons of mass destruction
In the future recreational marijuana would be legal in Colorado but in the meantime I was going to prison
where I could not be touched by the powerful destructive wind I can’t say I wasn’t grateful
Janice M.
I wear a crown of spark plugs crash a wedding party
I am bald and my head shines like fresh chrome on the grill of a classic Buick
The bride will have to work hard tonight to prove to her beau that he made the right choice
and I will uplift my tits as the Governor of California mounts his white horse and comes to rescue me
Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over fourteen-hundred of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He has been nominated for numerous prizes, and was awarded the 2017 Booranga Writers’ Centre (Australia) Prize for Fiction. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, is based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for Kindle and Nook, or as a print edition. His new poetry collection was published in 2019, The Arrest of Mr Kissy Face. He lives in Denver, Colorado, USA.
I’m blessed with eyes that look inwards, that see the departed and joys to come, that sifts the beauty that’s foiled with smog, that keeps a gallery of lakes and fjords.
I’m blessed with ears that vie with shells for capacity to echo the wanton waves, to resonate to the whistles of roaming whales, to capture the breaths of slumbering pearls.
My nostrils dilate to the hidden scent that stone exudes and inanimate gems, that stars transmute to ethereal winds, that words transfuse with the warmth of a friend.
My skin vibrates to the water-drop’s silk to the velvet of petals, to the lace of trees, to the fluff of clouds that seep into veins, to the texture of flames that penetrates.
Interlocking
My mind interlocks with that of the tree of a thousand rings and thirty-three, with that of a falcon who grieves at night for having kidnapped the sacred trout.
My fingers interlock with those of the wind who shrieks the pain that dwells within, with those of a lingering, pensive cloud who contemplates the cerulean skies.
My teeth interlock with those of thorns who have impaled all types of scorn, with those of a squirrel who loves to crack the nuts of wisdom on aprons of grass.
My eyes interlock with the halos of stars an agglomeration of cosmic lights, with the rays of Helios when he departs the spheres of the earth in his orange ark.
Solemnity
An Englishman’s home is his fort, a law established by Sir Edward Coke to emphasize the sanctuary of one’s abode. The assimilation to a castle had struck a chord – when I was only thirteen years old – in someone whose house was like a port accommodating galleys, ships, and boats.
There were always visitors around to probe the deepest abyss of inmost thoughts, prying, interrupting, and disrupting discourse.
I always sought the furthest room when the kitchen congested with drink and food, with preparations for a banquet that would conform to the social etiquette of being a host.
The bustle and babel created discord. The aromas of strangers who chattered and fumed would linger for hours on eves and morns.
There were always people around the house, neighbours, relatives, acquaintances and bores, fingering the solemnity of my private world with greasy fingers that relish the sauce.
Heritage
Before me lies a kingdom, submerged in the ugliest form of camouflage. The castle is a mill and the mill has ash and every nearby stone is draped with trash.
I walk the narrow lanes, each roofed with an arch. It feels like roaming the heart of an ark. I look for traces of submerged stonework amongst a vineyard of pots and pans.
The din of transactions is maddening my mind. There’s no way of silencing the gaping mouth that craves for profit from the merchandise that usurped the throne of scripts and chants.
On the top of a hill, a temple perches whose walls had withstood all types of archers, whose star was erased from stone by scratches, but whose winding stairs attest to its heritage.
Susie Gharib is a graduate of the University of Strathclyde with a Ph.D. on the work of D.H. Lawrence. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in multiple venues including Adelaide Literary Magazine, Green Hills Literary Lantern, A New Ulster, Crossways, The Curlew, The Pennsylvania Literary Journal, The Ink Pantry, Mad Swirl, Miller’s Pond Poetry Magazine, and Down in the Dirt.
Thinking now Of the barbaric rites Of our young days, Fraternity rush at Chapel Hill, A kind of ritual mutilation: Invited, I suppose, because I’d been to Boarding school, but quickly turned away, Not at all like them, tailored heirs of Planters, silver flasks, Harris Tweed sports coats at football games, Kinston, Goldsboro, Rocky Mount, The place that would have me— Frame house without Ionic columns— Refuge for northern boys Come south to school. A year later I was the brother who escorted Two or three baffled freshmen to the porch To explain we had not gotten To know them well enough. I am ashamed of that And much else besides. Have only been back two or three times since. Once a young man found our picture From fifty years before. Is this you, he asked. I had to say it was. I still keep up with two or three of them; With one, a neighbour now at Golden Pines, I share a glass of port And rue the passage of time.
Knowledge
People come to the cottage now To help us with different things, Fix the computer, cut down trees, Cost of being seventy-two. The computer guy brings no special tools, No Allen wrench with which to probe The hard drive’s dark insides, Except for which I might leave My brain to science, Only keystrokes, clicks of the mouse, Things some do for themselves.
The cottage next door is for sale, Realtor’s sign incongruous on our dirt road. My parents’ friends, also long gone, Left it to four children who have reached That tired, timed impasse of heirs: Those who would keep it can’t afford to And vice versa. So there are grandchildren Who will not know These New Hampshire woods, this pond.
Still I would protect them and us From the dead white pine By the turtle rock— I remember the storm that took its life, Years ago, Lightning running up and down the bark In a silver-black night. The woodsman, of course, does have special tools— Bobcat, chainsaw. More than that, he knows Exactly where the tree will fall.
Robert Demaree is the author of four book-length collections of poems, including Other Ladders published in 2017 by Beech River Books. His poems have received first place in competitions sponsored by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire and the Burlington Writers Club. He is a retired school administrator with ties to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. Bob’s poems have appeared in over 150 periodicals including Cold Mountain Review and Louisville Review.
In many ways, I never learn. Coaxing dead bruises. Corking my skin.
Sewing love into hems. Yearning for a reviving touch. The walking wounded in nature’s glory.
A love that bruises
Welts in line with flinching An exit beleaguered by blind adulation As harpies hang from dying trees Frothing at the mouth with maudlin song Dropping their dread like breadcrumbs Haranguing me to flee
You are not bullet proof
Let me sing to your ribcage Blessing your breath Soothing you with love, quietly I am your goddess With mettle, love forged its way We in these wastelands Our secret Brigadoon At last, I am feeling alive in a love so robust My organs riot Your order and will pull me closer Nothing can save me from you A guest inked on your skin Hunting for my final resting place
Love’s loss
shirking responsibility bathing in foolish want lounging in dreams eyes blazing in unison a sighing universal walking to walk breathing to breathe waking to each new dawn with little surprise in store holding onto fragments of hope in respect of the promise made we keep living to love with fingers now talons scratching at skin digging to feel something other than nothing you made the nothing something we grew closer as love knocked us sideways stoking the hearts of us flooding our bodies with joy love in a country made for two we sealed it and ran you with my sadness above you me with your mouth on mine breathing quick to save time
Remind me when I forget
Remind me that you love me Even when I blaze through Singed at the seams Untouchable Remind me that you love me I forget
Rebirth
I’ve made so many mistakes Given myself to the lost Hoping to find home Suffered the wrath of the cruel Left in pieces of grief I want a rebirth I want a riot of butterflies To take me back Back to that air heavy with colour Muted sounds comforting Nights steeped in the wonder Of my mother’s belly Back to the beginning Naked in a church font Blessed in morning light Mouths whispering promises to protect me A baby up in arms Demanding only love
Transgression
I do not want your attention. The shouts of heraldry are misplaced as I squint at the sun. I hide in the dark. Waiting for empty pavements to exist. Do you know how it feels to stalk the earth in vain. To watch the rain and want to be the raindrops? The only joy is knowing I’m not alone in my exclusion. I am part of a pack. A misunderstood teeming line of souls. One day, we will have favour. We shall have glory. You and yours will bow. Holding your wicked tongue. Your unclenched fist signalling hope.
I am an unfinished opus
I am an unfinished opus. A work of art in waiting. Life composes me. The seasons work in tandem.
Rain dampens wrath. Cold brings hiatus. Sun warms the binding. Adding essential strength.
Anne-Marie Silbiger is an Irish poet living in London Twitter
Butterball! Fatso! Lardass! The enduring names my Catholic school chums unaffectionately called me on the plague-ground at St. Mary’s Grade School in the fifties. Who could blame them? My wads of flab embodied everything they feared
they would become if they let themselves go. I weighed 164 lbs. in sixth grade and wore jeans marketed as “Husky.” No matter that these excessive pounds journeyed my way during months of hospitalization and bedrest prescribed
by doctors for my “possible” case of Rheumatic Fever. Hours watching Howdy Doody and other couch attractions combined with mounds of Twinkies, chicken a la king, donuts, M&Ms, Fritos, Baby Ruths, Milky Ways, guzzled down with Coca-Cola, Ovaltine, Pepsi, and
You-Hoos, anesthetized my swollen ankles, stiff limbs, murmuring heart, and broken spirit. I wasn’t like the other boys, but I had been. At four years old, in home movies, I was skinny and running after life. Then my ankles swelled, my body stiffened,
and my mouth opened to the processed wonders of the fifties—capitalism’s cold war harvest. I lost the weight when my father died in 1964. Turns out, grief is a terrific diet regime. Still my body held other treats in store for me.
At 14 my face and forehead were so riddled with acne that Bud, owner of the Snack Shack on Pershing Boulevard, where I ate golden hash browns tickled with butter, loudly asked in front of all his customers at the counter,
“DO YOU HAVE A SKIN DISEASE?”
I turned to the Halcyon Plan: washed my face three times a day with Halcyon Oatmeal Soap (how those soapy oat-crisps scraped across my pustules and made them bleed!), smeared stinging Halcyon Lotion (really hyped-up
rubbing alcohol) over my sores twice-a-day, and took Halcyon Pills (candy coated sugar tabs) twice-a-day, all to be like those other boys: athletic, smooth-skinned, attractive to the girls. At 15 my face resembled an unbaked pepperoni pizza.
You’ll never find a woman, I said aloud to my mirror image. You’ll be alone for the rest of your life. Accept it and forget it. And I did. I flushed the soap, pills, and lotion down the toilet. I didn’t look at myself in the mirror
for a year. When I was sixteen, I caught my reflection by mistake—maybe in a spoon or a lake. I was astounded. My face was as smooth as a newborn’s behind. Still, I wasn’t like the other boys. I could
play a mean set of drums and, despite what the nuns told me, I had a mind. The urge to conform, to be like those other guys, was something I gleefully abandoned to the nasty blemish of time.
St. Rose of Lima
She was an occasion of sin. Men would see her and their apostate gushers would fill holy water fonts from Pisco to Puno, Lisbon to Pucallpa. The entire male population of Peru teetered on the edge of Hades and she knew it. Her parents wanted her to marry, be merry, act like a normal girl, but Rose had different ideas. What about those poor backsliders enraptured by her silky dark hair and smooth olive skin? Because of her irresistible beauty so many souls sizzled, sputtered, bubbled-up
in Satan’s skillet that his stupendous spatula couldn’t handle all that spiritual bacon. To stop the drooling and dripping, Rose cut off her hair, slathered her face with hot peppers until it blistered, and placed a homemade crown of thorns on her head. But wait, that wasn’t enough to atone for the shameful venery caused by her gorgeousness. She was a master seamstress and regularly took a sewing needle and plunged it deep into her scalp, probably penetrating her brain. No wonder she had visions of the Devil. Since she was a saint-in-waiting she evidently
didn’t have to worry about infection. Guess pre-canonization was the 17th Century version of antibiotics. Well, maybe not, she died at 31. I only read three books at St. Mary’s Grade School: St. Rose of Lima, Blessed Martin de Porres, and the Lou Gehrig story. I wanted to give away all my clothes to the poor, like Blessed Martin, but my parents didn’t take to that idea, and I certainly wasn’t up for sticking a pin in my head (besides, I wasn’t, as far as I knew, an occasion of sin—but maybe perusal of some priestly diaries might prove otherwise). So, I chose baseball. I’m still a follower of St. Lou.
Launched in Light
1.
Every morning I open the blinds as if hoisting the main on a sailboat. Like wind, a nothing that propels vessels along waterways, light, another nothing I can’t hold, or touch, or taste, fills our bedroom— announces another day on our beleaguered but still green planet.
2.
People argue over light: a series of waves, a gaggle of particles, waves and particles. Its contrast with afternoon shadow heartbeats a room, pushes particles of my life into an open face discovery, sends waves of warmth through my biography.
3.
They say that night harbors mystery, but real mystery is launched in light. How does something not liquid pour onto a carpet, or spread into a room like a celestial mantilla? How does a huddle of vibrating molecules force a smile or an invisible wave inspire a song?
Requiem in Winter
The icing lake moves slowly pushed by northern Michigan winds, pallbearers to autumn’s corpse—
a sombre procession witnessed by bending spruces, birches, cedars and aspens; their sudden
frozen creakings, a brutal requiem with movements entitled Impermanence, Decay, Endurance.
The Mirror Stage
Identity didn’t exist in the 14th Century (i) Nobody wondered who they were— they knew: either they were peasants who spent their lives working for others, making babies, and waiting to die, or
they were the noble class who spent their time waging war, making babies, and waiting to die so they could pass on their possessions and reap their just reward in the next life.
So what is this carapace we crawl inside, carry wherever we go; this Self, invented by psychoanalysts, that we constantly cultivate and that gets in between ourselves and others all the time
but random images reflected to us by parents, siblings, teachers, friends— fellow travellers in this veil of years? Some of us wear fedoras and payot, others prune and preen in imitation of
their avatars in the pages of Vogue or GQ. Some wear t-shirts in winter, others gray government suits, blue shirts, red ties, ready for their television appearances. Some are captured in nearly invisible
bikinis, swim trunks, and flat stomachs cavorting with the terminally happy in places like Spice Island, Casa de Campo, and Belmond La Samanna. We are obsessed, in our confusing and divided times,
not so much with graven images of old, but with a modern excarnation: the Self reflecting on itself. Shipwrecked On Illusion Island we worship ourselves, our craven images, gravid with death and gravebound.
(i) See Tuchman, Barbara, A Distant Mirror, New York: Random House, 1987
The Sea
Roar that makes the cosmos cower, waves that carry on their backs dolphins I aspire to become, undertow—invisible, sinister, evil, admirable—takes back what it gives only to give it again: treasure of sand and shore, seashells that echo its voice, green tangled locks of Aphrodite’s hair, Poseidon’s foamy champagne along its penumbra, aroma from below, destiny’s perfume— a mist that mimics infinity and captures eternity’s smile.
Charlie Brice is the author of Flashcuts Out of Chaos (2016), Mnemosyne’s Hand (2018), and An Accident of Blood(2019), all from WordTech Editions. His poetry has been nominated for the Best of Net anthology and twice for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in The Atlanta Review, The Sunlight Press, Chiron Review, Plainsongs, I-70 Review, Mudfish 12, The Paterson Literary Review,and elsewhere.
Image: Herbert James Draper, The Pearls of Aphrodite, 1907
Rotund Mrs. Goldstein, my boss asked me if I was taking drugs Of course I was
Drugs were like sex, which I wasn’t getting and ice cream, which I was getting a lot of serving myself from the ice cream tubs when she and her husband weren’t looking
Drugs and ice cream direct lines to pleasure
No, Mrs. G. I’m not taking drugs
Max, you give me denials like a drink machine gives cans of soda
I was taken aback by her use of metaphor and couldn’t match her eloquence my lies flat-footed
She gave me a skeptical look and stepped closer I’m only five foot four She was a broad wall in front of me I had the thought that I could step forward and kiss her aproned chest smelling of corned beef lean against her and pray as if I were at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem
Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over fourteen-hundred of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He has been nominated for numerous prizes, and was awarded the 2017 Booranga Writers’ Centre (Australia) Prize for Fiction. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, is based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for Kindle and Nook, or as a print edition. His new poetry collection was published in 2019, The Arrest of Mr Kissy Face. He lives in Denver, Colorado, USA.
“Was your day OK?” It’s just you look away and I don’t bee line to your honey smooth forehead. I don’t see your worries – those collected in blemishes or bags or even uneven sags that I don’t see. You are not Exhibit A or B or even C to be looked at like a commodity. You are more, my eternal amour. You are my best sounding-board friend and the perfect true love; my lover in dreams and in each creamy rich chocolate waking hour and day. The only one with that timeless girl’s heart – like the laughter of bicycle rides – and that sunrise smile as you nurture other smiles around you. You wear it loosely, care-free as you ‘pay it forward’ or tightly tied back on those few fraught long days. Your happiest actions outshine all that is outward as they come from somewhere softly ageless and inside. So, let me now ask you, please. You are important to me, “Are you alright?” “Was your day OK?”
Mark Anthony Smith was born in Hull. He graduated from The Open University with a BSc (Hons) in Social Sciences. His writing has appeared in Spelk, Nymphs, Fevers of the Mind and others. In 2020, he is due to appear in Horror Anthologies published by Eerie River and Red Cape Publishing. ‘Hearts of the matter’ is available on Amazon.
residents oldish some younger than me most yoked to challenges – me blessedly free for now at least
I fretted to select poems didn’t want to swamp lovely folk with hard words dense works I couldn’t make them sad lost in miscomprehension
I did my normal thing – I’ll read unless I have a volunteer expecting no-one then
your quiet cracked voice said I will your wife stared at you soft through dementia’s mist alerted by your gentle confidence
and you read Frost’s A Time to Talk with your whole deep-timbred heart claimed its meaning read friendship’s rhythm in rich-seamed Geordie tones
Ceinwen lives near Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, and writes short stories and poetry. She has been widely published in web magazines and in print anthologies. She has an MA in Creative Writing [Newcastle 2017]. She believes everyone’s voice counts.
Robert Demaree: At a workshop in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, in August 2017, Marilyn Nelson introduced us to poets we were not likely to know—poets from the Middle East, Native America, Gary, Indiana, poems that spoke of addiction, alienation, anger. Then she explained to us the “golden shovel” prompt or exercise, created by National Book Award winner Terrance Hayes. We were to write a poem in which the lines should end, consecutively, with words from a line by Gwendolyn Brooks, the first African American to win a Pulitzer in poetry and serve as Poet Laureate for the U.S. We were offered a choice of three lines by Brooks, and I selected “I shall create! If not a note, a hole” (from “Boy Breaking Glass”). I was able to follow the directions for one of the two stanzas below.
Golden
Shovel Exercise
The participants all look alike this morning, and I Think of the syringes, which we shall Not know, even if we create Poems of pain and exclusion, even if We were to experience, as we have not, The chilling look and touch of a Security guard, his voice a strident note Of smug assumption, a Clue to the we-ness of this American hole.
Then I remember being pulled out of the line Returning from Canada, Luggage searched at random, they said, But we suspect for prescription drugs, Targeted for our years, A group not mentioned In this morning’s verse.
Chateau Frontenac
Looking back sixty years It seems so like them That my parents chose a place Called the Chateau Overlook, A modest auberge appropriate To a schoolmaster’s means And outlook on life. I remember the tour at The Plains of Abraham, and a man Lobbing a half-dollar U.S. over the Heads of the crowd, a tip for the guide. It fell in the mud at his feet; He paused for a moment, Then picked it up.
I went by myself to the Place d’Armes. Returning, I asked the concierge In my false, wooden French, “Où est ma mère?” “Oopstairs” was his reply.
Last summer our daughter and her son Drove to Québec. The Chateau Overlook is gone. Philip stepped into the lobby of The Chateau Frontenac, Something I had not done, And rode to the top floor Where he took a picture of The Plains of Abraham.
Robert Demaree is the author of four book-length collections of poems, including Other Ladders published in 2017 by Beech River Books. His poems have received first place in competitions sponsored by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire and the Burlington Writers Club. He is a retired school administrator with ties to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. Bob’s poems have appeared in over 150 periodicals including Cold Mountain Review and Louisville Review.
