poetry
Incense and extinguished candlesScent my small-town Saturday night.Post-benediction, our priest returns to the rectory.Stained-glass filters church light into the dusk.A mourning dove signals daylight’s departure.
I’m one of those readers who start at the beginning of a volume of poems. I don’t page through, nor do I read the end of the book first.
Milwaukee poet Mark Zimmermann’s first full-length poetry collection, Impersonations, dazzles with a gallery of pithy portraits written in a novel form. Take, for instance, “Osama bin Laden.”
I came across a dead porcupine sitting on its bellylooking asleep—his only sign of injury a crookedand bloody nose—and thought perhaps I’d get a poemout of it—this corpse I nearly stumbled over
My brother and I conjured a swamp of black water,filled it with saw-toothed specimens, upping the anteof our basement games. Any trek downstairs
Poems swing from the clothesline strungbetween earth and skyShe wears the soft shawl of sunriseher words like silkrunning through our fingersan offeringa melodic string of pearls
Afraid I will fall in love againwith his honey-colored wisps of hairand sturdy sinewed armsI wear a new red dressa fiery shield from regret
In dim lightGrandma sits at her tableshaving fat and fleshfrom the pig’s skullswick swick swickher knife slicesthrough bristled skinpast cartilage and brain
He sits at the counterof the café, keeps his hat on,a grey fedora, maybe thinkinghe won’t stay long.
My mother wasn’t a bakerin the ordinary sense. Nothree-tiered cakes with strawberriesmarching the frosty perimeters.No éclairs sliding from the ovenfor treats on Sundays. Sure,
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