August 22, 2009
No Boxes
by Sarah Pletts
There never was a box for your head.
Boxes are for stuff.
Never was one to think outside of.
It’s always been
heart to heart.
Detours just got thrown in.
Throw them out.
Return to your heart.
Let it rule and
put your keyboard brain to work
for your whole body.
Ms. Pletts has performed dance/theatre in Europe Camp; the Americas for 35 years—from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to the Utah Olympics. She’s soloed in Rome, Paris and Monte Carlo. She’s performed alongside Alan Ginsberg and Hunter Thompson. Her film, The Phoenix Risesscreened in four countries. Her group, The Hysteria Manufacturing Co., performed during the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival. She’s directed the Living Arts Foundation in Aspen since 1983. She finished her second book Dancing Downstream, and holds a BFA from Pratt Institute. She’s received many grants including Bell Atlantic, Benetton & the Colorado Council on the Arts.
Sarah Pletts
Box 1838 , Aspen, Colorado 81612
970-925-7018
pletts_star@yahoo.co.uk
May 4, 2009
Queen Alexandra’s Sulfur
(Sonnet to a Butterfly)
by Lynda La Rocca
Here in this hot, harsh land you make your home
where falcons soar and canyons carve the earth.
From rock to shrub to feathered grass you roam,
yet you’ve not ventured farther since your birth
than this horizon human eyes can scan
and feet can tread in moments quickly past.
You take no interest in the whims of man;
in this, your realm, your reach is just as vast.
These golden wings reflect their own sunlight;
you coax a drink from flowers in the sand
with neither fear nor worry that the night
will come too soon. What follows is as planned.
In two short weeks a life can bloom and grow
as rich and full as any that we know.
Lynda La Rocca was born in New York City in 1953, grew up in New Jersey, and graduated magna cum laude from Georgian Court College (now Georgian Court University), Lakewood, New Jersey, with a bachelor’s degree in English. From 1977-1982, she was a municipal and general-assignment reporter for the Asbury Park (NJ) Press. She has lived in Colorado and worked as a full-time freelance writer since 1982. Publication credits include The Denver Post, The Pueblo Chieftain, Woman’s World, America West Airlines Magazine, Highlights for Children , and a poetry chapbook, In the Shortness of My Days (New Spirit Press, NY, 1993). Since 1994, she has also worked part-time as a teaching assistant in the Spanish-language laboratory at Leadville's Colorado Mountain College Timberline Campus. She lives in Twin Lakes, Colorado, with her husband Steve Voynick, dog Luz, and ornate box turtle SunSpot.
April 24, 2009
Untracked
by Mike Adams
I ski now, untracked,
into the falling snow
that falls into the trough
of hard snow left
by yesterdays’ travelers,
so that the going,
through the snow-bowed
pines, is easy yet new,
my skis buried, only
the tips, pushing
tiny bow waves, visible
and making the smallest
of sounds, a faint
hissing in the full silence
of the forest.
My breathing, the fixed
flowing rhythm of arms and legs,
the still woods –
The world with all
of its burdens falls away.
I think of my 57 years,
the mountains I have climbed,
nights under the wheeling stars.
All of the women I have loved
and the one I love now
with all the fullness of my years.
And I think, too, of companions gone –
men and women – carried out
of my life by death or the strong
currents of life,
And the falling untracked snow
and what lies at the heart of it all.
Michael Adams is the author of several books of poetry and essays, and has been published in numerous journals. His most recent work, a collaboration with the poets James Taylor III and Phil Woods, is titled Underground. These three poets write and perform as the Free Radical Railroad. Michael is the winner of the 2007 Mark Fischer Poetry Prize, awarded by the Telluride Writers Guild. He teaches in the Master of Arts program for Prescott College, in Prescott, AZ. Michael grew up in Pittsburgh, PA and has lived in CO since 1980. He currently lives in Lafayette, CO, with his wife, Claire.
Mike Adams
firegiggler@earthlink.net
April 9, 2009
About Certainty
by Wendy Videlock
So much can be learned
from the open curve
of the question mark,
from the comma's calm,
from the certain G,
and the soft w,
from the kindred link
of the q and the u,
and yet,
and yet,
in this state,
a breath away
from the fervent curve,
from the i and the u
is the certain fear
of a kind of dark:
the abrupt chagrin,
the erasure mark.
(first published in Eleventh Muse)
Wendy Videlock lives on the Western Slope of the Rockies, where she is frequently assaulted by poems.
Wendy Videlock
coloradawendy@gmail.com
970-241-2057
April 1, 2009
Casa , Del Norte
by Chris Ransick
Dry wind caresses elm tree’s burls,
weathered paint the hot sun curls.
A hundred hammered nails hold fast
the slats of pine that they outlast,
the wood itself now giving way
to another night, another day.
Tall grass invades the welcome mat,
grows up through the porch where Grandfather sat
cursing the drought, cursing the rain,
cursing the tracks that bore no train,
till even the magpies, even the crows
abandoned his stunted cornfield rows
and flew away from forsaken dirt,
from the old clothesline where a tattered shirt
dangled down discolored shreds,
ghost scent sifting from the threads.
No one inhabits this casa now,
rust on the doorknob, rust on the plow,
dust in the cupboards, flies in the sills,
last residents still beneath their hills,
dreaming the dreams of the ancient dead,
where the river is honey and the rocks are bread.
Chris Ransick , Denver’s Poet Laureate, won a Colorado Book Award in 2003 for his first book, Never Summer. His collection of short stories, A Return To Emptiness, was a finalist for a 2005 Colorado Book Award and in 2006 he published his most recent collection, Lost Songs & Last Chances. He work has appeared or is forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, The Cincinnati Review, The Notre Dame Review, The Denver Post, and The Paterson Literary Review. He is a member of PEN USA’s Freedom to Write Committee and works in his local community to support literacy and freedom of expression.
Chris Ransick
4654 S. Pearl Street , Englewood, CO 80113
chris@chrisransick.com
March 12, 2009
hymn of three cherries and an apricot
by Rachel Kellum
you brought a bowl
of orchard cherries
so black red, so well read,
I blush just remembering how
they crushed and
fled their skins inside my mouth.
for the road I saved three,
and a perfect apricot sun
wrapped in a paper napkin,
but not for me. they sat
in the passenger seat, patiently,
a sweet lopsided quartet,
leaning with me around miles
of mountain curves.
the apricot went first.
(oh yes, I dared my teeth)
velvet cleavage, tart bursting
cousin of peach.
(the cherries, singing, start
to preach: O pit,
a wrinkled prayer!)
I meant to save them
for my kids, I really did.
but none were spared.
one by one, over a day
in two cars and a dim morning
kitchen, I hmmmnned them in,
and in and in.
Rachel Kellum's poems have appeared in Barnwood Magazine, Blood Lotus, Slow Trains, The Nieve Roja Review and Greyrock Review. Her creative non-fiction – two childbirth narratives that resist and revise the technocratic language of birth—are featured in the book, Journey Into Motherhood. A central Illinois native, Kellum has been writing poetry since third grade and can still recite the first poem she ever wrote at the age of eight about her teddy bear. She has lived in Colorado fourteen years and currently teaches writing, literature, humanities and oil painting at Morgan Community College where the plains have curiously claimed her again.
Rachel Kellum
721 Custer St. , Brush, CO 80723
rachyllgyne@hotmail.com
February 18, 2009
Here The Note I Would Like To Leave On Your Door
by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
You do not have to smile today. It’s gray.
Put the brave face in a box.
Curl your bones into my spiral of hum
and I will make you a home here.
You don’t need to tell me about
what was said and what was not.
And I will not speak of these things.
I will not speak at all except to say your name.
All around us dead leaves are dancing
like brown prayers unloosed from the lips.
The mule deer graze at what lies beneath snow;
they tutor us in listening.
Listening is the deepest praise.
There’s plenty to sing when we’re ready.
For now, rest on this silent rung. Hear how
the wind already brings whatever weather comes next.
Poet and organic fruit grower Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer lives in Southwest Colorado, where she serves as Poet Laureate of San Miguel County. She writes a weekly column on language for the Telluride Daily Planet, a spiritual column for virtualteahouse.com and a parenting column for parentingsquad.com. She teaches poetry for Young Audiences, The Aesthetic Education Institute of Colorado and Camp Coca Cola. Her books include If You Listen (winner of the Colorado Independent Press Association Poetry Award); Insatiable; Charity: True Stories of Giving and Receiving; and Suitcase of Yeses, an audio CD. She’s anthologized in What Wilderness This Is and Geography of Hope: Poets of Colorado’s Western Slope. Her MA in Linguistics is from UW-Madison. As mother to three children, ranging in ages from 0 to 25, she relies on singing for her sanity and performs with a seven-woman a cappella group, Heartbeat.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
PO 86, Placerville, CO 81430
970-728-0399
www.wordwoman.com
rosemerry@wordwoman.com
February 11, 2009
A Question?
by David J. Rothman
It is unclear to me?
Why so many people?
Seem to end statements?
As questions these days?
What I'm getting at?
Is that there seems to be a fear?
Of asserting propositional syntax?
Upon the world?
As if no one dares to eat a peach?
As if they did?
Dragons and volcanoes would devour them?
Like the students in my classes?
Who, when I ask them their names?
Answer "John?" or "Leslie?"
To which I've taken to responding?
Gently of course but nonetheless firmly,
"Is that a question?"
The underlying implication being
Come on, let it go?
Pluck that string?
Spank that star?
Dance in that fountain?
And try again to tell me who you are.
David J. Rothman has been a Finalist for the Colorado Book Award in poetry,and his poems and essays have appeared in Appalachia , The Atlantic Monthly, The Gettysburg Review, The Hudson Review, The Kenyon Review, Poetry, and scores of others. He also publishes widely in the mountain sports world. He is a co-founder of the Crested Butte Music Festival, the founding Publisher and Editor of Conundrum Press, and served for six years as the Headmaster of a private, independent school, Crested Butte Academy. He has taught widely in secondary, higher and continuing education and sits on a number of non-profit boards. He currently teaches part-time at Lighthouse Writers and the University of Colorado, and serves as President of the Robinson Jeffers Association. He lives in Lafayette, Colorado, with his wife and two sons.
David J. Rothman
9726 Phillips Rd. , Lafayette, CO 80026
303-664-8396 (h), 949-212-4011 (c)
February 4, 2009
Master Chef
by Barbara Ford
Two doors down lives the storyteller,
who can spin an hour into a seamless cloth
that serves to wrap you
as night creeps up unnoticed while you,
a statue, stand listening
to the unbroken thread issuing from his lips
reminding one of syrup
pouring from the heart of a tree,
dark and sweet, thick and smooth,
the storyteller pausing only when he senses
that there are people, like you =or example,
who haven't yet had dinner,
and haven't yet learned
how to turn language
into a full course meal.
Barbara Ford lives and writes in the crosswinds of two mountain passes. After years spent at sea level, she now enjoys the Sawatch and Sangre de Cristo ranges as her central Colorado neighbors, while striving to perfect the recipe for high altitude pancakes. With a background in art, Barbara pursued true love and the right light for several decades, living and working in various American landscapes. A lifelong letter-writer and notebook-scribbler, her passionate embrace of writing gradually snuck up on her, and the pen replaced her paintbrush. In poetry she writes towards an acceptance of the surprises in life and that which connects us to each other, often finding them to be one and the same.
Barbara Ford
Box 207 , Poncha Springs CO 81242
(719) 539-2626
January 19, 2009
Abiquiu
composed at Ghost Ranch
by L. Luis Lopez
Take this city-filled
soul,
pour it out,
place it in soil
beneath
your high desert vista.
Fill it with canyon,
sky,
mesa,
mountain,
smell of rain
and
song of bird.
Tint each
with time of day.
Let each
settle
into a painting of sand
so that when I'm away
I can
close my eyes
and gaze upon
and breathe your sacred strands.
From A Painting of Sand
L. Luis Lopez received his Ph.D. in Medieval English Literature from the University of New Mexico. He received his M.A. from St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico in Liberal Arts, and his B.A. in Secondary Education from Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama. Dr. Lopez is in his 44th year of teaching, having taught high school in Tampa, Florida, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and in Grand Junction, Colorado. He taught in the Academic Honors Program at the University of New Mexico and has been teaching Mythology, Latin, Ancient Greek, and the usual English writing courses at Mesa State College in Grand Junction, Colorado, where he has, until recently, served as Director of the Academic Honors Program. Dr. Lopez has published two books of poetry, Musings of a Barrio Sack Boy and A Painting of Sand . He has had poetry published in a number of literary magazines and journals including The Americas Review . He has six poems in Geography of Hope published by Conundrum Press. He also has one play, Día de Visitaciones , which has had runs in Albuquerque and San Antonio. Lopez writes in English, Spanish, and Spanglish (a blend of English and Spanish spoken in many communities in the Southwest).
Luis Lopez
c/o Mesa State College
1100 North Avenue , Grand Junction, Colorado, 81501 .
970-248-1120
llopez@mesastate.edu
December 11, 2008
The Road Near Two Grey Hills
by David Feela
A Navajo woman knows how to weave a rug
as if it were as natural as breathing.
She plucks at the warp like a grandmother
picking lint from an old sweater
but the pattern climbs like a beautiful moss
up the north side of her loom so slowly
the children think she does nothing all day long.
The sun comes up, the sun goes down
and nothing between but the rhythm
caught fast in the tangle of weft.
At night she unbraids her children’s hair
and combs it smooth, telling stories
of the old ways when animals spoke in riddles
to guard their secrets from those
who could unravel the world for themselves.
If she finally closes her eyes
it is only to better hear her children breathing
amid the shuttle of light on the highway
and the bleating of sheep in the field.
David Feela is a poet, free-lance writer, writing instructor, book collector, and thrift store pirate. His work has appeared in regional and national publications, including High Country News’s “Writers’s on the Range,” Mountain Gazette, and in the newspaper as a "Colorado Voice" for The Denver Post. He is a contributing editor and columnist for Inside/Outside Southwest and for The Four Corners Free Press. His poetry chapbook, Thought Experiments (Maverick Press), is part of the Southwest Poet Series. His web page can be viewed at www.geocities.com/feelasophy
David Feela
15505 Road 22, Dolores, CO 81323
feelasophy@yahoo.com
December 3, 2008
No Place Like Home
by Marj Hahne
What girl wouldn’t want to be Dorothy,
to be spun up high above the dusty gray sky of Kansas
with just a basket, a little dog, and a dress?
Who wouldn’t want to be an instant hero, the pretty
lady of the house that landed flat on the Wicked Witch of the East,
faceless villainess in garish hose and sharp-nosed shoes whose
latest crime was picking on nice folks half her size?
What girl wouldn’t want a fashion makeover from Glinda
the Good Witch, best-dressed in all of Oz (the Lollipop Guild notwithstanding),
her lilting voice a wise advisor on the long strange way to the Wizard?
Who wouldn’t want her wanderings underlined with bright yellow bricks,
ruby shoes to rescue her quick restless feet,
friends with smarts, heart, and spunk that make a monkey
of a dead witch’s sister from the West?
And who, who wouldn’t want home to be only three heel-clicks away,
the family of your dreams waiting at your bedside?
Marj Hahne considers herself first a teacher, then a poet, having taught children and adults the subjects of poetry writing, mathematics, English-as-a-Second-Language, Business English, and arts and crafts. Having taught or performed at over 100 venues around the country, Marj feels at-home in motion—and at last, here in Colorado, because the mountain, sky, and people refresh the senses daily. Primarily earning her living as a freelance copyeditor and proofreader, Marj has been developing an inquiry-based creativity model called CreatiQuest, a poetry-meets-travel tour company called inTraVerse, and a moving arts venue called Coffee Folk Productions. Virtually visit Marj at www.marjhahne.com
August 4, 2008
The Kicker
by Beth Paulson
At kickoff when both teams lined up,
you'd stand behind the 40-yard line,
loose-armed, shifting on both feet,
waiting for the referee's signal
as the band drummed and rumbled, fans yelled,
whistled and rang cowbells.
Then you'd run up with short steps and kick the football off the tee
in such a long, high trajectory, all eyes
would follow it into the stadium lights' glow
while the other players in their black and silver pants
waited for the ball to fall into the end zone.
At field goals and PATs, you always made it look so easy--
the ball just shot through the uprights
after it touched your cleat--
as if your legs and feet were made of something
beyond mere bone and muscle.
I always liked best to see you punt,
though you considered that a dubious honor.
You'd take your stance behind the crouched long snapper,
hoping he'd get the ball to your cupped hands.
Then you'd quick shift your grip till it felt right
and, with one movement, step out on your right leg, arms out
in front holding the ball, and kick it hard with your left leg,
straight from hip to toe as any dancer.
Then someone in the crowd who'd craned his neck to watch,
who knew games are never won in life easily,
would shout loud so you could hear,
Great punt!
Beth Paulson taught college writing for over twenty years at California State University Los Angeles and now lives near Ouray, Colorado where she teaches writing workshops and writes a popular column for the Ouray Plaindealer. Her poems have been published in many literary magazines and her work is included in anthologies published by Houghton Mifflin Press and University of Texas Press. She has two published collections of poems, The Truth About Thunder (2001) and The Company of Trees (2004) as well as a CD of nature poetry, By Stone By Water. Beth's poem, "Hollyhocks," was nominated for the 2007 Pushcart Prize. Visit her at http://wordcatcher.org.
Beth Paulson
PO Box 1168 , Ouray, CO 81427
970-325-0931
May 13, 2008
Man Saves Own Life
by Aaron Anstett
In the morning, before breakfast, I save my own life,
then walk around the house all day a hero.
Friends come by and ask how it feels.
I say it just happened. I couldn't help it.
They'd do the same in my shoes. I don't tell them how,
before I knew it, something raced down my fingers
and my feet. Something made me strong.
It crowded itself in my arms and my heart
and filled me up with as strange and kind a feeling
as I could remember, and suddenly I knew nothing
but I had to help that guy. It wasn't words. No voice
told me. It was more like light behind my eyes, weight
pressing in from every direction. High notes pierced me,
and it was clear what I had to do:
(from Sustenance, New Rivers Press, 1997)
Aaron Anstett’s collections are Sustenance (1998), No Accident (2005) selected by Philip Levine for the 2004 Backwaters Press Prize and winner of the Nebraska Book Award and the Falcones Poetry Prize), and Each Place the Body's (2007). His poems appear widely in journals and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. He has long been active in the poetry communities of southern Colorado, where he lives with his children. He is poet laureate of Colorado Springs.
Aaron Anstett
1326 Lindenrose Grove, Colorado Springs, CO 80907
719-338-9772
