"I had many things to write, but I will not with ink and pen write unto thee..."   POETRYrepairs v07.09:107

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VALERIE MACEWAN Delays The bag lady in my head keeps slamming her 3-wheeled shopping cart into my filing cabinets, spilling her odd collection of forgotten discards and oft-wanted memories. And I have to stop what I'm doing to dust them off and put them back into the cart. Rearranging schedules, priorities and emotions, taking needed moments of reality to bathe in sentiment and retrospection, as I pause to consider the contents. A neglected image of you holding the baby and your slender smile as you listened to my schemes pour out of the bag lady's box of images. I had to suspend all transactions and cease operations and sit in the rocking chair and watch the hummingbirds. The Oxford English Dictionary defines REPAIR: Concourse or confluence of people at or in a place; resort, frequent or habitual going; making one's way; to arrive; to dwell; to heal, to cure, to recover; to renew; (AND!) to fix to original condition. In each sense, www.poetryrepairs.com

"Poetry endangers the established order in the soul."   poetryREpairs v07.09:107

BACK | HOME SUBSCRIBE PS : Sponsor Poetry visit Poetry Sponsors SUZANNE SCARFONE Think of It As a Pleasant Change Think of It As a Pleasant Change On this day the sun speaks and you put your chair down in the grave. You are wearing a bright March hat and gardenias as big as hope. You have already filled a bag with heliotrope and timpani the teacups of governors the words of five fine cads and now you read aloud from an instruction manual. Arrange the drawing room in the dirt and wait, without sneezing, without missing the milkman's note, the wisteria and baby's breath that would not grow, the sway your life collected. Forget the sounds of winter rain, the humming moan, the plaintive crow of gods dizzying an ocean of seaweed to bloom. Then you set up house in the ground. Behind you, in a past that's always there, the Pennsylvania hills flower gooseberries the size of hands. Sour, your mouth rough with green, they steer you home a mystery. And your parents jitter and bless and breathe you asleep and talk about trees and men who work and sob fables on which to rest your head. As I gather your portrait inside my throat and make you leave, think of it as a pleasant change a retreat through space a garnet room or even a meeting of wombs. You jump into the harmless trench with a breath drawn in to release later, and your arms slide down to greet Edna and Gertrude and Sadie and Fern in the meadow just below the dream you played in as a child. Your fingers, gliding from my eyes, become a cry, a flaw as full as dawn in a forest that cannot exist, and then you set up house in the ground. POETRYrePAIRS invites your essay on poetry, or on a poet or poets, and, also, essays on all things related to poetry, its theory and its practice. Or, simply comment on the poems here at poetryrepairs.com

"Repair Your Mind...Read More Poetry!"   poetryrePAIRs v07.09:107

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KELLY WHITE I will not do this one more day for Sache' The funeral program has a teddy bear with wobbly glued on eyes— I suppose there must be children in attendance, rows of little girls in scratchy petticoats and shined shoes squeezed between grandmothers' knees and squirming, jiggling, frilled socks and patent leather toes busy, you can see she squirmed—Sache' Waters, 5 years old, hip cocked, dark glasses, pretend champagne glass, microphone— twelve pictures make a clock face around her kindergarten portrait, Sache' a newborn, sleepy, plumper, baby, peering from under a blanket, smeared spaghetti face in a high chair, Sache' in Eagles sweatshirt, Phillies hat, on Santa's lap, in bathrobe, bathing suit, tutu, sequined tap recital, Barbie-princess-halloween, laughing, the thirteenth an angel smile, cheek laid on two sleepy hands, blue backdrop with fluffy white clouds. A rainbow. "Sunrise 7/7/01-Sunset 9/2/06," shot dead in her mother's car. Midnight. The wrong street. Wrong neighborhood. A gang mistake. The country is lost. I don't want it, don't want to see the pink and purple bear clap his paws, don't want to remember birthday cakes and candles blown out— I just walked by the patients in the waiting room, didn't even nod, had to go back, lay my head on my desk, but my desk isn't low enough, had to lay my face on the floor, below stained ceiling tiles and the smashed wall above I think—a permanent memorial, handprints, baby shoes, faces; Shirley knocks on my door. She's crying. I have to leave off praying. She says today in Paradise, ten little Amish girls. . .. poetryREpairs.com seeks volunteer editors to expand poetryREpairs via "language specific" subdomains; for example: fr.poetryrepairs.us to create a network of truly 'Contemporary' and 'International' sites. If you are fluent in a language other than English and you wish to help, please edit a one or two poems; send the poems and a paragraph 'about you' to editor@poetryrepairs.zzn.com .

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