JULIE ELLINGER HUNT : You Were Thirsty so I Bought You a River
ABDRENA ZAWINSKI : Dinner with Conversation
table : poetryrepairs v11.04 - contents
POETRYREPAIRS v11.12:136
contemporary international poetry - for your reading pleasure,
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You Were Thirsty so I Bought You a River Dinner with Conversation poetryrepairs v11.04 - contents  
POETRY requires a mature audience ENTER only if you are 18+ <18Big Fish

JULIE ELLINGER HUNT
You Were Thirsty so I Bought You a River
Tears run down my face often and my thoughts run away from me Skinned because the bones are better bare Half of what is now isn't because nothing that makes sense lasts long come and take a seat along the rock wall watch your river crest watch the currents sway change disappear with drought I can't breathe anymore, or any good I'm twisted up from all this doubt puCcle pieces no longer fit together I'm falling further down into the pit they make us live in But a lot looks better from here so come down from those heights and sit with me some more
POETRYREPAIRS 11.12:136
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You Were Thirsty so I Bought You a River Dinner with Conversation poetryrepairs v11.04 - contents  
POETRY requires a mature audience ENTER only if you are 18+ <18Big Fish

ABDRENA ZAWINSKI
Dinner with Conversation
My son sits across the shiny teak table framed by his three friends, their two pairs of parents and me. We spin the lazy susan as he makes his way through appetizers of wrapped pork and shrimp and fowl, picks smalltalk, then slips me his latest calling card: superscripted italics prop up his name embossed at Menlo Park. A manboy with his mane tied back for me, he charges dinner conversation with a tale, says I should've seen the performance, a bald barber clipping hair to industrial rap, six rings piercing his lower lip. He asks me, in a polite restraint, about my trip to Mexico. I ramble about beaches, sundown with good tequilla, then step up the pace in beetling jabber, call up his old playing field where ringbilled doves flew in off course to the diamond edged in shards of broken glass and schoolgirls' squeals at winter in the wrong nest. Still biting, he says he never did like baseball or birds. Someone says they heard in the park a pitbull battling boar ate crackers from an officer's hand. He laughs a retort, "just another urban legend of an exotic-pet-run-wild." I tell him I read somewhere that Indians believe vanishing trees are reborn as unwanted children. He snaps back, "even ones recycled in dumpsters at K-Mart?" Someone else asks if fans follow my poetry readings. I do not answer. I want to scream that nights I lie awake now with ritual blood in double time, fertility haywire out of season, everywhere everything else struggling to green. Instead, I watch my son across the widening table sit shovelbent over my main course, biohazardous waste symbol swelling his shirt. Tomorrow he'll fly back to Berkeley, where I say I want to be, where he warns swat teams stand watch at People's Park in a broken promise traded for a volleyball court. I spin the susan, pretend to eat, move grains of unspiced rice about my plate, pass by seconds at the chance at one snapshot with him arm in arm, not crying out loud before smiling red-eyed at the U-Haul packed for California, not laughing long on that Latin beach that stretched up from Madagalpa, not caught in quiet of a new sun breaking dawn, just posed here in the conditioned air at the restaurant table, before he runs to catch time with old friends, before I walk off begging him to call, walk off clutching the pang in my stomach, walk hungry into night and quickly down the narrowing street to my car alone.
POETRYREPAIRS 11.12: 136
Poetry endangers the established order  of the soul - Plato




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You Were Thirsty so I Bought You a River Dinner with Conversation poetryrepairs v11.04 - contents  
POETRY requires a mature audience ENTER only if you are 18+ <18Big Fish

table
poetryrepairs v11.04 - contents
v11.10037
JOSEPH FARLEY : Detritavores
BOB HAMILTON | Press Release Writing
ELIZABETH KRONOFF | The Flower in Spring
v11.10038
GRAHAM CATT | The Seabirds
LAURA CROSS | Build Your Expert Author Platform
PAUL HOSTOVSKY | This Tree
v11.10039
GAIL ENTREKIN | Feet
NORMAN OLSON | a rant on the subject of poetry publishing
YEHIEL HAZAK | Roots
v11.10040
RAY SUCCRE | Sick and Selling Gems
advertisement | ALLPOSTERS
TRINA STOLEC | Mixed
v11.10041
MICHAEL ESTABROOK : GAS & OIL
NGO VAN | On Third World Struggles
WARD KELLY | Trying Not to Splash
v11.10042
THOM DWORSKY | Figures of Speech
KELLY HOWE | What Is Ghostwriting?
PAULA GRENSIDE | Shy Flower
v11.10043
PIA TAAVILA | Thirst
ART CONTEST | topic: Calendar and Cover art for 2012
RIC MASTEN | Old Dandelions Waiting for the Wind
v11.10044
JULIE ELLINGER HUNT | You Were Thirsty so I Bought You a River
JOHN HORVATH Jr | Experience for Poets
BILL CARROLL | Blue Heron Fishing
v11.10045
ELIZABETH KERLIKOWSKE | In the Spirit of Scientific Inquiry
LYN LIFSHIN | ALL THE POETS reviewed
CAROL GLAUNER | My Mother Was Right
v11.10046
ROBERT JOE STOUT | Exhibitionist
CONNIE RAGEN GREEN | Overcoming Writer's Block Easily - How To Make Sure You Know When And What You Will Write About
LYN LIFSHIN | It's Garnet or Blood, Depending on How You Look at It
v11.10047
JANOS A. V. HORVATH | A Ready Fighter
advertisement | poetryrepairSHOP @ Zazzle
MICHAEL DAVID COFFEY | Pomegranates
v11.10048
J. K. DURICK | Thinking of Suicide
GEORGE HUTTOM | Critical Factors Regarding Self Publishing
JACK HRINIAK | Fireflies

POETRYREPAIRS 11.12: 136
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You Were Thirsty so I Bought You a River Dinner with Conversation poetryrepairs v11.04 - contents
You Were Thirsty so I Bought You a River TOP  You Were Thirsty so I Bought You a River ©  JULIE ELLINGER HUNT  .
Dinner with Conversation MID   Dinner with Conversation ©  ABDRENA ZAWINSKI,  . From ZAWINSKI's Traveling in Reflected Light (Pig Iron Press), 'Dinner with Conversation' appeared in poetryrepairs v01.12
poetryrepairs v11.04 - contents] BTM  poetryrepairs v11.04 - contents ©  table  .
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