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WELCOME TO
River Poets Journal
Based in New Jersey
A Journal of Poetry/Prose
Art & Photography
River Poets Journal - Special Edition - 2012
The Hopeless Romantic
Click on the Special Editions/Anthologies link to click on and view the full Journal pdf file
Poems by River Poets Journal Contributors
All future rights to material published on this web site are retained
by the individual Authors and Artists/Photographers
Music by Sandy Bender
"Rebirth"
This page was last updated: March 11, 2012
Contact: Judith Lawrence
The End of Them
My friend lives in a mailbox,
licks the cancelled stamp of her heart,
red flag raised.
No one picks her up.
She draws maps
of all the places the men she once met
are still waiting.
She practices their conversations
and gestures at the gym;
they grow like muscles.
She joined a cartel,
kidnapped his memory,
carved out the heart
and stuffed it in the mouth,
hung it from a bridge
where tomorrow begins.
She threw open a door,
stepped out onto a crowded dock,
the hands of the horizon
folding clouds into the shape of ships.
She keeps asking Which one is mine?
She dreamed she was a child
hit crossing the tracks,
only seeing where she wanted to go,
chased by a mean dog.
She woke up
not knowing who or where she was,
her body broken in unimaginable ways
by the terrible train of time.
She said she couldn’t move.
I want to teach her to walk,
use a fork and the remote.
I begin by holding a mirror up to her face
tell her to repeat her name,
but she only calls to the small reflection
standing in the distance,
asking him to come back,
to stay.
©Andy Macera
Who Better?
Who better to return to
at the end of the day?
Can't wait to get home.
Empty my pockets
and wash my hands.
Who better to lift a glass
at the start of dinner?
Clink.
He: "On no two consecutive days…
She: … is the shoreline precisely the same."
Who better to shake a tail feather
or slow dance, New York Style?
Oldies are the best.
And when I land on her backgammon blot
oh, to play that long, slow back game.
Who better on the road
to make it home wherever we are?
And meeting people along the way
who better to encourage
me to tell an old story made new?
Who better to light a candle
for a joy to share, or a sorrow?
Her byline: respect and reverence.
As each season brings its own,
who better to gather the harvest?
©Neal Whitman
Lotus
Drape me with silk
lustrous as the line of my thigh,
feed me oysters
champagne lapped, finger napped,
cream whipped
to fill my hollows.
Make cartography with your mouth,
move mountains with your fingers,
tongue highways down my belly
moan your prayers
hush in my ear you are done
with her,
hope these offerings will
unfurl my heart.
©Linda Simoni-Wastila
Inside of My House
Someday you are going to walk into my house
I will make you baked chicken and a green salad
with Italian tomatoes and Feta cheese
I will show you the pictures of me when I looked
like my daughter except my hair was the color
of mahogany and hers is the color of wheat
You can read my books of poetry
I will read my poetry to you
I will make you a big pot of Snicker doodle
so we can drink coffee out on my deck before
I take you down to the harbor where the lake twinkles
under a Strawberry Moon
Yes, this is my house and you will see my picture
of Flaming June and my atlas of the world
I will turn on the light in my replica lighthouse
so we can cuddle on the couch
In the bedroom, in my house you can dive into
my quilt that smells like vanilla or my French perfume
You can take off my green camisole
and kiss the insides of my elbows, then my knees
I'll let you sweat all over me until
we float away on an invisible river
here inside my house.
©Rosalie Sanara Petrouske
The Color of Pebbles
I saw a girl on a horse, once
Her hair was a heavy steel gray, and then red, and then black
She moved the animals ahead of her, and they moved because she wanted them to move, and there was no force in it, only wanting
She was old, and her touch held such wisdom that it put babies to sleep, but she was young and rode wildly and she rode fast, or maybe she rode in her own time, ripely
All around her was the color of pebbles,
She could smell water
And sometimes no one could find her at all.
©Grey Johnson
The Balcony Room by Adolph Menzel
Manet at Isle of Wight by Berthe Morisot
Still Life by Vincent van Gogh
Translation
Which language can I use to speak to you?
Most are closed to me, the foreign syntax of worlds not my own,
the signs translate differently, a cultural rift.
When you lift my hair off my neck,
I want you to press your lips just there, but you give a quick fan
and drop the locks back into place, damp, clinging tendrils.
For language we have touch or laugh
until our eyes slide out to sea, awash in what we can not say.
The horizon widens its interminable blue ache.
©June Sylvester Saraceno
Blossoming Almond Branch
by Vincent van Gogh
Birds of a feather
A café au lait under a Berkeley sun
students like birds fluttering a spring-speckled patio
a bustle of wings, a shimmy to settle
and nibble with sly indifference
whatever morsel of oblique desire
falls nearby.
©Janet Butler
