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to

The River Poets

Journal

Based in Lambertville, NJ

A Journal of Poetry/Prose

Art & Photography

Oil Painting - Alan Fetterman

Septombre

                              By Ruth Z. Deming

First she comes

a skipping girl

twirling down

the avenue

kerchief on head

basket in arm

strewing

leaves

acorns

apples

and casting herself

invisible

across the land

won’t scare us

with

things to come:

the shedding of

maple’s majestic leaves

uncrowning of the golden oak

reducing

all

to

baldness.

After

the initial chill, 

the shuddering trauma,

acceptance falls

like welcome rain

as her solemn brethren

October and November

bring forth a new definition

to our world:

We must

find beauty

in spareness:

in the lone bird who calls

and the spinning leaf

dancing down the avenue.

Ocean In A Box - Judith A. Lawrence

"George Street" Oil Painting - Joe Kazmierczyk

Lamentar Del Barrio

By Joe Treceno

Qué tal?  You switch-blade poets

     and domino philosophers

Apocalypse people with gritted teeth

and clenched fists living in the

land of the multilingual and  

the cunnilingual

in the rampant despair of

the tenement hearses

struggling with chemical dependence

and Puerto Rican independence

astride the Hari Krishna chants,

halleluiah cries and

santeria sacrifices

everyone out to save your soul

and no one filling your bowl

the stomach growl stronger than

the hunger for knowledge

Dali melted summers, dias de

conciencia perdido and nights

of death hushed pale

past the Second Avenue push-cart Rambla

with mixed-sized sneakers on sale

and hidden within the granite

canyon walls, the weapons

of self destruction

Picasso never painted the

Guernica of the barrio,

nor Monet the floating

condom lilies of the East River

the Indians must surely have

accepted food stamps for this

part of Manhattan

alongside platanos, pasteles and

salsa caliente of course

a chalk outline circles an

early morning corpse

glasseada son los ojos de

lo sonadores del barrio

(Untitled)

By Roy Smith

He flew at lightspeed

weighed nothing

left watching pyramids grow

now he’s back with his red eyes

clear and serene

looks like a big cat with eight arms and legs

fuzzy and unimaginably cute

might have seen him at the bar

dancing to eighties blasts

maybe the B52’s

doesn’t smoke

but always has a pack

he’s all theory of special relativity

big Dipper and cries of Orion

known billions of sentient beings

across his daily millennia

all dead now soul living stranger

Calligula and Beethoven

his breath smells of unsalted peanuts

and chocolate licorice

he’s just here folks

to tell us about them there meteors

day after

gonna let them out of the zoo

likes Johnny Cash.

Dust Song

By Phil Nerges

In the cloudless glare

Way off to the west

Dust rising in the air

Just a puff of wind, a truck perhaps

Hard to tell from so far away

Like a plume of smoke shimmering in the heat

The sun is cruel in the desert

I think of home, of being alone

On the burning sand,

The little cloud is growing

I wonder who has walked here

And who is coming now

A flash of light in the dust

A reflection from a windshield

That is heading out of nowhere

And I wonder who is coming, whether I should hide

Might be bandits, warriors, soldiers

A ghost for all I know

Could it be you that's coming?

Pulling the tail of a comet

Beneath the desert sun

You said we'd be forever

That's how I hoped it would be

Seems so long ago, before I left to go…

The cloud of dust keeps growing

Moving right this way

I wonder if you're coming now

Wouldn't that be nice?

You said we'd be forever

That's how I hoped it would be

It moves too fast to see inside

When it rumbles by

Just a cloud of dust is all that's left

As it disappears

Heading back to nowhere

Beneath the desert sun.

Don’t Love You Anymore

By Mike Walerstein

It’s been a long-long time a-coming

But it’s longer looking back.

We shared our years and shed our tears together.

And I guess we thought about breaking up

It must have been a thousand times

But we stuck it out and turned it for the better.

(Chorus)        I don’t love you anymore

But don’t love you any less

     Our love turned into friendship

And I’m glad.

I don’t need you anymore,

  But don’t need you any less.                  And I thank you for the happy               years  we’ve had.

I loved you in that special way

Reserved just for the young.

In our springtime it was passion and desire.

And now that fall approaches

I’m still glad that you’re the one

That kept my ship afloat through stormy weather.

(Chorus) I don’t love you anymore

But don’t love you any less

Our love turned into friendship

  And I’m glad.

                      I don’t need you anymore,

  But don’t need you any less.

   And I thank you for the happy

years we had.

Times I longed to kiss your neck

And others just to break it.

And I gave you many sleepiness nights

And I still wonder how you take it.

But through ups and downs,

Tears and frowns

That smile kept shinning through.

All and all I’m glad after all

To be loved by a woman like you.

Excerpt from Words in Search of Music.

Dedicated to the words that live in all of and to the melodies music we have yet to find. Together they make our songs of life, our words in search of music.

Bertrand at the Beach

By Ted Peck

Bemused, disconsolate, buffeted, beaten,

bearing his beach umbrella, folding chair,

his blanket and his Baudelaire

Bertrand limps along the sand

assailed by memories of Beatrice,

who has abandoned him, scorning his love.

He sulks, he scowls, he plots revenge.

Establishing his small domain,

his island of shade in a sea of sun,

he settles his chair, picks up his book

(“Les Fleurs du Mal” in paperback),

adjusts the tinted glasses on his nose,

surveys the scene around him, seeking solace.

Bodies he sees!  In all directions,

female bodies, concupiscent, bold,

oiling their limbs beneath the gaudy sun.

Nearby, a lusty young one sits alert,

resting her chin upon her hand--

returns his stare.  She is, he swears,

the model for the haughty nude

depicted in “Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe”.

His flesh quickens; in his imagination

he removes her clothes.  Finds her too heavy

for his taste, and looks away.

Turns his attention then upon a group

of sportive nymphs out splashing in the surf--

Renoir’s nude “Bathers”, to the very life!

Such luscious bodies, how could he resist?

Shall he approach them?  Balding, middle-aged,

a most unlikely Romeo, he fears.

His lust subsides.  (Oh Beatrice!)

The air is heavy.  His eyelids sink.  He sleeps.

His mouth falls open.  The sunlight steals

across his toes, and in his dream

miraculously, from the sparkling sea,

Aphrodite rises, gloriously nude.

Second Guessing

By Marcia Angermann

When does it seep in,

slide under the gate of not seeing,

twist a path into unremitting light.

When do the should haves and could haves

begin to ask,

“Why didn’t I?”

With a diagnosis?

When “terminal” becomes forever?

Or is it in the finality of absence

that you can no longer see who you were

in the before,

you can’t accept

not living up to your own divine expectations.

How could death be such a surprise,

when you saw it coming,

that train roaring down the track,

you heard the whistle scream,

and scream,

and scream,

and still you counted the ties on the track.

Sometimes the Wind Covered Them With Sand

             By Gloria Calcina del Vecchio

Up and down the beach were player-pianos

And the rain and snow fell on them, but

The sea never reached them.

Every morning a woman in a rose-printed

Dress turned one on and it performed

In front of the surf until night.

Sometimes in the dark, someone would

Come over the dunes and

Set that piano on fire, replacing it

With a TV set with which people watched

The ocean contained inside a box.

Poetry Selections from the

2007 Artsbridge/River Poets Anthology

" The Eclectic Muse"

Published 12/2007

Poems, Prose, Art/Photography by River Poets and Contributors

All future rights to material published on this web site are retained

by the individual Authors and Artists/Photographers

Music by Sandy Bender

"Thorns and Bramblest"