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WELCOME TO
River Poets Journal
Based in Lambertville, NJ
A Journal of Poetry/Prose
Art & Photography
River Poets Journal - Spring/Summer - 2011
Poems, Prose, Art/Photography by River Poets and 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: September 12, 2011
Contact: Judith Lawrence
Featured Artist - Alla Podolsky
www.allapodolsky.com
Grander Than the Sky
A Dogs Dream
Lightness of Being
Sanctuary
Gare de Lyon
A Room of One's Own
The Lost Generation
Familiar Ground
When Mother dropped to the ground, kissing
the earth, even the wind took notice
and stilled its breath. The flowers hung limp
in children’s arms and the train conductor clapped
and clapped, forgotten
tickets lying crumpled underneath his feet.`
The woman once shy, the one who hid
behind her braids and brothers, fell into the embrace
of thirty strangers as her children
counted heads and shadows – a symphony
of shrieks and laughter. Yet one man stood apart,
shuffling his shoes into dirt,
face bleached as holiday linen.
Three brothers lost. Forty-seven years
swallowed whole. One man wipes his brow.
Two cousins reunite.
With Father, Mother danced the tango, fast
as the gunshots once chasing her across Europe.
Here, Mother treads slow -- pointed toes
and stiffened arms -- relearning first steps
on native soil.
© Ksenia Rychtycka
The Light in Holland
Near the water, the light has a weight
Not seen from the street, orange
Subsuming into lemon, the blue water
Into a gray-white sky.
Van Gogh
Observed the difference in light
That he experienced in the south
Of France, emblazoned in colors –
red, blue,
Yellow, green, though diffused
In his native land where light & water
Refracted into dark blue-green mist.
©James Naiden
Still Crazy
If we had met when you were 50 and
I was 20 we’d have gotten on famously.
You would have been my Sugar Daddy and
I would have been the apple of your eye.
Yet, it wasn’t in the cards.
Like titans we’ve been battling it out—
your King Kong to my Godzilla.
Thirty years later, you now call me Honey,
tell me that I’m Lookin’ good;
I can almost say I love you.
Some rush into romance,
others never take the chance.
We’ve saved the best till last.
©Leah Stenson
At the Battery Store on East Main
Leaning on the store front
awaiting morning handouts,
he said he’d been to Viet Nam.
Asked if I had been,
for some reason I said yes, and
I was here to buy a battery.
He called me Sir, the way he’d been raised.
I hated that humility, regretted my lie.
Said in Cambodia he had a mama-san,
all the beer he wanted,
saw some bad shit.
I said I’d seen some bad shit.
He said, I killed women and children…and dogs.
Asked me, did I have any chickens?
He had lotsa chickens
at home, grew up on a farm down around Macon.
Said the voices wouldn’t let him be –
everywhere the damn voices.
Then, the serum that made his eyes
thick and pale.
©Bruce Majors
Just a Glance
An old lady
wearing a pleated dress,
on a worn English bicycle,
pedaling with determination
down a steep side street
in a steady rain
A patron
in a small café
noticed her in a whoosh-of-a-blink
His mind
glazed in thought,
glanced into another life
© W.P. Czerwinski Jr
Missing Formation
Missing pickets along the fence
look like flown sparrows
on a telephone wire
when sun warms some birds
faster than others
so gaps appear
in the huddled formation
like rock skips
across a reflective lake.
©Diane Webster
About Bouzouki and Dancing
There's more to this music
than the sway of hips across a dance floor,
smiles so tight you'd swear they were clay
stolen from the beach near Perissa.
The floor's a quiver of arrows
and about to explode.
Silhouettes of lost loves cling like bats
to the rim of each shiny glass.
You’ve come here with the tourists
in groups of twos and fours,
crossed the archway from one bar to another
led only by moonlight, or perhaps it’s true
you followed the footsteps of the Greek waiter?
Inside, he won’t say a word, won’t
tell you how easy it is to lose
yourself on these streets
that twist like acrobats flipping
off balance beams straight up to the sky.
If pressed, he’ll say even the most
spirited of the waiters
can’t stem the bitterness of retsina
that seeps from these walls.
For you, every breath is bright
as the whitewash outside,
stone pillars glistening like the ice
you dropped down your lover’s back
on that last night together.
For him, there's more to all this
than the shadows
that skitter corner to corner.
Alone, dancing his own circle,
the waiter from Olympia falls.
©Ksenia Rychtycka
A Gift
You plucked it from
A barren peach tree
And offered it to me some sort
Of bruised and oozing, thoughtless joke-
You centered it plump on a cotton place mat.
Its fuzzy, orange brilliance paled
The autumn warning
Of crisp, gray leaves
And waning sunlight,
Of life and time-
so swollen, so soft and dewy
It mocked my womb
and swelled my heart.
©Maria Wheeler
