Category: Uproar
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RETURN TO THE FIRST GARDEN
When my father was seventy-four and I was no longer a girl that cowered, skirting the edge of the room, I asked him to travel back to his childhood, the landscape he’d banished for years. He became an Amish boy in suspenders, hitching the horse to the buggy, driving Delaware’s back country roads past the
GHAZAL FOR EVE’S DAUGHTERS
Some women resist ruin for three thousand years. The wrecking ball smashes the front closet and hall but they just keep humming and dusting the knick-knacks. Lot’s wife disobeyed, turned and looked back at what was forbidden, now she’s afraid to risk any tears, four could dissolve a salt pillar. I watched a woman sell
FINDING THE FIELD WITH NO ROADS
I cast my bread on the waters, what I’d wanted and loved shuffled off on a raft, waved, promised to call then never looked back. Sometimes grief braids a rope, crafts a cage or a prison. I set the last brick, found a noose coiled round my neck. What could I do but build a
HER WINTER HEART
He conjured up a crow and sent it like a curse, cloaked in black, raven-lit, it settled on her shoulder. Who could have guessed a crow could save, it stole the poisoned bread. Now when ravens strut she counts their raucous throats as gifts that forced a turn, her winter heart borrows light, just like
4th Annual Carmen Ziolkowski Poetry Prize Winners
For the fourth annual Carmen Ziolkowski Poetry Prize, First Prize, $500, donated by Carmen’s family, was awarded to Don Narkevic, a poet from Buckhannon, West Virginia. Narkevic’s compelling poem on craftsmanship and ancestry in “Emerging Stone” resonated with the judges. Jim Ziolkowski remarked, “I think this would bring my mother back to Italy and the
Emerging Stone
Like Father’s unfinished life, the half-dressed donated stone stands in the farm’s front yard true as an oak. A traveling mason settles for pasta and peas at the family cemetery. The youngest daughter whispers Father’s name in his hairy ear like a sad girlhood secret, her tears pooling like stars in his chip-pitted cheek. Later,
The Garden’s Quiet Song
In the quiet of the morning, I dig my hands into the earth, lettuce leaves stretch to the sun, garlic bulbs whisper beneath the soil. Onions peek through, a humble promise, Roma tomatoes blush with summer heat, cucumbers curl, hidden in the green. Basil stretches its arms toward the sky, while thyme and oregano weave
When Irises Bloom
in springtime, the earth rumbles and the sun-kissed soil begins to stir slender leaves suddenly begin wriggling their way to the surface, eager to drink misty raindrops and bask in the balmy air and I wait, with anticipation for the sturdy stems that will rise in the days to come, sprouting their bearded petals of
Flowers In Blue Vase
This blue vase So rough to the touch Beneath my fingertips The leaves are velvet tongues Still life of zinnias Daffodils and marigolds Arrange the view On blue linen tablecloth Outside Behind the window pane Dreamscapes glisten The earth beckons Beyond the cultivated fields To chance our way Through groves of thickest darkness See the