The Red Wheelbarrow Poets

The Poet’s Road

Mark Fogarty

It’s State Road 111, I think.
It’s a Sunday afternoon, just getting dark.
Everyone’s inside, and even though I like
Being alone, I miss them some.

The road starts out as a doublewide each way,
Then narrows to a single lane each way.
Soon there are no homes, just empty
Commercial buildings, looking as if
They’ve been empty since the Great Recession.
The bank repossessed, damn them,
And the mice come out at every moonrise.

I’m running along the river road
Til there’s a huge hill, hard to negotiate,
Shadowed by silent trees,
And by the time I reach the crest it’s dark,
No nothing anywhere.
No cars even to tailgate and then pass me
In a cranky roar. The river’s been empty
Since Clark’s men rowed up it.

That’s a poet’s joke: Route 111
Is in the eastern part of the country,
Clark Fork River in the west.

I make up songs as the boneyards whistle by:
Two cousins pleased I’m singing about them.
When I see the lights of Rivertown ahead,
I will sing Rivertown’s praises.

On the far side of the hill, there’s the river again.
It cheers me up, though it is dark and getting cold.
Turn right and go ten more miles!
That’s too far to go, and it’s not too far.

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I’m in Love with a Jacaranda Rose

Milton Ehrlich

Pink with a hint
of mauve purple,
a penetrating scent
sweeter than Baclava
when she blooms.

Every morning
many kisses,
one petal at a time.

My flower is fragile
but strong enough
to spook a horse.

A momentary gaze
at her radiant glow.

I dread the day
she will fade.

I practice weeping now.

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Slight Problem

Arthur Russell

The number of stairs between the first floor and the landing has changed. It was ten, now it’s nine.

You wonder who there is to complain to. You actually look over your shoulder. That’s normal. When a stair goes missing between the first floor and the landing, you wonder who is in charge.

No one is in charge. Be happy that you can still get to the second floor, you don’t step off into a void.

If you’re lucky enough to meet a jeune fille, convince her to go home with you, and come upstairs, she won’t notice. The stairs appear the same as always. Creak, railing, paint drips: same. She will look up at you with a smile as you turn to look back at her midflight. Your soft face and petitioning eyes will reassure her. Everything is fine. The nagging thought that a stair is missing will distract you when you get excited during sex.

In the morning, you will count the stairs as you go down to make breakfast. Nine stairs. You will hear the shower come on and take a mental inventory of the towel situation, the toilet situation. Both are fine. She’ll move around the bedroom. You’ll like hearing how your house plays her melodies, like someone new playing the piano at The Village Vanguard.

When she comes down, you will count again. Your last thought before she enters the kitchen with that luminous face and wet hair still not brushed will be: still nine.

After she leaves, you’ll get the shoeboxes. That means looking at all of the photos of your wife and daughter. You’ve practiced passing over that hard place. There’s a photo with your daughter and three girlfriends sitting on the stairs at her eighth birthday; they’re wearing pink hair bands with springy foam ball antennas. As you expected, there will be ten steps, not nine.

You will go into the living room and count again. Nine. You count the stairs in the photo. Ten. You climb the stairs holding the photo like a GPS, trying to figure out which step is missing, but none is. There are just fewer than before.

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Rachel And Amanda

Mark Fogarty

Rachel and Amanda walk side by side.
You could take them for twins.
Rachel and Amanda walk side by side,
In tune like fine engines.

Rachel and Amanda are two of a kind,
And it’s the first of a kind to be.
Their skin makes olives thirst for sun
In sunny Sicily.

They’re tall but not too tall,
Sturdy without being wide.
They improve the tepid air
When they walk side by side.

Rachel and Amanda smile at babies,
And sometimes they smile at me.
Their hair flows in streams that know
The courses of geometry.

As flowers have their day to bloom,
It’s Bloomsday for these two.
And if I could I’d have them stay
Rejoicing in my view.

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Janet Kolstein

A Raw and Burnt Umber Bird (With Buff Titanium)

nestles inside the second lower case a
of a cut-out sign that spells
materials
across the front of an art store
in Paramus,
off Route 4,
when gloves have come off
with the stirrings of spring
which should bring
a feeling of hope,
you know,
that thing with feathers.*

* “Hope is the Thing With Feathers,” by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

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The Golden Ratio

Janet Kolstein

It starts with scribbles
and spins into an empty circle —
with two dots and a small arc,
the marks say someone.

Arms and legs may be depicted
sprouting from the head,
or, from a vertical line,
defining the body
of humankind.

With more circles, more lines,
more dots of various size,
a family is drawn.

A big blob colored yellow radiates lines like limbs.

A family must have a place to live,
so a squarish shape is made. With a door. A window.
A chimney with smoke.

What’s a home without a tree? A blue sky?
Grass to connect us to the ground?

Flowers bloom into bloated hearts
and names on paper.
Stars. 3-D Boxes. Eyeballs.

We doodle hair-dos, clothes, guns and cars.
Desires.

The golden ratio,
and one, two, three-point perspective
emerge from fancier tools.
Symmetry assumes importance —
abstraction with allusive hues,
personal views.
From “I can’t draw a straight line,”
to eyes that follow you around the room.

How do they do that?

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