October 2015
I am a retired business-to-business PR and publishing professional residing in northern New Jersey with my wife and son and a shrinking menagerie of merry pets. I began writing poetry (not very well) 100 years ago as an undergraduate at Georgetown University, where I earned bachelor's and master's degrees in English Literature. My poems have appeared recently in Contemporary American Voices (I was the Featured Poet in the January 2015 issue), the Wilderness House Literary Review, Blue Monday Review, and Atavic Poetry. In 2013, I celebrated (mostly by smiling a lot) the publication of my first poetry chapbook, What Comes Next, by Finishing Line Press. A lifelong Giants fan (New York and San Francisco), I still can't believe I lived long enough to see them win three World Series in five years. If you'd like to see more of my work, please click on http://www.whlreview.com/no-9.4/poetry/JamesKeane.pdf.
Sunday Afternoon
As the recliner makes a pillow
of my empty head (my body in disguise),
you skitter
from window to window, eyes
trained for weeds in the flower beds. If
there’s weeding to be done, your aim
is to find it. The aim of my body is the game.
Any game. There are weeds in every
flower bed you sow. There’s a game on
every Sunday I know. But the recliner is inclined
to weight my body instead, and though
the weeds have disappeared
from all your flower beds, you haven’t stopped
skittering
from window to window.
I See You Walking
everywhere. Mile after mile
after mile, your legs
sashay through the air, arms
wavering - at despair? Your face
glares like stone in the sun
at everyone. Will I ever
see you smile – anywhere?
Credits: "Sunday Afternoon" was originally published in the Oak Bend Review. "I See You Walking" was originally published in the Tipton Poetry Journal.
©2015 James Keane