June 2016
I grew up in Pennsylvania, just south of the Appalachian mountains. Our family often visited our Irish coal mining relatives in Schuylkill County. I earned an M.S. in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Wisconsin, and have remained in the Midwest ever since. I currently teach high school African and Asian Cultural Studies, and am an advisor to breakdancers and poets. I’m also involved with the Sheboygan chapter of 100,000 Poets for Change. A Pushcart Prize nominee, my poems have appeared Midwest Prairie Review, The Journal of Creative Geography, Gyroscope Review,and elsewhere. I just published a chapbook, Staring Through My Eyes, with Finishing Line Press.
Artwork by Sharon Rotz
Seed Pod
Phantasmagoric play of vermillion
violet, indigo, russet
lemon and flame
all a sizzle in summer’s sunshine
hands clasped in joyous
expectation
wind breathes down her spine
and she sways into dance
this was before she saw the leaves
scuttle across the sidewalk
the brown gleam of horse chestnuts
collected in her hand
she skipped alongside the butterscotch
laughter of her aunt
thinking of school paste
and carefully cut construction paper
and wondering how music can be written
as notes on lines
measured in bars
when all these things happen…
the summer, the sizzle
the arrangement of color
clasp of hands
all of it
all at once
in the memory of her waning years
music like lift-off
like wind
flying
-first published in The Artist’s Muse, 2016
Oblation
She tells the kids to go play
as we drag wooden crates
over uneven pasture
enclosed in the stuttering current
of a failing electric fence
bottle of cabernet
from the kitchen cabinet
twilight shimmers atmospheric gold
over this farm settled on a ridge
above distant Lake Michigan
past the blue-cast mass of trees
it’s lambing time
baby sheep leap
from all four feet at once
dancing putty hued pattern on the green
she pours the wine with one hand
raucously into our glasses
laughing and drawing me in
while the evening chill
creeps into our faces
recollections of life on the stage
ages ago in New York
a couple elemental drops of wine
offered up to the soil
-first published in Intersections: Art and Poetry
Phantasmagoric play of vermillion
violet, indigo, russet
lemon and flame
all a sizzle in summer’s sunshine
hands clasped in joyous
expectation
wind breathes down her spine
and she sways into dance
this was before she saw the leaves
scuttle across the sidewalk
the brown gleam of horse chestnuts
collected in her hand
she skipped alongside the butterscotch
laughter of her aunt
thinking of school paste
and carefully cut construction paper
and wondering how music can be written
as notes on lines
measured in bars
when all these things happen…
the summer, the sizzle
the arrangement of color
clasp of hands
all of it
all at once
in the memory of her waning years
music like lift-off
like wind
flying
-first published in The Artist’s Muse, 2016
Oblation
She tells the kids to go play
as we drag wooden crates
over uneven pasture
enclosed in the stuttering current
of a failing electric fence
bottle of cabernet
from the kitchen cabinet
twilight shimmers atmospheric gold
over this farm settled on a ridge
above distant Lake Michigan
past the blue-cast mass of trees
it’s lambing time
baby sheep leap
from all four feet at once
dancing putty hued pattern on the green
she pours the wine with one hand
raucously into our glasses
laughing and drawing me in
while the evening chill
creeps into our faces
recollections of life on the stage
ages ago in New York
a couple elemental drops of wine
offered up to the soil
-first published in Intersections: Art and Poetry
©2016 Sylvia Cavanaugh