March 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.
Cherry in Seattle
As if to keep your thoughts underground
fingers at the controls
free to feel for mineral spice
your past a part of the city scenery
another winter barren
under a shrouded sun
its light empty as film too soon unwound
the scraps of years hefted up
then shunted down
but springtime sap
heartless snake
refuses to stay put
seeps a bitter bile
creep of chill
beneath a fingernail
the hinged man of bone and tendon
who warmed your bed
dug in with greed of a thief
set you to bloom in open air
branch dark defiant hair
tattooed your blush in the heart of porcelain flounce
footfall of his stride
shook the earth to your core
to your outer edge
then gone
this annual ascent of sap scolds
like some sharp-tongued fisherman’s wife
with her switch
ignores the pleas of gravity
of reason
of adrenaline rush
casts you to that ring where you feel it most
an amber stain
fiftieth circle counting in
next year fifty-first
still you blossom
in light
in shame
pull close the gossamer rain
-published in Seems – A Literary Magazine
Space Time Continuum
Radius radios forth from the center
rotates infinitesimal multitudinous possibility
slicing between seconds of a clock
birdsong against flight against clouds passing by
the percussive jazz of two against three
or the sheer impossibility of Tuvan throat song
to think we envision time enclosed in a circle
comfortable like a cup of tea
boundaries visible, knowable
area visible, too
but with a catch
the ratio of diameter to circumference
bursts rational borders
streams digits beyond every conceivable edge
on and on
forever
the needle of our own oblivion
flickers and winks
from the banded face of time
©2016 Sylvia Cavanaugh