December 2017
Joan Colby
JoanMC@aol.com
JoanMC@aol.com
I have written poetry and short fiction all my life and published a lot of it. My day job is editor of a trade publication Illinois Racing News. I live on a small horse farm in northern Illinois with my husband and various animals. My latest book, "Ribcage," (from Glass Lyre Press) recently won the 2015 Kithara Book Prize. I also am an associate editor of FutureCycle Press and Kentucky Review.
Author's Note: Here are a couple of early poems. "Ah Clio" is the very first Clio poem I wrote as a young woman--it was published in Manroot. Over the past 50+ years I have written many Clio poems, some of which have won prizes and many of which were collected into a chapbook published by Kattywompus Press titled "Ah Clio" As a note: Martin Willitts did the cover artwork for that book.
"The Anthropology Exhibit" is another early poem--I find it kind of embarrassing now--definitely the poem of a young self-absorbed poet--but it was published in The Laurel Review which was quite a feat and gratified me (I hope not to write more in this vein).
"The Anthropology Exhibit" is another early poem--I find it kind of embarrassing now--definitely the poem of a young self-absorbed poet--but it was published in The Laurel Review which was quite a feat and gratified me (I hope not to write more in this vein).
AH CLIO—MUSE OF HISTORY
I am always running across you
In the basement of the
Museum of natural history
Gnawing dinosaur bones
In the reservoir drinking again
At sea, letting your feet
Mingle with salt and water
Upstairs dropping the one shoe
In the coal mine, letting those braces
Fail, the walls caving in (as always
You are saved)
In supermarkets counting your change
The back of your head in every film
Your shadow in every photograph
In the national parks, you wear
Polaroid sunglasses and drive a
Yellow camper
In small towns you lean against
Barber-shop windows and spit
I find you
Riding first-class on Pan-Am
At rock concerts smoking grass
And drinking Ripple
Singing to every newborn child
Walking all the breakwaters and levees
On observation decks staring
Out over all cities, chewing gum
In every Mobile comfort station,
Washing your hands.
first published in Man-Root
THE ANTHROPOLOGY EXHIBIT
The curator of trivialities has set a snare
Steel lipped sucking at my free swung hair.
He has a case prepared,glass and chrome
I shall feel at home.
Glass-eyed exhibit, naturally posed
Inwardly engrossed.
Peering, classifying, impersonal eyes
Read the printed lies.
My ragged cloven brain, sentence shrunk
To bare blueprint. I am sunk.
Study or guess, what did she eat
In life. I fed on life: sweet
Too sweet, puckering as bitter
I was a baby-sitter
For ghouls who suck the bone
Bare as senseless stone.
first published in The Laurel Review
© 2017 Joan Colby
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