April 2018
Laurie Byro
philbop@warwick.net
philbop@warwick.net
In 1985, while pursuing a business degree, I unhappily landed in a creative writing class and announced to the group that I thought Walt Whitman was a chain of schools throughout the United States. To my astonishment, I had found my pacing, abandoned prose, and started a poetry circle that has been meeting for 16 years. I have published four poetry collections, most recently: “The Bloomsberries and Other Curiosities” Kelsay Books and “Wonder” Little Lantern Press (out of Wales). https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Laurie+Byro I am the Poet in Residence at the West Milford Township Library and despite it all, love New Jersey, and have lived here almost 60 years.
Poet
There’s a name that takes on status after you’re dead,
but alive you walk among the trees, muttering
to yourself. How bleak, they missed all that: she believed
that damselflies had a smell, a witch’s cauldron rising over
the lake. She told them angel wings rattle in the forest.
Her poems were a failed writer’s “mistake.” Bleak, freak,
chic, oh well. Oblique, does a poem have a smell?
She could conjure, but never spell. Even her chums
with their cobweb noises. Oy, she heard those voices.
She keeps racking up words but never a pension. She makes
politicians cringe. There is an illness for what she has.
Words summon her to the fairy houses. She follows vowels
home like a crusty trail. She could never write prose
or something dignified. She had no lineage, her mother was
a plumber, and has no MFA. Sssh, you might have guessed,
her best friend, says he's: earnest. They praise her fast
retort, the word they couldn’t remember never mind utter.
You must know her poems were her children, a sordid clan,
brats behaving badly. As a last resort, they praised her ability
to respond with this or that quotation. Left-foot right-foot,
through the forest. Aren’t you tired, of this brief and meager
hobby? Why couldn’t she be a lawyer and make the trains run.
Gnarly bending limbs, a rough line here or there, a strophe bends
low to the ground. Only the sky should covet sound. She praised
real poets, the cardinal’s chatter, she’d hurl words hard
and soft: chartreuse, aquamarine, pearl. A smoldering cinder
became a red thrush about to burst into flame. Listen,
hummingbird rests on his halo, his laurelled boa of light.
After she died, they said, "even in silence she is articulate."
Even then, we wish she'd give voice to angels.
This poem was recently nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
There’s a name that takes on status after you’re dead,
but alive you walk among the trees, muttering
to yourself. How bleak, they missed all that: she believed
that damselflies had a smell, a witch’s cauldron rising over
the lake. She told them angel wings rattle in the forest.
Her poems were a failed writer’s “mistake.” Bleak, freak,
chic, oh well. Oblique, does a poem have a smell?
She could conjure, but never spell. Even her chums
with their cobweb noises. Oy, she heard those voices.
She keeps racking up words but never a pension. She makes
politicians cringe. There is an illness for what she has.
Words summon her to the fairy houses. She follows vowels
home like a crusty trail. She could never write prose
or something dignified. She had no lineage, her mother was
a plumber, and has no MFA. Sssh, you might have guessed,
her best friend, says he's: earnest. They praise her fast
retort, the word they couldn’t remember never mind utter.
You must know her poems were her children, a sordid clan,
brats behaving badly. As a last resort, they praised her ability
to respond with this or that quotation. Left-foot right-foot,
through the forest. Aren’t you tired, of this brief and meager
hobby? Why couldn’t she be a lawyer and make the trains run.
Gnarly bending limbs, a rough line here or there, a strophe bends
low to the ground. Only the sky should covet sound. She praised
real poets, the cardinal’s chatter, she’d hurl words hard
and soft: chartreuse, aquamarine, pearl. A smoldering cinder
became a red thrush about to burst into flame. Listen,
hummingbird rests on his halo, his laurelled boa of light.
After she died, they said, "even in silence she is articulate."
Even then, we wish she'd give voice to angels.
This poem was recently nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
© 2018 Laurie Byro
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