THE POET – Featured Poetry – June 2022

DIFFERENT FRAMES

By Doerthe Huth (GERMANY)

We can stop thinking about the future

because it sometimes overtakes itself.

What we thought yesterday for tomorrow

was erased by the present.

With everything we know today

the decision to start a war can destroy everything.

It crawls into the frame of our life and

carries plans to absurdity.

The world can be put into different frames,

waiting to be filled with light and colours.

Inserting an image means to

protect and highlight it through the frame.

Building frames is a solid handcraft.

The measurements must be precise, and

the actions must cope with the ideas,

to compose an era of brightness.

Not very craftsman is gifted.

Some frames are not made solid enough

to defend the image against the ravages of time

such as dirt, corrosion, and decay.

With all we know today,

we also have to realize:

Not every manufacturer is gifted

Some frames break at some point.

END

Doerthe Huth is a poet, Life Coach and author of books about the joy of life. She is a member of the German Writers’ Association, and her first collection of poems and essays appeared in English in 2022.

W: www.doerthe-huth.jimdosite.com

FB: @DoertheHuth

Twitter: @DoertheHuth

Amazon: www.amazon.de/-/e/B00458KTCC

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RUN-AWAY BRIDE — OR THE MERMAID’S LAMENT

By LindaAnn LoSchiavo (USA)

Bree made a wish inspired by broke girls

In fairytales, not realizing then

Mist magic isn’t free. Before smoke curled

For dinnertime, she quit the sea for him.

Her human limbs are pale, not powerful

Like mermaids’ tails. They can’t kick hard enough,

Return Bree to the deep blue beautiful

Realm underwater, force that made her tough.

Their wedding lullabied anxiety

Away. Then moods wrecked her loveboat. And she’d

Draw baths, avoiding his society

To sink beneath, imagining seaweed,

That salt encrusted skin, fins, cool order

She’d dreamt of giving up. He built their pool.

The shoals and eddies of chlorined waters

Are hers to rule now, cruelly fooled.

END

LindaAnn LoSchiavo, a Pushcart Prize, Rhysling Award, and Dwarf Stars nominee, is a member of SFPA, The British Fantasy Society, and The Dramatists Guild.

W: www.linktr.ee/LindaAnn.LoSchiavo

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WRONG POEM

By Allan Lake (AUSTRALIA)

Big Girl dominates cafes, bars. Barks

like a bitch during basketball games.

So like you, mate! That voice can rock

then silence an entire gym. Topics cascade,

laughter erupts and we all have to smile

as jelly dances, wobbles joyously.

You two share that and a certain style.

Soiled track suit, slip-on sneakers,

square glasses perched on square face.

Like you, she doesn’t try to please anyone

but delights everyone as she demolishes

jam doughnuts washed down with beer

by the bucket. Jokes about losing weight

by sawing off one leg, then cooking it

for a between-meal snack.

I know that, like you, BG loves cats

and kids, stops just short of devouring them.

A welcome pest, a balm – kapow – to oldies,

essential at a party, will remain deafeningly

alive till heart gives out then receive a ‘departy’

to die for. You come to mind when I look

at Big Girl. I know you’re still single

but, perhaps being ‘like’ magnets,

you wouldn’t connect, without strain

on those over-worked organs. Anyway,

you should probably disregard this;

it’s just wrong with our tenth (tin)

anniversary coming up.

END

Allan Lake is a poet from Allover, Canada who now lives and writes in Allover, Australia. Some coincidence! His latest chapbook of poems, was published by Ginninderra Press (Aus) in 2020.

E: [email protected]

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GOT IT

By Gabriella Garofalo (ITALY)

Got it? It’s a dirty job, a foul play

When fear digs into her soul,

Who knows, an act of kindness maybe,

When stalked by water words madly fight

With her to see the light,

While you stare at the reeds

So averse at welcoming water-

And where’s the heaven in all that scrape?

A red orange idiom, that set ablaze

Lovers and baskets to weave?

Say,do you really think light

The rawness of a freshly mown grass?

Do you really call garden

A constellation of constraint, and dissent,

Do you really think clouds wild maenads

Shaking the sistrum all over orgasms and skies?

Foul play, sure, but only by birth

Grass can see the life,

And an acrylic moon can’t stand out:

Hills and heights deceive,

No mercy from the girdling grass

As trees and bonds grow older-

My snaky disease, I know

Mornings are your pawns,

What can get your eyes if you win?

No need to silence the soul,

No need to drain the sounds,

So, stop faking you are torn

About which road to walk,

When you know only too well

All the debris of the sky gather in a womb-

Mothers or births?

But who plans the route,

Who designs hurdles, and labyrinths,

Maybe creatures who dodge them

To hurl themselves

At limbs that catch, grab, grasp-

It’s too late I’m afraid,

Only when water floods you realise at last

Heaven needs births, and mothers,

To enjoy a life of pure white,​

You here?-

Free from creatures, and limbs,

Only good for starving and whining,

Only too hungry for a stony life.

END

Born in Italy some decades ago, Gabriella Garofalo fell in 

love with the English language at six, and has written poetry ever since.

SIFTING THE DUST

By Bobbi Sinha-Morey (USA)

As the days dissolved our lives

grew like sprouting weeds sifting

the dust on dirt roads, our hands

brought to manual labour on the

farm – my brothers, sisters and

me; and we were so far away from

town you’ll never see the outline

of a lilac tree. Each morning an

hour before dawn two of my brothers

would be milking the cows and I’d be

going down row after row turning soil,

growing herbs and vegetables til my

skin would brown under the sun;

a backbreaking duty while my mother

would spill seams of intricate half-truths

from her lips equalled with her undivided

devotion to converting our big barn into

an antique shop. The youngest one we

didn’t know what to do with; she’d tear

her paper dolls, watch their scraps fly

away in the wind – an odd intrusion

in her mind; it made me want something

normal like finding a lovely bird, holding

it in the cage of my hands listening to it

sing. My mother taught us girls how to

sew clothes, fry, cook in the kitchen,

write in shorthand, practice typing and

math for a practical profession. I never

wished for anything. One day in the winter

I bought a heavy coat with my own

money; owned a calico cat, the one

thing I loved the most before it got

loose one freezing night in the wilderness.

The only time I saw it again I was

asleep and there were tears of ice on

its face inside my dream.

END

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Bobbi Sinha-Morey’s poetry has appeared in a wide variety of places and her work has been nominated for The Best of the Net Anthology

as well as for The Pushcart prize.

W: www.bobbisinhamorey.wordpress.com.

W: [email protected]