March News and Gratitude

Once again I’m running late posting my thank-you notes to editors who have published my writing recently. Here are seven poems and a book review published during the past three weeks:

The Lake: “Witness”

Synchronized Chaos: “Fables Six – Ten/The End” (second half of a ten-poem sequence reprinted from my collection last penny the sun, 1-5 were reprinted in February)

Synchronized Chaos: My first book review, of Elsie Augustave’s The Roving Tree

DM du Jour (daily online journal of Danse Macabre): “Superstition” (a birthday poem written last year for a friend, and published in time for her birthday this year)

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Closing out 2014 with a basket of blessings:

Happy New Year to each and every one of you, my friends — thank you for being such generous readers and wonderful people.

Here are the final thank-you notes for 2014; I seem to be closing out 2014 with an overflowing basket of blessings:

The Stare’s Nest has kindly published my New Year’s Eve poem, “Breaking Bread” — today, on New Year’s Eve yet! Thank you and Happy New Year to editor Judi Sutherland!

Both The Lake (editor John Murphy) and Verse-Virtual (editor Firestone Feinberg) have released their January issues a day early — thank you, John Murphy, for including my new poem “Remembrance” at The Lake, and Firestone Feinberg for reprinting “It’s a PIRATE!” in the January issue of Verse-Virtual. (“It’s a PIRATE!” is from last penny the sun, Balkan Press, 2014).

I’d like to thank Russell Streur, editor of The Camel Saloon (AGAIN) for selecting “Elusive Alchemist” as one of the two December poems from The Camel Saloon to be reprinted in The Second Hump — I’m deeply grateful to have the “Elusive Alchemist” honored in this way.

 

 

More gratitude: Synchronized Chaos, Via Negativa, & One Sentence Poems

I’d like to thank Cristina Deptula, editor/creative facilitator at Synchronized Chaos, for publishing four of my ghazals, including two reprinted from last penny the sun. You can read them in the December 1 issue of Synchronized Chaos (they are written under the name “Halima bint Ayuba”).

I’ve been reading and enjoying Dave Bonta’s Via Negativa blog, which features at least two new poems each day, one each from Dave Bonta and Luisa A. Igloria. I’m taking on a challenge for myself this December: to write a poem every day in response to their poems. Dave Bonta has generously published my response-poems from Dec. 1 and 2 (“Reckoning” and “Loosening”) as guest-posts. Please be sure to follow the links at the bottom of each poem to see the poems by Dave and Luisa that inspired these.

I’d also like to thank Dale Wisely and Robert Scotellaro, editors of One Sentence Poems, for publishing my Hausa and English poem “Gobe, Jibi” (“Tomorrow, Day After”) .

 

Ways with Grapes

Ways with Grapes / by Laura M Kaminski

The grapes are growing, blushing
darker on the vine, rich juice
and dusky husk combined, as if
a heaven made of honey rained,
and these are dew.  To those
who compose music, they are wine,
fermented, aged, notes and tones
and characters, the compositions
then distilled, refined into a brandy,
set aflame.

Poems are made from these same grapes,
these same fine drops of nectar —
left in sunlight, these droplets
evaporate and dry. Waiting and sunlight
make a poem, a song that can
be held between the fingers,
arias and cantatas dried
to lunch-box- and pocket-size,
a symphony in a handful,
come-as-you-are, take-along heaven
common raisin.

 

Catechism

Catechism / by Laura M Kaminski

When still a small and prissy girl,
more prone
to matching bows and shoes
than digging inquisitive
holes in the mud,
it seemed clear that earthworms
fell from the clouds
with the rainwater.

I assumed those squirming
pink and brown segments were bits
of angels’ intestines,
angels who’d met with mishaps,
buffeted to pieces
by the wind
or sliced by lightning.

Careful not to get anything
sacred on my socks, I tiptoed
through the debris,
sanctifying my squeamishness
with conviction.