Category: Poetry
Piece by Piece
by Josie
In the sudsy bathtub with my lover hot & content, one finger fiddling a weeping joint we soak in lavender & hold each other ; slippery skin to skin.
Don’t Give Up on Me,
by Josie
‘cause I want to do two things : first try to show that life finalizes itself on the threshing floor, engorged with a life- time of self-thinking thoughts and self-sinking assertions.
101 bpm
by Josie
Wisps of sainthood waft about this living room— give me flamenco, give me Persian rhythms and sweet gypsy jazz, swing it all out of speakers perched high on the cabinet counter. Bits of wild wind shoot through the second story windows, running from the belching mountains beyond the poplar trees in the backyard. The gusts lift the melodies and snuggle them into marrow-bones, into … Read More 101 bpm
Beware Bull
by Josie
He was better educated—better than that lot, he spoke Persian and wrote Persian poetry and ran around with wild men who fished the Dunedin rivers with pocket knives, waiting for night to shine lights at the flounders and roast sparking fillets on a cast iron fire.
Phytophile
by Josie
Beyond the ribbed panes of the kitchen window swings a gorgeous plum and yellow philodendron; sweeping lacquered leaves catch the breeze half in split leaf, half monstera, a good name for such a beast! She belongs to our neighbor, who carefully disregards her day after day, neutrally striving to feed her natural sunlight (9-9:30 a.m.) and a sprinkle of cloud water from the Mountains … Read More Phytophile
Bistro Patio
by Josie
The coffee molting in that licked cup is stale already, gone the steam, gone the beans, gone the money-bagged Peruvian bean man, never stood a chance against this batch. Doesn’t matter anyhow the cup’s not there for consumption anyhow, the cups there are all for aesthetics—my fancy word for look at me in my mood, look at
Summertime Afternoon in the Midwest
by Josie
The sky is thick and dreamlike with clouds, great battleships of cotton and luster sailing to an endless azure tune— on my back beneath the poplar tree I listen to the steady whine of the horse fly. Rain has come over the central plains in torrents, heavy running along the window panes heavy with oblong droplets pelting skin, duck from backdoor to garage, … Read More Summertime Afternoon in the Midwest
Humans
by Josie
The mountain shudders under great weights of gusts and snow, groaning and creaking the six English climbers huddle rope-tied to rocks and tree branches listening for avalanches. And I sit here, at this metal patio table, so arbitrarily square, in a humid afternoon swatting flies and wondering what I will have for lunch.
Fresh Fish with Aloha!
by Josie
he called out, his knotted arm, knitted and purled, pumping a bucket the size of a table. I heard his low voice as I walked by him, say to his boy holding the rods that no one’s biting these days no one’s calling. I imagined him, then, standing on that barnacle-crusted pier, two rods in hand fishing for people. Scooping up chums who … Read More Fresh Fish with Aloha!
Breath Work
by Josie
She sighs, constantly. Always the sigh, sighing herself to wishful elegance, whisking the whites to rising peaks, she counts herself backward,
