This month features Russell Streur and Stephen Jarrell Williams
Russell Streur
SIX ROSES
The last six roses my father planted
Bloom at autumn’s end
Red against the dun and rust of the river bank.
I expected to hear his ghost
Snoring in this house tonight
Loud enough to wake the living.
Instead I hear my mother pacing quietly
Through these rooms in starlight and green slippers
Afraid to wake the dead.
PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN WITH PINE CONES
She paints her legs
In sedge and meadow rue
Hikes Mill Trail
In timber steps
Through oak and hickory
To calypso time
She is thin this morning
One of the old ones here
Who stayed behind
In stream and wood
With owls in her hair
And pine cones at her waist
More like sunlight
Than ever.
BEATNIK GIRL
I am looking for the beatnik girl
Who quotes Neruda in her sleep
Who worries in the morning what exactly Johnny meant
When he whispered truth is beauty to an urn
And I am looking for the beatnik girl
Who knows all about the opera in Tempe
Modigliani nudes in the spring adieu
Deluge in Arcady and the Legend Duluoz
And I am looking for the beatnik girl
To walk with me through Attic weeds to mountain citadel
With garlands on her thighs an age apart from woe
That girl of silken grace and sliest text who really likes
Late night jazz
On the radio.
Russell Streur is a resident of Atlanta, Georgia. His works have appeared in 63
Channels, The American DIssident, Half Drunk Muse, Juked, Lost, Megaera, Raving
Dove, Poems Niederngasse (Switzerland) and The Blanket (Ireland).
Stephen Jarrell Williams
SEA OF DREAMS
We will come together
With the unstoppable tide
Of those that do not know us
Their disasters slicing through the sea
Blood like wine fading into the depths
The white sandy bottom soft as your breasts
Staring up to me in the blur of a dream
I will never awake
Never swim far from your reach
Your dazzling eyes seeing
World of the underneath waters
Your fingers and toes waving me in.
ESCAPE
When they lose interest in us
We will sneak away
From under their weight
Finding grace in each others arms
Riding the crest of waves
Side by side
Endless speed-thrill
Hand in hand
Our faces in the spray
Cheering our escape
The sea vast ahead of us.
DRUMS
Turning over from a dream,
opening eyes to
a white sheet across a span of surprise.
You are there sleeping,
tranquil as a tropical isle
inviting a touch.
Your hair flowing vines
capturing my fingers,
drawing me closer.
Drums beginning to beat far within
your reawakening.
Stephen Jarrell Williams has been called "The Poet of Doom," "A Voice in the Wilderness," and "A Minstrel for Love." He was born in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. His parents are native Texans. He has lived most of his life in California. His poetry has appeared in Aoife's Kiss, Aphelion, Blue Collar Review, The Broome Review, Camroc Press Review, Censored Poets, Chronogram Magazine, Deuce Coupe, Fissure Magazine, Freefall, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Hawaii Review, Heroin Love Songs, Hungur, Is This Reality, Kalkion, Liquid Imagination, Mad Swirl, Metazen, Mirror Dance, Neonbeam, Nerve Cowboy, Nomad's Choir, POEM, Poesia, Posey, protestpoems.org, Purpose, REAL, Rusty Truck, Scifaikuest, Sex And Murder, Shoots And Vines, Tales from the Moonlit Path, Thieves Jargon, Unfettered Verse, Zygote In My Coffee, and others.
