Poets Against War continues the tradition of socially engaged poetry by creating venues for poetry as a voice against war, tyranny and oppression.
Joan Maiers
JOAN MAIERS teaches writing at Marylhurst University near Portland, Oregon. Her work appears in Fireweed, Hubbub, The Other Side and Seattle Review. She is completing a poetry manuscript, SPECIFIC GRAVITY.
HALF LIFE
Although I understand the February reception at the White House has reconfigured, I am sending a poem in hopes that the anthology will materialize to convey the consensus of writers against devastation in Iraq or anywhere:
HALF LIFE How many animals perished in the Chernobyl letdown, not to mention humans or flowers? the same iris I view at Augen Gallery lies fuse-petalled in Kiev.*
In my front yard the magnolia is hot. Snow feeds it slurries of rain. Each May, cottonwood drift drops its net shoulder height, showers of atoms catch the soil by surprise.
Life under fire-- is it any different in Dublin, in Caracas, or in Yucca Flats?
Clouds carry traces, life wild and domestic. How will we know when to turn out the lights?
*prints exhibited by Royal Nebeker
Reservoir
In Memory of Ben Linder, April 28, 1987
Sprayed across the courtyards, flowers of Matagalpa open their valves. Lavender mists rise up like moisture from asphalt.
Once again blossoms fall from the mothers' hands, scaphoid shapes upon the graves, an act that mourns the living, the angles of their faces so sharp they scrape.
Once might expect to find him there now, curled under the carapace of diesel or waking from a dream: a snake crawling inside the netting over his bedroll.
In a local northwest home, I knew him only by a set of clothes left in storage, his worker's uniform, denim, flannel shirt, rosebud boots, trailwest parka.
Now, candles of our chestnut trees burn without caution around northern storage zones. In a day or so their clusters will burst vermillion in the sun.
(published in MR. COGITO, Volume IX, Number 3)
RE-MEMBERING
Not just/ that they died/ but they died/ in terror/ jaws of canyon/ caught them/ knowing/ but not/ knowing/ in their freefall/ their lamps/ were calibrated for pyres of apocalypse/ on that day/ lute strings/ lacing/ their vizors/ taut/ for meeting/ the Bridegroom in widemouthed/ embrace
