Poetry Features - . Shari Wagner               . Scholastic Press publishedher young adult biography J. Tolkien: Creator of Languages and. Legends. Currently, she’s intrigued by haibun, an old Japaneseform that combines prose and haiku. Doris works as a communityengagement librarian for Monroe County Public Library in Bloomington.

She thanks her husband, Thom Gillespie, for being her tech guru parexcellence and for his continuous encouragement to pursue her writing. Her poems sing theconnections of what we often take as opposites- -animals and humans, physical and spiritual, darkness and light, the living and the dead. So many other naturaldisasters I can hardly name: cats and bebeguns and choice pieces of poisoned suet. So many suffered: blue ones, yellow ones,red- breasted ones, those black iridescent ones withyellow fur speckled like medals across their chests.

Evenings, hear them sing to theirdear departed. Notice how they closetheir wings like hymn books in church,how their dark claws clutch the tree limbs,how their voices travel up and downthe bark as if hoping to embrace that othernight sky with their music.

They,poor birds, have no sense. See how they welcomedarkness, even the cold finality of night. Followingits direction, I caught the last split- secondof a shooting star’s odyssey downto Earth.

It streaked across the sky beforedisappearing into the haze of man- made lights. I raced back to your room to tell youthat I recognized your soul insidethe fox’s sleek body, your musclesrippling its fur. I rushedinto the house through the storm- doorwhich sang on its hinges, up the stairsto your room, not stopping until I found youon your bed, not stopping until I feltthe rise and fall of your breathon my palm.

I stood listening to youthe way I listened to my children breathewhen they were new, two fingers poisedunder their nostrils in the dark. I held your hand, its veinsblue as the sky at firststarlight. I wanted to tell youabout the fox, how her prints scrimshawedthe snow, how the night came alivewith her breath, how one star above usexploded to dust in the night. Men saytheir petals feel as softas a woman’s flanksjust after bathing. Parisianwomen insist that if you tastejust one, you’ll hungerafter them forever.

Social Board. This is the Social Board. A place to read the QOTD and just hang out. New to Ladies of Lallybroch? Please introduce yourself and join in. The vast majority of industrialized societies are so totally disconnected from the natural world that very few even notice the rapidly dying ecosystems around them. If you read my earlier post on the Revelation 12 sign you understand that the astronomical alignment which occurs for the first and only time in all of history will.

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Limited edition 7" picture disc featuring two brand new tracks from Against Me! One amazing way that God can speak to us is through our dreams at night. Unfortunately, most people don't understand them. Many people are wondering, "What do. Find a complete guide to TV and movie titles heading to Blu-ray and DVD throughout the month of June, including The Fate of the Furious, Kong: Skull Island, Ghost in.

In Japan, they eat the firstof the year pickled; in Indiathey fry them with cardamom,cumin and garam masala. Native. Americans gave papoosestheir apples to suck upon,while the Inuit ate them frozenstraight from the sled. To try one yourself, pick onefrom your neighbor’sgarden. Like everything elsethey taste better stolen. Eat under coverof darkness or with a secret friend. As with an artichoke, work your wayfrom outer skin to inner heart. Marinate the petals in nectar,thieved also, served in a silver bowl.

When you approach the center of eachdelectable flower, bite hard. Tastetiny gold stamens betweenyour teeth and your tongue. Insideyour belly one kernelof silk will grow. Wheneveryou make love, you will feel it—wildred pulse, passionate flower,unravel, blossom, then bud.?

Hear themthrumming so loudly in the bulrushesnext to the creek. Rememberhow your flesh rose bellyto belly when greeting your love. When a woman pauses to watcha hummingbird drink from a flower,the dead can only guesswhat has caught her eye. For whatdo the dead rememberbut the world of the senses? The smellof freshly mown grass, a mockingbirdmocking, crickets rustling their prayerbooks, the fog hornblasting its double note. During moments such as thesethe dead struggle to leashin their bones, especially muzzlingthat empty spot just above the jawwhere the mouth once lay, pink,round, and perfect. How painfulto hold back those ah’s which longto escape each time a starsplinters its body across the sky.

Doris with Cody and Kristen near Skagway. A Selection of Uncollected Poems: From Quill & Parchment, Pushcart Prize Nominee, 2. Suspense Thriller Movies The Circle (2017) on this page. First Call: Cody. Was it the evening Oscardrove past with his dog team? When we heard the whoosh of his sledover the crusted snow?

Or perhaps,the night the stove oil ran outand the village turned as blackas though the engineof the world had blown out? Surely, it was a night whenthe Aurora Borealis rippled herflaming chest across the sky,and we lay in each other’s armslistening to God’s angelssoldering heaven. Or perhaps, it was a nightmore ordinary. A night like any otherwhen the iron stove spat its sparksacross the floorboards and Orion spilledhis tallow over the sky. A nightwhen lemmings squeezedtheir swag- bellied bodies under our door,leaving etched snow- braceletson the counters of the shed. That night, you little darling,were cruising along at just the rightlongitude, just the right latitudethrough the cosmic dust. How lucky we wereto be billeted just south of the Arctic Circlewaiting, waiting.

Your sister slept soundly, her handsstill clutching Good Night Moonwhile I called to you with my bellyand breasts. Outside, our chimney,and the chimneys of all the Inupiat villagers,poured cloud after cloud of smokeinto the sky, little grey ghoststhat beckoned you home. Someonehad left
 the black iron gate open. Someone, maybe, the same person,or another from the dancing,costumed mob had left apples,oranges, and skull cookieson top of the graves. Even as the gate creakedfree in the wind, even as. Mabel Dodge Luhan’s copyof The Pied Piper rustledits pages in a come hither way,the dead stuck to their roots,their quiet passageways. Perhaps, we partied too loudlywith our whizzing sparklers,or all that erratic light hurt the lonelysockets where their eyes once stood.

Maybe, we danced too hard on their roofs. Certainly, we did we not show enoughfear as we read their nameschiseled on stone, and ignored theirbones changing to humusunder pi. The pampas grass is thick- -its contiguous green spikes offering a refuge for squirrels and rabbits. Onthe far side of the house, the walnut tree has begun its staccato droppings. The sunflowers and tall daisies reach for sky as the tomato branches curldownward under the weight of heavy fruit. Can old age be like this?

Thisfeeling of abundance, of having survived the tornadic winds of spring, therollicking thunderstorms of June and July to come this day full of stillnessand the world’s beauty. Could you talk about this aspect of your poetry? We are nature. Mostly I celebrate nature, but more and more I want to mourn how much we damage it- - most likely for eons- -by releasing tons of gases into the atmosphere every day. Listen to its sounds: the crow’s harsh cry, the mourning dove’s coo and, this time of year, in Indiana, the rise and fall of cicadas' chirr- -a soundscape that I track my breath to each night while falling asleep. That it inspires, provides solace, restores?

Darcy, our lab mix, I string words together in my head. Like the images in dreams, some linger, most evaporate, but the experience of this forest- singing feeds my next poem whether it is about nature, love, travel or even an elegy. Did you actually live in such a village? Did that experience have an impact on your vision as a poet? Living for ten months in the Inupiat village of Kivalina in arctic Alaska with my husband and child had an immense impact on me as a writer and a person. The villagers fed us, found us a home, told us stories each day, and invited us to celebrations and funerals.

The minister even asked if his family could adopt our daughter, Kristen. We laughed but knew at the time he was serious. In the late 7. 0s, the culture remained primarily a hunting/gathering culture. In many ways, it felt like stepping back in time except that the villagers had snow machines and motorboats. The women still made boots, mukluks from caribou fur, which they sewed with dental floss.

When we arrived in September, salmon dried on white whalebone racks next to the houses. In November, I joined the ladies and ice- fished on the lagoon, where a woman in her sixties cracked through a foot of ice with an auger. The arctic sky offered the most breathtaking sunsets I have ever seen.