Aug 7, 2018 | Alexandrine, Gus Stevens, Hexameter, Seasons, Summer
The wading pool is shrinking with the wasted sun and the yellows of summer drain slowly away exposing red bricks beneath the glittering spray. With cast-off toys and leaves littered about their feet, the bone-soaked nine-year-olds will squeal, crash, and run through...
Aug 4, 2018 | Grief, Gus Stevens, Heptameter, Hexameter, Mom, Whale
She let go yesterday; she thought she could let go, let him slip from her nose, and gently from the sun to sink deeper than her lungs could go; it was done. She carried her son for nine suns, and eighteen moons before. Could she let go, when the tide turned within her...
Jul 28, 2018 | Bible Story, Gus Stevens, Multi-Syllabic Rhyme, Pentameter, Prophets
It’s told that Socrates chose the hemlock over this greater terror: banishment. But tortured Jonah, standing on the dock the hour he spied the boat to Tarshish went in secret to the furthest corner of the earth to hide his hate beneath a Spanish tent. He refused...
Jul 23, 2018 | Gus Stevens, Hexameter, Pentameter, Rhymed Couplets, Summer
Why are my poems so obsessed with doom? Is there no light their dark will not consume, no work they will not turn into a chore, nor child they cannot drown in metaphor? Sometimes beauty is neither fraud nor thief; sometimes a leaf is just a common leaf— a welcome...
Jul 18, 2018 | Alexandrine, Daughter, Dream, Gus Stevens
I wonder if the tearful child, not yet perceiving what it means to fall asleep, might believe she dies each night. Afraid to go alone, she chokes on her goodbyes, “Please don’t forget me! O please leave the door ajar!” But the swallowing Unknown will...
Jun 5, 2018 | Alexandrine, Daughter, Dream, Grief, Gus Stevens, Hexameter
In my dream, I held too many things in my hands and my fingers grappled and fumbled with the load afraid I’d drop one as I stumbled down the road for I’d balanced several things atop an icebox and my dream-drunk brain was slow, weighted down with sand...
