Good morning!
Just a quick reminder that the poetry anthology is accepting submissions until September of 2021. I’m already receiving some truly amazing work. In the next few months I will be featuring and promoting the poets who have submitted their work. I encourage you to support their work and check out their other writing endeavors. If you have something to contribute to the “Wilderness of Soul” please feel free to contact me at sereichert@comcast.net.
Today, I’m offering up a couple of poems in semi-celebration of this strange month of ‘love’. Enjoy the broad spectrum of heart.
SCARS Growing a scar is hard. The wound never stops throbbing It’s enough to keep you awake at night And irritated during the day. The thrashed skin, angry and red, Prying open at the slightest provocation So you wrap the bandage Good and tight, Until the rest of the limb Distal to the wound Throbs with its chokehold, Gasping for blood. No blood, But no pain either And no dead skin, Hanging to catch on your clothes. Reminding you At every minute Bump against door, Hair toss Or paper turn That someone, You love Cut you.
Lizzy We were girls in tall grass Running with scraped knees And dry throats. Disappearing into the past When things were simple When life was sunshine And big-dipper gazing We were the past I can’t quite recall anymore But the whisper of memory I hold on to Like the edge of a cliff What if I forget? Will we both stop existing? Will we snuff out Without the constant loop playing Over and over in my memory? Do I keep you alive? Or does your memory keep me? Your bike gears were gritty with sand and the vinyl on your seat was cracked so you never sat. You were never still. You were perpetual motion And magic kept you aloft. How still and fallen you lay now. The earth is tender and cruel Around bones that once Commanded the rotation of the skies.
