Tag: Poetry About Mourning

Larry Smith: “Proverbs”

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PROVERBS
                        (for Mike James)

They say the moon is an orange we should not eat.
They say sweat on your neck brings good luck.
They say to brag is to cut off a toe at a time.
They say your virtues are your grandchildren; hold them close.
They say tomorrow will be like today, only the weather will change.
They say speak gently to the old, they are a bridge you must pass over.
They say robins speak to robins, crows to crows.
They say grief has many faces, depression only one.
They say kindness is a seed we plant in each other.
They say.

About the Author: Larry Smith is a poet, fiction writer, memoirist and editor of Bottom Dog Press books in Ohio. He and his wife Ann cofounded a meditation center in Huron, Ohio. His most recent book is CONNECTIONS: Moring Dew: Tanka. 

Image Credit: Image originally from The Birds of North America. New York :Published under the auspices of the Natural Science Association of America,1903. Courtesy of the Biodiversity Heritage Library

M. J. Arcangelini: “Invisible Ink”

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INVISIBLE INK
In memory of Mike James

The letter from his friend came inscribed
With invisible ink. He pondered it, puzzled,
Then remembered hearing once how
To make such things viewable.
He held it over a candle’s open flame.
Just before it ignited, the words
Appeared, but the paper immolated
In his hand before he could read it.

How much more is there to be said?
His friend is dead now, gone. Ashes stirring
with the slightest breeze, drifting upward
like grey snow run backwards and projected
onto the future. Fertile memories to be
reawakened in the shadows of dusk,
harvested from the white fields holding
words he left behind unsaid, unwritten.

About the Author: M.J. (Michael Joseph) Arcangelini was born 1952 in western Pennsylvania. He has resided in northern California since 1979. His work has been published in many magazines, online journals, over a dozen anthologies, & 6 collections, the most recent of which is “Pawning My Sins” from Luchador Press, 2022.

Image Credit: Paul Cézanne “The Artist’s Son Writing” (1887) Public domain image courtesy of Artvee.

Imran Boe Khan: “A Thousand Miles from Your Bedside”

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A Thousand Miles from Your Bedside

I’ve watched you lose life
in measures I cannot grasp.

Distance was the only way to escape
the time loop back to my origin story.

I’d like to say I travelled
to reinvent myself

though I know I just wanted a reason
to not be the one closing your eyes.

They are emissaries from your conscience;
I fear the contradictions they carry.

I have spent my years pursuing an unreachable remoteness,

knowing my life has been yours to roam through
like a mother tasting her own poisoned milk.

While I cower beneath a son’s first day at school,

a daughter’s graduation party, I can feel those eyes
fumbling their ways softly across my face,
lighting a wick beneath the chiselled brow
they cannot read.

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About the Author: Imran Boe Khan has work appearing in places such as the Rumpus, Sixth Finch, Cosmonauts Avenue, Yes, Poetry, and The Bitter Oleander. A previous winner of the Thomas Hardy Prize, Imran is a lecturer at Bournemouth University, and lives in Christchurch, Dorset.

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Image Credit: Broncia Koller-Pinell “A Bedroom Interior” (1895) Public Domain