#Potcake Poet

[batgovernor]

Nina Parmenter, 'A Spell for Motherhood'

Take a mountain. Scale the pink-arsed flanks of it, limb over limb. Find Poseidon. Extract from him a wave and a horse’s hoof. Pluck a tree; kill the grip of it by showing it your thoughts. Make your peace with the grave. Eat apples, all of them. Taste in them the sin of being a woman. Let that smack you in the gut, you deserve it. Straddle the equator. Suck up its spin, take it with you; feel…

[batgovernor]

Potcake Poet's Choice: Pino Coluccio, 'First Comes Love'

Potcake Poet’s Choice: Pino Coluccio, ‘First Comes Love’

There comes a time when sitting home alone looking at your life — I’m such a knob — gets to be a drag. You hate your job, your car’s a piece of crap, and what you eat is fatty, fried and salty. But then you meet a girl. The life you made a mess of pulses. And not content to mess up just your own, you settle down and mess up someone else’s. ***** Pino Coluccio writes that this poem is one his…

[batgovernor]

Launch: Potcake Chapbook 12, 'City! Oh City!'

Launch: Potcake Chapbook 12, ‘City! Oh City!’

City! Oh City! – poems on the light and dark of urban life. Thirteen of the best contemporary English-language poets present their wildly differing takes on the glamour and squalor, the joy and heartbreak, the varied people and the hidden wildlife of our modern cities. Five of the poets are new to the Potcake Chapbook series, and I’m delighted to be adding Kate Bingham of England, Francis O’Hare…

[batgovernor]

Potcake Poet's Choice: Amit Majmudar, 'Eyespots'

Potcake Poet’s Choice: Amit Majmudar, ‘Eyespots’

Caterpillars build their bunkers out of terror. Transformation hunts them, haunts themas oak leaf peepholes open underfoot to bare the air, the emptiness that wants them.I have a measure of infinity inside me. A is no and mit is measure in an ancestral tongue that haunts me, hunts me.I’m half in love with what I have to be. The other half is looking for a razor to make of me the Amit who was once…

[batgovernor]

Launch: Potcake Chapbook 10, 'Travels and Travails'

Launch: Potcake Chapbook 10, ‘Travels and Travails’

Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but surely we’re going to get back to casual international travel again some day soon? The 10th chapbook in the Potcake series is now being mailed out from London, and I trust it augurs well for the happily peripatetic. As usual, the chapbook contains an assortment of the bright (D.A. Prince), the dark (Tom Vaughan) and the flippant (Max Gutmann), with everything…

[batgovernor]

Potcake Poet's Choice: Juleigh Howard-Hobson, 'I'll Keep My Ghosts'

Potcake Poet’s Choice: Juleigh Howard-Hobson, ‘I’ll Keep My Ghosts’

“…presence, if it has been real presence, does not ever leave.”–May Sarton I’ll keep my ghosts. Each morning down we go Through the hallway, where they begin to show As grey reflections of themselves in frames That do not answer when I call their names But swirl and curve around me, to and fro. Sometimes, in this house that they used to know So well, their unseen numbers swell and grow Until I…

[batgovernor]

Michael R. Burch: 'For All That I Remembered'

Michael R. Burch: ‘For All That I Remembered’

For all that I remembered, I forgot her name, her face, the reason that we loved … and yet I hold her close within my thought: I feel the burnished weight of auburn hair that fell across her face, the apricot clean scent of her shampoo, the way she glowed so palely in the moonlight, angel-wan. The memory of her gathers like a flood and bears me to that night, that only night, when she and I were…

[batgovernor]

Calling the Poem: 13. 'Crafting the Verse'

Calling the Poem: 13. ‘Crafting the Verse’

We stand on two banks of the river that’s flowing between us. I’ll bridge my new thoughts out to you with a verse. First I form key ideas – they need clarity, cleanness – The bridge forms an outline, takes shape in my head. Now that bridge must be built, Built regardless of canyons, or mud flats and silt. The pillars are images placed first for more of the bridge to traverse,With my strongest…

[batgovernor]

Potcake Poet's Choice: Richard Fleming, 'His Room'

Potcake Poet’s Choice: Richard Fleming, ‘His Room’

It took five minutes, more or less, to fill, with what he left behind, a cardboard box and to compress into its space, his life, unsigned in much the way some paintings are, then stash it in the waiting car. In those five minutes, I remained there in the small, vacated room, while the red-faced landlord explained a small arrears. Would I assume responsibility and pay? My conscience made me easy…

[batgovernor]

Potcake Poet's Choice: Brooke Clark, 'At a Child's Funeral'

Potcake Poet’s Choice: Brooke Clark, ‘At a Child’s Funeral’

Today we give to the earth the body of our little girl, our little darling; we’ll never watch her twirl around the house again in her impenetrable games or listen as she wheedles and whines our names in that annoying tone we tried to break her of before; now we’d give anything to hear it once more. She’ll find whatever waits for all of us when this life ends– eternal silence or the souls of…

[batgovernor]

Potcake Poet's Choice: Michael R. Burch, 'Styx'

Potcake Poet’s Choice: Michael R. Burch, ‘Styx’

Black waters,deep and dark and still…all men have passed this way,or will. ***** Michael R. Burch writes: “This original epigram, written in my teens, returns more than 6,000 results. I started writing poetry around age 13 and decided that I wanted to challenge the immortals around age 15. I was always very ambitious about my writing. When I couldn’t out-write Keats and Shelley at age 15, I…

[batgovernor]

Potcake Poet's Choice: Mindy Watson, 'On Johnson's Creek'

Potcake Poet’s Choice: Mindy Watson, ‘On Johnson’s Creek’

Mid 80’s, late Wisconsin summer day. You’re male; just one of many crayfish lured Innately to this shallow, turbid creek. July’s sweet warmth assures you that you’ll not Find only sanctuary, but a mate. And at a human hand-span’s length from tail To telson, you’re a splendid prospect: tailAloft and eyestalks staunch, you greet the day.With fierce claws brandished, you await your mateIn burrow’s…

[batgovernor]

Potcake Poet's Choice: James B. Nicola, 'Everybody's Friendly, Just About...'

Potcake Poet’s Choice: James B. Nicola, ‘Everybody’s Friendly, Just About…’

On my floor there lives a very nice old man. Foreign. He’s going blind. I don’t think he was necessarily an act- or but a vestigial life percolates up from beneath the lines in his face and accent. Lately, reaching out to him has become exhausting. He’s too friendly now and thrusts his face too close. . . . I was friendly when I moved in the building. I thought old meant interesting. Besides,…

[batgovernor]

Potcake Poet's Choice: Cody Walker, 'Mad System Down'

Potcake Poet’s Choice: Cody Walker, ‘Mad System Down’

He thought he saw a Herd of Cattle Grazing on his lawn: He looked again, and found it was A Phaser set to “On.” “We’re seeing more and more of this, With Sarah Brady gone.” He thought he saw a One-Eyed JackGo grizzling through the night:He looked again, and found it wasHis Dream of Being Right.“It turns out not to mean a thing,”He texted Barry White.He thought he saw a High-school Hoodlum Trash…

[batgovernor]

Potcake Poet's Choice: Vadim Kagan, 'You Are Changing'

Potcake Poet’s Choice: Vadim Kagan, ‘You Are Changing’

You are changing from day to day And from night to night You are changing before I say Let there be light You are changing your smile, your hair And even your eyes You are changing what isn’t there Making truth of lies You are changing the coins you betAnd the games you winYou are changing what has been setOutside and inYou are changing from old to newAnd again to oldYou are changing all that we…

[batgovernor]

Potcake Poet's Choice: Helena Nelson, 'On Gloom and Proper Respect'

Potcake Poet’s Choice: Helena Nelson, ‘On Gloom and Proper Respect’

He doesn’t exactly blame her for it. No, it’s not her fault. She is the way she is— incorrigibly optimistic. But the strain of her unbridled cheerfulness must tell. His gloom requires due diligence. It’s there to serve a need, and needs a slow and proper processing. That’s it—a proper pro- cessing. To this he must commit, and hence his necessary isolation. No, he is not depressed. He’s just…