Amy Barone | Two Purple Poems

Purple

 

Like a desert flower,

they surprise, pop up

on islands of late winter mud.

 

Burst through bare patches of grass.

Symbols of royalty and pride.

Crocuses robed in purple with yellow tongues.

 

Hungry for a new season.

My company on a sunny March day

as the days stretch out.

 

All in wait for more color, light, life.

Easing our loads. The promise of green.

A time of hope.

 

 

______________________________

 

Hyacinth

 

A scent sends me back —

where spring was a destination.

 

Nature nurtured. Violet flowers

emerged in a secret spot,

trumpets of sweet perfume.

 

Today I placed a potted hyacinth

on the grave of loved ones

who tended gardens.

 

 

______________________________

Amy Barone’s most recent full-length poetry collection, Defying Extinction, was published by Broadstone Books in 2022. SPD recognized it as a Poetry Bestseller of the Month (July 2022) and an SPD Recommended Book. We Became Summer was released by New York Quarterly Books in 2018. Barone has also published two chapbooks, Kamikaze Dance (Finishing Line Press) and Views from the Driveway (Foothills Publishing). Her poems have appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, New Verse News, The Ocotillo Review, Paterson Literary Review and several Brownstone Poets anthologies. She belongs to the Brevitas online poetry community. Originally from Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, she currently lives in New York City and Haverford, PA. Follow her on Twitter where her handle is @AmyBBarone.

Charles Pierre | Early April Violet

Early April Violet

 

 

An ordinary shift in the chilly wind

brings this seed to sprout amid braided debris,

just above the high-water line on a beach,

where the Nissequogue River enters the Sound.

All one can see are five frail petals

on a slender stem, with no visible leaves

to cushion them in such a punishing place,

where the life of a being so small is gauged

in days, and the thin light of early April

is the only tenderness this flower will sense,

exposed on a raft of dead grasses and reeds,

bent by onshore gusts as the new moon ascends,

when a spring tide floats the violet to sea.

 

 

This poem originally appeared in the author's poetry collection, Father of Water (2008).

 

 

_________________________________

Charles Pierre was born in New York City in 1945 and raised in Centerport, New York. He studied at the University of Virginia and worked as a copywriter in Manhattan, where he has lived since 1973. Mr. Pierre is the author of five poetry collections: Green Vistas, Father of Water, Brief Intervals of Harmony, Coastal Moments, and Circle of Time.

Chris O’Carroll | Rose of Sharon

Rose of Sharon

 

Last week, you held one debut bloom aloft,

High harbinger of this outburst, this spree

Of petals tissue-flimsy, whisper-soft

Bowing you low with multiplicity.

Pale lavender around deep Concord grape,

These flowers pregnantly proliferate;

Their color scheme now bulks and droops your shape

As each brief blossom trumpets news of weight.

They furl at night and drop off soon enough,

Then you renew them day by spendthrift day,

Each with a core white spike of lacy fluff

Adding its lusty thrust to their display

Shouldering this mad splurge of fancy dress,

You curtsy to your own effusiveness.

 

__________________________________

Chris O’Carroll is the author of two books of poems, The Joke’s on Me and Abracadabratude. His work also appears in An Amaranthine Summer (published in memory of Kim Bridgford), Extreme Sonnets, Love Affairs at the Villa Nelle, New York City Haiku, The Great American Wise Ass Poetry Anthology, and multiple volumes of the Potcake Chapbooks series. He is a member of Actor’s Equity, and has performed widely as a stand-up comedian.

Sarah Sarai | Low Life, Malibu

Low Life, Malibu

 

Buoyant and so damn blasé about it,

the ducks are all You looking at me?

I can float, sucker.

 

While those puffed-up fighter pilot

gulls straight up sneer, Haw! Haw!

fools, we’re slumming it.

 

Unhinged as their jaws, they swoop in

on darting fish close to the surface,

then circle our scraps for dessert.

 

You and me, slouched on wet sand, we

feel the day’s chill as a flesh-crawling

parasite. We consider following

 

the sun as she shimmies down,

searching new and newer horizons,

and each time, we invite her to join us,

 

up the highway, in a cracked red-

leather booth shaped like a crescent moon.

She might want to but never shows.

 

We’re not big on duty, but we get it.

We have us one responsible sun.

The I’m-all-that flighty couldn’t care less.

 

 

Previously published in Pine Hills Review, August 2, 2023.

 

__________________________________

Sarah Sarai is the author of several poetry collections including That Strapless Bra in Heaven (Kelsay Books, 2019); Geographies of Soul and Taffeta (Indolent Books, 2016); and The Future Is Happy (BlazeVOX Books, 2009). Her poems are widely anthologized, most notably in Gerald LaFemina’s Composing Poetry, a Guide to Writing Poems and Thinking Lyrically (Kendall Hunt Publishing, 2016); Like a Fat Gold Watch: Poetic Responses to Sylvia Plath edited by Christine Hamm (Fat Gold Watch Press, Brooklyn, 2018) and Say It Loud: Poems About James Brown edited by Michael Oatman and Mary Weems (Whirlwind Press, 2011). A native New Yorker, born in Long Island, she grew up in Los Angeles, returning to attend Sarah Lawrence where she earned her MFA. She currently lives in the big city and works as an independent editor.

Bruce E. Whitacre | The Foldout Couch

 

Jesalah Love Art Neon Sign
After Keith Haring

The Foldout Couch

 

His force thumps the entire divan

against the renter-white wall,

adding to the small dents.

These are the good years.

Galaxies revolve like the club door, powered

by magnetism and mystery.

Tossing cushions is foreplay,

though sometimes here the fizz goes flat.

A bicep in the red lava light,

an ass in the veil of blue smoke, its globes

green glitter-strewn and sweating. Heaving

planets and stars call

to the white light between the eyes,

the fire in the throat

as you take all he’s got.

The collapse, the caress, the clip

of the spring through the mattress.

Another notch in the floor.

Counting down the security deposit.

 

Previously published in RFD, Issue 190, Summer 2022, pp 55-57, with other poems from Whitacre’s forthcoming Good Housekeeping.

 

_____________________________

Bruce E. Whitacre’s recent publications include his debut poetry collection, The Elk in the Glade: The World of Pioneer and Painter Jennie Hicks (Crown Rock Media, 2022); Sky Island Journal; Poetry X Hunger; Dear Booze; Diane Lockward’s third volume on craft, The Strategic Poet; and the 2022 anthology I Want to Be Loved by You: Poems on Marilyn Monroe. Work here was nominated for Sundress Publications’ 2020 Best of the Net Anthology and the 2024 Pushcart Prize. A featured poetry reader at the Forest Hills Public Library, he has read his work at Poets House, the Zen Mountain Monastery Buddhist Poetry Festival, Kew Willow Books, Lunar Walk, and other venues. He holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and has completed master workshops with Jericho Brown, Alex Dimitrov, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, and Mark Wunderlich. Bruce is a native of Nebraska and lives in Forest Hills, Queens, with his husband.

Patricia Carragon | Wild Is the Wind

photo credit: Roxanne Hoffman 

Wild Is the Wind

(sung by Nina Simone)

 

do you hear the wind?

see that scarlet leaf

dance on concrete?

 

I am that wind

I am that leaf

I am that dance

 

in the distance

Ms. Simone sings about

spring & kisses

 

in a dervish trance

you cling to that leaf

embrace the wind

 

the wind is wild

and logic & fear surrender

to oneness

 

the wind is love

and love is the light

that has no end

 

 

Published in Jerry Jazz Musician, February 17, 2022

__________________________________

Patricia Carragon is the author of several books of poetry and fiction. Her most recent poetry collections are Meowku (Poets Wear Prada) and Innocence (Finishing Line Press). Her debut novel, Angel Fire, was recently released by Alien Buddha Press. Patricia hosts the Brownstone Poets reading series from Brooklyn on Zoom and publishes an associated anthology annually.

Don Hogle | Red Geraniums

photo credit: Don Hogle

Red Geraniums

 

Was it on the ferry to Mount Athos

that the spring sun felt hot on my face,

the wind still cold on the back of my neck?

A priest with a black hat and straggly beard

snoozed next to me. Gulls flew alongside,

catching pieces of bread thrown to them,

their bodies unnaturally close to us.

 

Or was it in Budva, beneath the sign that read

Sailor, where someone took my picture?

Wearing my aviator Ray-Bans, arms folded

across my chest, I looked comically resolute.

 

No, it must have been in Kotor

with its trumpet blasts of red geraniums. Yes,

I sat in the warm sun, the air cool on my neck;

the flowers spilling from the window boxes

were so bright, I said, Yes, run me through

with your unrepentant red, for I have no desire

to ever leave here.

 

 

Published in Artemis, Volume XXX, 2023

_______________________________

A lifelong student of languages and an avid traveler (to some 40 odd countries), Don Hogle blogs at Postcards from a Traveler. Hogle is also the author of two poetry collections, a chapbook titled Madagascar, published by Sevens Kitchens Press in 2020, and a full-length book, Huddled in the Night Sky, forthcoming from Poets Wear Prada, fall of 2024. His poetry has appeared in Apalachee Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Hayden’s Ferry, Full Bleed, and The Inquisitive Eater, among other places. He was a finalist for both The Missouri Review’s 2021 Jeffrey Smith Editors’ Prize and Green Linden Press’ 2021 Wishing Jewel Prize, and a semi-finalist for Naugutuck River Review’s 2021 Narrative Poetry Prize. He lives happily in Manhattan without pets, children, or spouses of any gender or species.

Carrie Magness Radna | Red (A Ghazal)

Red (A Ghazal)

 

 

A smear of lipstick glazes your favorite coffee cup —  Passion Red.

 I’ve not been a coffee drinker, until recently, 

when I  started wearing makeup again, after your last yahrzeit — and red.

Passion was one of your favorite colors, but you hated the stain it left on your face.

Things keep changing since you’ve gone. I don’t sleep anymore. I gobble up red

meat, every meal. I wear leather, velvet & lace — chains by the bed.

I speak out. I shout. Your girl has grown up. I remember you with fresh red

roses every Wednesday — Daddy would surprise you, after work.

When will I feel okay again? Will I find the answers to life, traveling? I miss the red

clay of Oklahoma, where you once told me you would never leave. Momma, what a liar you are!

 

 

__________________________________

Carrie Magness Radna is an audiovisual cataloger at New York Public Library, a choral singer and a poet who loves traveling. Her poems have previously appeared in The Oracular Tree, Mediterranean Poetry, Muddy River Poetry Review, Poetry Super Highway, Walt’s Corner, Polarity eMagazine, The Poetic Bond and First Literary Review-East. Her latest poetry collection, In the blue hour (Nirala Publications), was released in February 2021. Hurricanes never apologize (Luchador Press) was published in December 2019. Her fifth volume of poetry, Shooting myself in the dark (Cajun Mutt Press), will be published in early 2023. Born in Norman, Oklahoma, Carrie lives with her husband in Manhattan.

Sarah Sarai | A Thousand Deaths

A Thousand Deaths

 

Jack’s in Wisconsin with a girlfriend

whose father is down one cow,

which I become in its death,

the wandering-off cow Jack finds

“out in the woods with its legs sticking /

straight up to the stars.”

Its unborn calf is by its side.

Eight dead cow-legs point out

two escaped cow-souls.

And so I become animal mother

sorrow, my eyes aching and red,

searching night skies.

My legs pointing to the endless.

I am galled by the up and

down of love, a boulder

hard-shouldered every day.

 

Quote from “Thinning the Herd,” I Have No Clue by Jack Wiler (Longshot Press, 1996)

 

_____________________________

Photo by Amy Holman

Sarah Sarai has published two to three poetry collections, depending on how you reckon, and a bunch of short stories. A native New Yorker, she lives in the big city, where she is an independent editor of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.

Susan Justiniano | Raspberry Kisses

 

 

 

Your kisses taste of raspberry

Tiny chills along lips swollen and red

slide down my throat

melt each nerve as they pass into me

 

the sexy — the want — I feel

hidden beneath lashes against flushed cheeks

pulse skips as your lips travel along my neck

 

our fingers slide

search to touch places

that make the sun jealous

 

threads of our clothes — prison bars! —

struggle to find escape

from liberated sensations

too inebriated to have names

 

sleeve pushed from shoulder

buttons undone by a nimble touch

raspberry kisses color of fire

brand bare flesh

 

hints of the enduring myth of heaven

paradise in your arms

give me rapture with each kiss

absorbed into layers

 

silhouettes dance under cotton covers

spread out on heated current

friction of flesh against flesh

 

our mouths explore one another

discovering delicacies uncommon to mortal man

 

there — that taste —

raspberry

tart

sweet

juicy

 

Elixir easily coaxed

Cherished fruit

To bear fruit

O wondrous raspberry kisses!

 

 

_____________________________

Susan Justiniano aka RescuePoetix is the first Puerto Rican and the first woman to serve as Poet Laureate of Jersey City, New Jersey. She is a self-taught, bilingual poet with a deep love for knowledge, music, coffee, food, dogs, and the color red (not always in that order). Words are embedded in her life. Her passion for them started at age nine with a dictionary, notebook, and the latest paperback she could get her hands on. Like a bad penny, you can find her everywhere: https://linktr.ee/rescuepoetix.

Robert Mueller | Winebibbers Go Home

Winebibbers Go Home

 

 

A crimsoned valuation

picks the motors of pentaculated

runners on a field of display

a hoax or an alarm.

 

It used to be the columbine

attracted hummingbirds and star-clipped

in a summer’s hottest tranche.

Now wintry spotter’s net

must catch a feathered red

 

to charge against the wickets

of a ghostly bricolage

a breach to ease the canted branch.

If weakly cardinal in cold

well stretches light’s delights

temptation ardently to spar

with gloom’s adherents snipes.

 

Where seeking bred of seeing’s heart-

flash if a stranger to an anger

braised the coals the scarlet

sparks not in the day played in the dark.

 

A tang to spin the spangled manger

underlay the helicopter hats amid

the gladiolas and poinsettia.

They drew the straws but kept

away the cats. A sanguine sprat

 

could stir the faintest blush

so let us taste the lips’ best rush

of comfort in the common claret

all ablaze and brandishing the fadeaway.

 

 

_____________________________

Robert Mueller is the author of Hereafter Knowing in Sonnets and Their Similars, an adventurous undertaking in literary history and critical interpretation under the signs of philosophy and theology. Other recent writings to his credit include a poem in And Then, poetry of an unusual stripe in Home Planet News Online and, in Spinozablue, a group of poems focused on the topic of our precious wetlands as well as an essay titled “Petrarcan Naissance.” Robert has earned multiple academic degrees, a PhD in comparative literature from Brown University, an MA in classics from the City University of New York, and a BA from Yale University. Among his major publications are essays and reviews found in Jacket2, American Letters & Commentary and ELH.

Bruce Whitacre | What Is Fire to Me, or, Sailor’s Delight

What Is Fire to Me, or, Sailor’s Delight

 

 

Wood smoke lingers aboard the LA plane

that just flew down a burning West Coast;

New Mexico’s blue skies are veiled in talcum —

these warming sunsets — candescent red.

 

Facing west, we eat at a High Plains café;

the dock probes a receding reservoir’s extended shore;

cottonwood seeds blizzard pink in twilight —

these warming sunsets — simmering red.

 

Bryant Park is sticky with a strange haze;

our tongues salted with the cremated West:

lodgepole pine, mule deer, and mountain lion —

these warming sunsets — radiant red.

 

Coast to coast, the signs rain down from heaven,

launched by scarlet, canyon-scorching flames,

cataclysm of pyrocumulus sky fall —

these warning sunsets — alarming red.

 

 

_____________________________

Bruce E. Whitacre’s recent publications include Hey, I’m Alive; Nine Cloud; Pensive; Diane Lockward’s third volume on craft, The Strategic Poet; and the 2022 anthology I Want to Be Loved by You: Poems on Marilyn Monroe. Work here was nominated for Sundress Publications’ 2020 Best of the Net Anthology. A featured poetry reader at the Forest Hills Public Library, he has read his work at Poets House, the Zen Mountain Monastery Buddhist Poetry Festival, Kew Willow Books, Lunar Walk, and other venues. He holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and has completed master workshops with Jericho Brown, Alex Dimitrov, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, and Mark Wunderlich. Bruce is a native of Nebraska and lives in Forest Hills, Queens, with his husband.

E. Penniman James | Seeing Red

 

Photo Credit: Matthew Hupert

E Penniman James lives and writes poetry in Brooklyn, New York. His poems have appeared in the anthologies Pluto 1 (Propoetsy, 2022), Birds Fall Silent in the Mechanical Sea (great weather for Media, 2019), and Lyrics of Mature Hearts (Gordon Bois Publications, 2020), as well as several online publications.

Akshaya Pawaskar | Red Blush

John William Waterhouse (1849-1917), The Awakening of Adonis, Oil on canvas c1900, Private art collection

Red Blush

 

 

The redness spreads over the sky like a blush

calming the frantic nerves of morning into

the warm eventide.

Is it the sailor in my soul, delighting over

this change in light?

Is it love tinting my glasses, warping my vision?

Is it the throbbing pain, attesting I am alive?

Is it the globe with vermilion on its forehead?

Is it the bleeding firmament?

Or is it fear or courage, victory or war?

How we interpret this play of colours,

this many-hued life.

How we weave stories of Adonis and Aphrodite

around roses.

How, then, the art on my wall never is red —

vibrant and arresting.

Perhaps, it was never a colour

meant for the shy,

though in their blush,

a hint of it they cannot deny.

 

 

______________________________

Akshaya Pawaskar is a doctor practicing in India, and poetry is her passion. Her poems have been published in Tipton Poetry Journal, Shards, The Blue Nib, North of Oxford, Indian Rumination, Rock and Sling, among many others. She won the Craven Arts Council ekphrastic poetry competition in 2020, placed third in the Poetry Matters Project contest that same year, and placed second in The Blue Nib chapbook contest in 2018. Her debut poetry chapbook, The Falling In and the Falling Out, was published by Alien Buddha in January of 2021. Follow her on Instagram; her IG handle is @akshaya_pawaskar.

Nancy Kirolos | Fairku/600nm

Fairku/600nm

Difficult to rhyme
Mix of yellow and red shades
Grapefruit soda yum

Carrot tangerine
Bitter British marmalade
Sweet ginger ice tea

Half circle at dawn
Indian mango lassi
Autumn pumpkin pie

Bright shade on dark skin
Orange color or sweet fruit
And Buddhism too

______________________________

Nancy Kirolos is an artist and an award-winning scientist living in the Netherlands. Her preferred media to create art are words, music, watercolors, and photography. She likes to write stories and poems in English and Dutch. Nancy’s goal is to stimulate people emotionally and intellectually through her written work which has been published in several publications in Europe and the US. In 2020, Nancy was longlisted for the Dutch El Hizjra literature prize

Howard Pflanzer | Orange Sky

ORANGE SKY

 

In the west the sky glows orange

Light scattered by the pollution

Right before the sun goes down beyond the shore

Is this a harbinger of a happier time ahead

Or just a precursor of another black night

 

Let’s wait for tomorrow

And see how the day progresses

Will the sky at dusk glow a brighter orange

Streaked with crimson

Or will the disappearing light plunge us directly into the darkness

______________________________

Howard Pflanzer is a poet, playwright, and fiction writer. Dead Birds or Avian Blues was published by Fly By Night Press in 2011. Recent publications include FIVE Poetry, And Then, Downtown Brooklyn, Home Planet News, Pratik, Poems:LES Festival of the Arts Dedicated to the Lower East Side (TNC 2016, 2017), Of Burgers and Barrooms (Main Street Rag 2017), and WORD:An Anthology by A Gathering of the Tribes (2017). His hybrid performance piece, Walt Whitman Opera, adapted from Whitman’s poetry with music by Constance Cooper, was presented at the undergroundzero festival in New York in July 2014.

Akshaya Pawaskar | Indian Summer

Indian Summer

These days
we wait for the moon
to descend upon
us, to fill us up
with its white coolness.
As our heads spin,
as our kurtas drench
with sweat,
cling to our flesh
and muscles,
and even the bones
of civilization creak
under the weight
of a wish to bare
our papery
parched skins.
We move thirstily to
the solace of noise
from our ceiling fans.
The blades slicing
the Indian summer,
cutting the air
into a salve on
our salty bodies
dressed in austere
cotton whites.
As Tropic of Cancer
simmers to a boil
and the mosquitoes
whine into our ears,
sounding like languorous
sullen lovers,
we recline on
the earthen floors
of this peninsula.
As hysteria of
the orange sun
meets with
our torpor,
an old paramour
afraid of touch,
it welts us red
with love that
needs no touching.


______________________________

Akshaya Pawaskar is a doctor practicing in India, and poetry is her passion. Her poems have been published in Tipton Poetry Journal, Shards, The Blue Nib, North of Oxford, Indian Rumination, Rock and Sling, among many others. She won the Craven Arts Council ekphrastic poetry competition in 2020, placed third in the Poetry Matters Project contest that same year, and placed second in The Blue Nib chapbook contest in 2018.

George Held | October’s & Two Haiku

October’s

color is orange,
for autumn leaves
and pumpkins

and the Hunter’s Moon
and summer-fattened
deer and elusive fox

with no more ground
cover in which to hide
from hunters

in search of a
game animal’s
hide and soul . . .

______________________________

"This adult milkweed leaf beetle is already in costume for Halloween." 
[Photo credit: M. J. Raupp, Bug of the Week (blog), Oct. 13, 2014,
 http://bugoftheweek.com/]

Butterfly milkweed —
on its orange flowers crawl
black-and-orange beetles

         Butterfly milkweed —
         on its orange flowers crawl
         black-and-orange beetles

______________________________

Don’t imitate me —
never simulate half an orange
cut in two

          Don’t imitate me —
          never simulate half an orange
          cut in two

(After Bashō)

Bashō meets two farmers at autumn moon festival, 
print from Yoshitoshi's Hundred Aspects of the Moon,
Tsukioka Yoshitoshi - Ukiyo-e.org, 
Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum,
https://ukiyo-e.org/image/metro/5233-060-092 

______________________________

George Held has published four children’s books with Filsinger & Company, Ltd. and over a dozen poetry titles with various small presses. His most recent book, Second Sight: Poems, was released by Poets Wear Prada in 2019. A collection of stories titled Lucky Boy is due out in 2020. Believing that smaller is better in poetry, he writes a lot of haiku. He wears his trousers rolled in Sag Harbor, NY.

Bruce Whitacre | Christmas Oranges

CHRISTMAS ORANGES

The children were not to watch

as Father unloaded the snowcapped wagon.

Crates and bushels went straight to the cellar

and under an Indian blanket.

Father pocketed the key with a wink.

Jennie had to sit to keep breathing,

her hands trembling as she cracked the walnuts.

 

That evening, candles clipped to the fir were lit.

Their dots of light graced the gingham bows, the popcorn

strings, casting deep shadows in the parlor corners.

Atop the white tablecloth brought from Ohio,

turkey with stuffing, yams, and fruit pies crowded

the table, so everyone ate standing or in the parlor.

Mother fanned herself at the fire, exhausted, while

Nora, the hired girl, hovered, hiding homesick tears.

Family and neighbors joined in rolling up the rugs,

then with fiddles and dancing. Jennie missed the beat.

Stepping to the window, she gazed through the frosted panes.

Stars arched over the prairie. Horses stomped under their blankets.

 

Father called her into the kitchen.

“I want you to see these first, Jennie. Remember?”

His carpenter’s hands, deft and hard, pried a crate open.

Golden spheres burned into view, sweet and strange.

“Oranges!” she cried. Father laughed, “They made the last train.”

She remembered from last year to peel them first

The flesh exploded in her mouth —

Ocean. Green. Warm. Sunshine.

She closed her eyes and swallowed. Not here, in one taste.

 

She carried a bowlful into the parlor.

The music stopped. The dancers paused.

She beamed as everyone surrounded her, each reaching for

an orange, the only ones any of them would eat that year.

The night froze in her memory like crystals on the panes

melting into a tale from time to time, like now,

for me, then freezing again for the next blue hour.

 

 

_____________________________

Bruce E. Whitacre’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The American Journal of Poetry, Cagibi, The HIV Here and Now Project of Indolent Books, North of Oxford, and World Literature Today, and was recently nominated for Sundress Publications’ 2020 Best of the Net Anthology. A featured poetry reader at the Forest Hills Public Library, he has read his work at Poets House, the Zen Mountain Monastery Buddhist Poetry Festival, Kew Willow Books, Lunar Walk, and other venues.  He holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and has completed master workshops with Jericho Brown, Alex Dimitrov, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, and Mark Wunderlich. An activist and advocate for the arts and social justice, Bruce lives in Forest Hills, Queens.

Bob Heman | ORANGE (I) & (II)

ORANGE (I)

We are told that oranges are orange, by definition. No other is defined in this way. We cannot hold a blue or a purple or a red or a brown in our hands. We cannot open anything but an orange to find more of it hiding inside.

ORANGE (II)

The word unfolds itself across the page, allowing the meaning that is revealed to spill over the edges into your life. In this way the difference between “orange” (the color) and “orange” (the fruit) is able to be comprehended, and to become part of the room you will henceforth inhabit.

Bob Heman (Photo by Lori Rogers)

Bob Heman’s words have been translated into Spanish, Arabic, Farsi, Italian and Hungarian. His prose poem “Perfect” is included in A Cast-Iron Aeroplane That Can Actually Fly: Commentaries from 80 Contemporary American Poets on Their Prose Poetry (MadHat Press, 2019). His essay, “Dreaming for Caresse,” is included in Seeing with Eyes Closed: The Prose Poems of Harry Crosby (Quale Press, 2019), which also features one of his collages on the cover.