The Voices Project - POETRY LIBRARY

Trips~ By Eden Benibo

8/9/2020

Sometimes,
I am found lost in my wild thoughts
beneath hard rocks of golden diamonds-
seated at the bottom of my being
for my inside's full of treasures,
precious gems
wrapped in poetry shapes.

Other times,
I drive down the Memory Lane
a narrow path
between express and shun.
A junction of the said and the unsaid
leading to the land-
ruled by choices made.

Most times,
under grey skies
I miss steps and stumble
falling into tunnels and dusty paths
dusty paths
a clear map-
to green pastures untapped.

Always,
once in every two hours
I visit my dreams three times,
like a mother hen-
nursing her eggs before they hatch

I climb onto the walls of my own heart
hoping for an escape in a clogging world.
I find my strength within-
just enough courage for my return,
as I go back in search of my fears
ready to fly!

Author Bio:
Eden Benibo is a young writer and poet currently transcending the phase of simply inscribing the stories she bears to voicing them. Her works revolves around finding a light through the various tunnels of life. Her works have been published on platforms such as -The Evergreen Poetry Journal, Poetry International, Kalahari Review, Praxis Magazine, Libretto Magazine and others.

All The Way From China~ By Nancy Baker

8/9/2020

He brought her tea and oranges that came all the way from China. And she loved the merchant sailor, and she wanted to travel with him, she wanted to go blind, she wanted to be lost in silks and golden reds and eat oranges in the morning, take him to her bed beneath the waves. She painted all her nails the color of the blood that crucified the savior, and she kissed the holy grail of this longing to be wandering beneath the heavens that come all the way from China. The ancient chimes go silent as the valley of her bed is bursting with the jasmine and she cries for the love and she cries for the moment to touch his perfect body tracing the night in every inky picture. She wants to be his lover that comes to him a dove, comes to him down foggy halls where the memory of her lingers like perfume on your pillow, perfume that comes all the way from China.
In Memory of Lenard

Author Bio:
Writing is Nancy Baker's passion. She is a photographer, published writer and artist.

Life Interrupted~ By Susan Surette

8/7/2020

Verdant growth pushes
through fertile soil
as many struggle to breathe
birdsong punctuates
early morning stillness
echoing through empty streets
Daily strolls leave
disquieting wake of distance
greetings hailed from afar.
Uncertainty spreads faster than
understanding
Necessities stockpile
greed and need sharply
divided
rooftops and balconies are
prime real estate as
open spaces close.
Nature’s rituals continue
uninterrupted; flickers return to
hammer on metal chimney caps
advertising for a mate.
Tulips bloom
forsythias sprout
pansies shimmy in the breeze.
Invisible enemy finds
faces peering from masks
anxious souls
resisting society
Healers are hailed
celebrated from windows
in the streets; fed, applauded, serenaded.
Families reacquaint while others mourn
separately in grief.
Life settles into the mundane
Earthworms reemerge below warming soil
as unattended loved ones
are lowered beneath.

Author Bio:
Susan Surette is an avid traveler, bibliophile, grandmother, hand drummer, yogi and poet with work published in The Avocet, Westward Quarterly, Nine Muses Poetry, Eskimo Pie and The Curlew. She discovered her interest in poetry after taking a free creative writing class and joining a women’s haiku group. Susan founded the Not Yet Dead Poets Society and leads the “Poetry for the Creative Mind” program at a local adult center, both located on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

After Taking My Clothes off in Public~ By Ben Westlie

8/6/2020

I’m floating in the bathtub
my nose like a buoy,
air flowing through its tip.
The water so still, I’m expecting a fog.
I want to be a ghost. I say out loud.
I don’t want to die, just hover
outside the sanctuary that is the body.
Humans are always searching for ways to fly.
I stay in the water until it’s icy.
My body begins to shiver.
I cry, the tears becoming the bathwater.
I cry, like anyone who has lost a secret.

Author Bio:
Ben Westlie holds an MFA in Poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts. He is the author of four chapbooks of poems, most recently UNDER YOUR INFLUENCE all published by Finishing Line Press. His poems have appeared in the anthology Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets Under 25 selected and edited by Naomi Shihab Nye and in the journals The Fourth River, Third Coast, Atlas and Alice, The Talking Stick, the tiny journal, Trampset and ArLiJo (Arlington Literary Journal).

Unloved (for Steve Irwin)~ By t.m. thomson

8/5/2020

You were a lovely giant
of a man—wide blue eyes
sincere as the ocean
is unexplored
& always amazed
as if seeing really seeing
the sliced azure of a papilio ulysses
for the first time
as it dipped & shivered
in a dance with your fingers.

You loved the skin of crocs--
their plates & the horn on top
like that of turtle shell
& bird feet its ridges
resembling eggs
or raindrops or tears
sometimes black-scorched-golden
& others with lines
of moss stitched by sun
& water.

You wrestled crocs to safety
& you could have wrestled the men
who laughed at the idea
of wearing their skin
on human feet
yet you wept
because all you knew
was compassion
even for the creature called human.

You praised the slimy the dripping
those with teeth stained brown
& ancient coming at us
through murky nightmares
those banded sea snakes
deadlier than a King
cobra as they writhe
through waves
the riparian
the beasts

You left this world
doing what you were meant
to do—you knew
you would—swimming
in the dark with the dark
as it fluttered smooth
fins under spangles
of sun striving
to break the unloved
out of our nightmares

Author Bio:
t.m. thomson has been in love with poetry since she was very young; her first poem was about colors. She draws much of her poetic inspiration from nature and art, both reality and artifice. Often poems occur to her while she takes walks or while her hands are immersed in soil. She refers to herself not as a “gardener,” but rather as a “player in mud.” Her work has most recently appeared in Wild Roof Journal and Whispering Prairie Press: Kansas City Voices and will be featured in Blue Ash Review and mutiny! magazine in the upcoming months. Three of her poems have been nominated for Pushcart Awards, and she is the co-author of Frame and Mount the Sky, a book of ekphrastic poetry, and author of Strum and Lull (2019) and The Profusion (2019). She has a writer’s page at https://www.facebook.com/TaunjaThomsonWrite

Wild Pitch~ By Gale Acuff

8/4/2020

Sunday means school, too, Sunday School it means,
and Miss Hooker, our teacher but more mine
than my classmates' because I love her like
I'm in love with her, which I am, and she with
me, though she probably isn't but I
pretend she is and pretend in dreams, too
--last night she died in my sleep, she got run

over crossing the street to fetch the ball
that I threw easily enough for her
to catch but she muffed it, put her glove down
when she should've turned it up, a sinker's
what I was aiming to throw. I didn't
see her get smashed--I had my eyes closed, kind
of bat-blind and the Hell of it was I
was the hurler. I ran into the street
and got run over myself, that's justice

and later maybe mercy because I
dragged my broken self, broken heart and all,
over into her lane just in time to
apply the tag of my lips to her lips
and hear her moan I think that was a passed
ball and to say to her, Maybe not, wait
until we wake up dead, we'll know for sure
then, God being the Official Scorer.
But today in Sunday School Miss Hooker's

back in one piece--I can't say the same for
me, how busted-up I am about her
all dying like that in last night's dream and
I woke before we went to Heaven, if
we did. I'll bet she did but as for me
here I am in Hell again even in
Sunday School class. Miss Hooker died for me
and there she stands. It's a damn miracle.

Author Bio:
Gale Acuff, Ph.D. has had poetry published in Ascent, Chiron Review, McNeese Review, Adirondack Review, Weber, Florida Review, South Carolina Review, Carolina Quarterly, Arkansas Review, Poem, South Dakota Review, and many other journals. He has authored three books of poetry: Buffalo Nickel (BrickHouse Press, 2004), The Weight of the World (BrickHouse, 2006), and The Story of My Lives (BrickHouse, 2008).

Dr. Acuff has taught university English in the US, China, and the Palestinian West Bank.

My Gray Child (excerpt)~ By John McCluskey

8/3/2020

i prefer snow
on easters in march
nice to think
of colored eggs
in last nest
of winter’s white womb
what better reason
to miss a family holiday
   then again

snow might have made
our hospital trip
dangerous passage…

and we did
need to leave
our specimen
(our child)

to identify
which wind
shook fresh fruit
from our tree
   as if a miscarriage
   would excuse me
had i decided it was too soon
anyway to fall in love
with    this child

Author Bio:
John McCluskey is a writer and photographer living in Connecticut.  John had his first novel,  A Moment of Fireflies, published in 2017 by New Plains Press and has had poetry, short fiction, and photography published in numerous international literary journals and anthologies over the years, including Light, New Plains Review, Jerry Jazz Musician, Sonic Boom, 3 rdWednesday, The RavensPerch, Quill & Parchment (featured poet June 2013), The Red Booth Review, Otoliths, London Photo Festival, One For The Road (anthology), and  Cradle Songs: an Anthology of Poems on Motherhood (2013 International Book Award winner and one of 4 finalists for the NIEA). John’s poem “My Gray Child” from  Cradle Songs was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, resides in the public and private collection of the Boston Public Library, and was read at a poetry reading in Taos, New Mexico by actor Tony Huston.The poem appears in full in John’s poetry book published in 2019,  I Will Listen If You Tell Me Who I Am.

Epitaph for July, The Slave Girl~ By Shelby Stephenson

7/31/2020

Slavery does not define me here alone,
And my color’s naked as my white bones.

Author Bio:
Shelby Stephenson, poet laureate, North Carolina, 2015-18, his recent book, SLAVERY and FREEDOM on PAUL'S HILL.

Shelby Stephenson says Poetry is the music of the soul. Poetry's music salvaged his life. He cannot imagine waking up to silence: he raises Purple Martins whose churbling swurges and swoops and Bluebirds that eye him when he checks their nesting boxes.

I never understood~ By Hafsa Showkat

7/30/2020

I always had it
But I never understood, "why?"
Thought that it helped
But now I think I was better without
Stood on it
But it collapsed and it hurt
If it wasn't made to bear me
Than it wasn't for me
I never understood
Nor I will ever understand
Don't know where it came from
Don't know how far it went
I don't want to feel it now
Because I never understood
This strange feel
That others call pride

Author Bio:
Hafsa Showkat is a young poet from the valley of Kashmir. She lives in the city of Srinagar, her passion of writing poetry gives her satisfaction and also is her favourite thing to do. The 13-year-old poet wants to be a famous poet like Rupi Kaur, who is her inspiration and favourite poet.

Dubious of Inchor~ By Amarie Henderson

7/29/2020

Well child, you shoulda known
Mighty big of you to sit there on your horned throne
You thought yourself a scholar
Oh but with knowledge came ignorance
You thought yourself untouchable
Damn near a god
Azaleas in your blood you'd mistaken for ichor
Ego so big, not a soul woulda dared to feed it

Those times under the willow tree come forth like a breeze fresh on the lungs
Washing away everything
Cleansing the soul of the forgotten
Light spinning through the leaves on a windy Sunday morning
Squeezing past vines to meet your heavy back
Time spent under that tree was the prize of a lifetime
A shade so good it'd cool off the devil
So strong it'd survive a thousand storms
Whew that willow child, could it ever get better than that?

It's Aureate energy consumed days like a gator on the prowl
Weeks fell into months
Months surprised to be called a year
The damn world sped up, no courtesy at all
With your light you were happy
The willow tree made sure of it
When the sunlight fades darkness overcomes
When greed takes over logic must crumble
When you marred the willow light seemed a little less bright
What's a day without a few clouds?

The willow grew ill, roots ripping through the ground in desperation
Pushing forward bearing fruit the world was not ready to carry yet again
Forbidden yet again, if not by God by his creation those who shift the world into the next chapter
Temptation once again the plow of a heavy soul
Leaves plummeting to their deathbed
A life short lived they never were able to fade

Boy, you stuck by that tree
You saw the fruition of something greater
The beginning for another
You marred that willow
It will never be seen the same
To the rest of the forest the shade will never be so cool
Satan had slipped a finger in the shadow
The decision was not an ultimatum, but an inevitable journey into the woods

To give yourself to the forest
You took on fate with open arms
For that I can't condone you
For the tree was the light what better could you be than the nutrients?
It was all to be, all to come
The forest didn't like that, the willow caressing fertilizer
You were food, now I know your mama told you don't play with your food
Could you've known the food was you?
Maybe not maybe so, but you were a meal
Lain in the meadow for all to yield
Vines wrapped around you holding you to the ground
Thorns tore into your back, yet bore you no crown
Up high in the branches of that great willow
You stay there your head rested in the leaves, for you this is nature's pillow

Rest boy you've got it, whether you've earned it is not up to me

Boy that's Azaleas, didn't I tell you?
Ichor sure does look a lot like that mad honey
Lawd boy, I wish you could see

Author Bio:
Amarie Henderson is a young writer from Mississippi, who loves to portray the truths of what was and what is going on now in the black community. This piece speaks of a forbidden love gone sour, and the virtue of the man who's story is being told.