Curbs to Climb
by Janet Buck
Your face is white soap pale.
A thousand mirrors record the sag.
Who painted your flesh this oatmeal fix?
Ghost in a drape.
Even a straw is testing
the wheeze of your lungs.
The bed owns the room
like a tumor that swells.
Nurses come and doctors go --
quietly as passing fish.
This pocket change of suffering --
church bells calling for a god
who seems absorbed
with bigger things than human ears.
When blankets of drugs peel back,
you'll need the cane of a friend
who isn't afraid of curbs to climb --
who won't avert her open eyes
from show and tell of spreading scars,
potage of time rubbing the heel.
I've scooted down
the basement stairs of losing it.
I've seen the termites
under floorboards
chewing at the planks of arks.
I knew when we met,
some painful hour would snap
our frames like dry saltines.
Agape is never a monk --
it's a choir that garners its voice
from the rush of a brutal wind.
Stand up and spend the last pink rose.
I do not want you resting here.
Janet Buck's poetry, poetics, and fiction have appeared in The Pedestal
Magazine, Poetry Magazine.com, CrossConnect, The Pittsburgh Quarterly,
Kimera, The Rose & Thorn, 2River View, Southern Ocean Review, Disquieting
Muses, Urban Spaghetti, Perihelion, Mind Fire, Born Magazine, pif, 3rd Muse,
Verse Libre Quarterly, Big Bridge, pith and hundreds of journals world-wide.
Buck was one of U.S. poets to be featured at the "One Heart, One World"
Exhibit at the United Nations Exhibit Hall in New York City in April, 2000.
In January 2001, Art Villa Records released Janet's first audio CD of poetry
and music called Before the Rose. It is available at:
http://www.artvilla.com/shopping/poetry/rose.htm
To hear a sample from the CD, go to:
http://www.artvilla.com/mp3/umbrellas.mp3.
Note: Featured
author in January 2001
E-mail: JBuck22874@aol.com
Writing interests: Poetry
Poems: "The
Orphan", "Caught
in Lesser Tragedies", "The
Broken Promise", "The
Gargoyle", "The
Going", "The
Bag Lady", "Rushing
Toward Entelechy", "The
Paralyzed Apocalypse", "Frozen
Sonnets", "New
York, New York", "Live
on CNN", "America
Under Siege", "Gutter
Balls"
Links: Hot Links:
Janet I. Buck, Janet's
Latest Interview, Desideratum's
Doggie Dish, Author's Den,
Active Amp.org—Features
Janet I. Buck, Poetry
Magazine.Com-October-Janet Buck, The
Part-time Postmodernist (August 2000), San
Francisco Salvo, Moongate:
Janet I. Buck, Offcourse, The October
Country , Cafe
Society: Poetry Life & Times, Kookamonga
Square, The
Adirondack Review , janetbuck.com, Funky Dog
Publishing—Janet Buck's Strawberry Nipples, Athens
Avenue—Janet I. Buck, One
World-One Heart Exhibit , Ygdrasil:
Issue 9 September 2000