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Featured Poet

Four poems by Joop Bersee

 


UNIQUE WAY

Elvis died.
We know.
He died,
rolled up
his sleeping bag,
became very small,
a comma in the ground.

He died his personal death.
We all.
I will die, my way.
My own,
personal,
unique way,
rolling up,
disappearing,
comma
in the ground.
My unique way.
I hold this in my hands.
And I feel safe.
Secure.



NOT HER DREAM

I don't even know
if she is still alive.
But, if I would meet her,
see her, in a dream,

she'd walk out. Yes.
And her face is a
Käthe Kolwitz,
because she looks at me.

Then she'd turn
her face and walk
out of my dream.
Not her dream.



K.B. HARBOUR, CAPE TOWN

In memory I feel being hurt,
fishing boats anchored to colourful
ropes, the white red light-house
on its pier where I once sat in cold

pee, two boys fishing at night.
The weather clearing, walking lives,
never growing bored, wearing the
red or pink sun, the wet hours

enduring waves, and more more waves,
finger waiting in light or darkness,
singular, people passing, before us,

after, cutting hours, cleaning fish, their death
staring eyes always blind, growing
more tired with each day passing.

 

JUST A THING

Here I sit,
with my bones in this world,
with my grandfather's legs.
He disappeared in the rain of time,
ground, watch and the minutes
ticking in my inner ear,
a candle when it gets dark.
He really was one of us, like us.
But now he is one of them,
horrors of the green, quiet,
nightingale cemeteries,
a child's soul on someone's
name, just a thing, not related.

 

 

Spring 2008 Poetry:

WHAT'S YOUR POETRY by Doris Arnett Gary
FEATURED POET Joop Bersee
EDITOR'S CHOICE Ashok Niyogi
GUILIN NOODLES by CJ Hallman
FREDDY'S FATHER by Gil Fagiani
WOMEN AT THE DINER by Gina Larkin
WOMAN OF OLIVES by Emma Lorelei Brennan
GHOST by Arlene Tribbia
TO MY AUNT WHO WAS RECENTLY FOUND DEAD IN A MOTEL ROOM by JoHannah Ash
RED BANK'S CARLTON THEATRE by Gloria Rovder Healy
READING by Em McAvan
AMEN by Devin T.N. Tanchum
CHRISTMAS COLD by John Bowden
INSIDE by Laine Sutton Johnson
BEAUTY by John McDermott


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