The Last Strips of Winter
read by kathryn rael turner
Strips of gray Wisconsin skin
stretch across park bench slats.
Winter's inhaled all of my color—
the sky, the pond, the garden.
Little of last summer's bouquet
clings to the cuffs of this brittle morning.
With a star from the east pacing the walls
of my lantern, deadwood greets spring's
great weight on the legs of its ancestors.
© Heather Rivet
Alice and the Hempstead Bloom
read by kathryn rael turner
I remember her rice paper skin—
shoulderless Alice, tethered
to the burning stare of our fifth grade class.
Angry lumps the size of peppercorns pushed out
from the garden of her forehead. Floral dress as frayed
as her hymns—she never lost sight of her shoes.
Thirty years later, I imagine she seeks refuge in a flower shop
and her Bronx apartment's window box:
if she over-plants from edge to edge, to window's top
with bloodleaf, cape primrose and arrowroot
she will have gathered petal and leaf enough
to curtain a child’s eyes.
Mike Lane is an advertising art director, and a happily married father of three who lives near Milwaukee Wisconsin. He especially likes the summer months, BBQing, football and ice cream. In fact he likes ice cream so much he had to quit buying it. Oh yes, he loves reading and writing poetry also.
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