POETS OF THE DAY: Helen Losse & John Amen

Helen Losse is a Winston-Salem poet, the author of two full length books, Seriously Dangerous (Main Street Rag, 2011) andBetter With Friends (Rank Stranger Press, 2009) and two chapbooks,Gathering the Broken Pieces andPaper Snowflakes. Her recentpoetry publications and acceptances include The Wild Goose Poetry Review, Main Street Rag, Iodine Poetry Review, Blue Fifth Review, The Pedestal Magazine, ken*again, and Literary Trails of the North Carolina Piedmont. Helen’s poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and twice for a Best of the Net award, one of which was a finalist. She is the Poetry Editor for online literary magazine The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature.

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Songs of War

Perhaps, the adage believed by children is true.

It concerns the way they view the world,

line blasted streets.

The men will die for those who govern,

singing songs of war and trumped-up creeds,

pitting brother against brother, maiming for life.

The sucking babes who cannot cry

have parched throats—throats that swell

amid the rubble. Have those children no homes,

no mothers?

first published in Poets Against the War (February 2003)

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Bridge

—for Troy

The gulf had deepened

among the members of the band,

as quarrelling turned to fury

like any nonsense where

all the M&Ms must be red

or all the nuts come from Brazil.

When spanning the distance between

entities became impossible,

the guitar-playing poet,

who’d said all along, “Bridge:

Ices Before Road” was somehow

funny, signed his song-rights away.

And though it’s not provable,

I’d say, he marched sanely over two brothers’

egos, without looking back.

first published in Right Hand Pointing

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John Amen is the author of three collections of poetry: Christening the Dancer (Uccelli Press 2003), More of Me Disappears(Cross-Cultural Communications 2005), and At the Threshold of Alchemy (Presa 2009), and has released two folk/folk rock CDs, All I’ll Never Need and Ridiculous Empire (Cool Midget 2004, 2008). His poetry has appeared in various journals and anthologies, including, most recently, Rattle, The New York Quarterly, The International Poetry Review, Gargoyle, andBlood to Remember. He is also an artist, working primarily with acrylics on canvas. Amen travels widely giving readings, doing musical performances, and conducting workshops. He founded and continues to edit the award-winning literary bimonthly,The Pedestal Magazine (www.thepedestalmagazine.com).

History

i.

The detective whispers to the nun,

seven girl scouts held hostage in a library.

Poodles are snarling in the boxwood maze.

I spent the morning sharpening knives, filing

family photographs, tried on my grandfather’s wingtips.

I am still channeling, sweetheart.

ii.

This is the second time I have

swallowed my tongue during a meditation.

If you were here, I would show you my teeth.

Yellow stain on the confession gown.

An owl beating its wings in the belfry.

The composer shreds his tablature.

Fire in the wheat. The farmer signs the contract.

iii.

A faint ticking sound in the tunnel;

again my guts on the rotisserie of blame.

Our ambition

is what the minotaur really wants.

My love, somehow you are always

two or three steps ahead of me, so well

you wield the plane, hammer, balance.

iv.

The jester is squatting by the hydrant.

He brings old news to the gateway of awe.

There is a crack in the chandelier.

I’m made of fairy tales, thorns, grapes as ripe as justice.

Must there always be an interpreter?

I hereby attest to

the malevolence of the atom.

v.

Ironweed spreads.

Azalea, crimson dragon, snorting in its trench.

I forget, are the clocks racing or lagging?

What story unfolds behind the opaque window?

Who is inside, patching meaning

onto the holey rags of illusion?

Performing communion in the television glow?

Gorging to keep cruel hours at bay?

vi.

I denied my roots a dozen times. A pro

gave me a valentine and wished me well.

The renderer stepped away from his churn.

A process of elimination began.

Surgeons. Stickmen whistling in the rain.

Your children turning over our birdbaths.

So many hawks frozen in the pines.

In the end, everything seems like theater.

In a Room

for Mary

i.

Today

your mother

with her magnolia voice

thanked me for the pineapple,

said she could almost

hear the ukuleles.

ii.

Years from now,

waiting in some apricot room

as my bones collapse,

I feel the shadow encroaching,

sweet but stern age arrived.

iii.

Simply your profile

as you sit in the eggplant dusk

on the edge of the bed.

That I could somehow touch

your future lives with my love.