by Verandah Porche
Time in the slog zone
scanning the war
with tears...
Skin is kind.
A furrow suits your face
If age folds it.
Rut fits tread.
Decode the trace:
Your name is mud.
Blood from a stone…
Dusk hits the spot.
Chaos.
Soft dates and
the palms that weighed them
roll in the marketplace.
The lovely blond...
Democracy
was her fiancé.
Cinders letter the road.
You bend to read
What wind spews.
Spring rings true
as red hands
in the Green Zone.
Based in rural Vermont since 1968, Verandah Porche has published The Body’s Symmetry (Harper and Row) and Glancing Off (See Through Books) and has pursued an alternative literary career. She has written poems and songs to accompany her community through a generation of moments and milestones. As a teacher and facilitator, she has created collaborative writing projects in schools and nontraditional settings: literacy and crisis centers, hospitals, factories, nursing homes, senior centers, a 200 year-old Vermont tavern and an urban working class neighborhood. Her work has been featured on NPR’s “Artbeat,” on public radio stations around New England and in the Vermont State House. The Vermont Arts Council awarded her a Citation of Merit, honoring her contribution to the state’s cultural life in 1998, and a recent grant to support the preparation of poetry for publication and performance.