by Verandah Porche
Light through the needle's eye: solstice
Poem for a blunt wound: poultice
Soft rime on branches, crystal lattice
The drift of white dry statice
Love sought in the underworld: Eurydice
Crevice too close for touch: interstice
Sacrifice draws a budding novice
A toddler adores her mother's bodice
Kid goats are given to caprice
Kickbacks are offered to police
Milk of human kindness, juice of malice
sluice together in a pewter chalice
Avarice, the caviar of vice
Paradise Lost with a pair of dice
Leaflets flutter from the precipice:
A kiss. No lip service. An armistice.
Take office in the wilderness, our choice
Blind Justice, entice us to rejoice
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.
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