EYES ABOVE THE MASK

by Joan Colby

Postal workers at the Bemus Point NY Post Office behind a new partition, designed to keep customers and staff safe during the coronavirus pandemic. Photo by Jim Wehrfritz for the Post Journal (Jamestown NY).

We eye each other warily
Above our masks
Keeping our social distance.

Is this the one, this guy in the tan jacket,
This woman holding a package in gloved hands,
This older man limping with a cane,
This teenager whose mask keeps slipping?

This one? The super spreader of a virus
Unknown to its carrier, asymptomatic.
The one whose contaminated breath
Floats a particle toward us.
Who can we trust? The employee
At the post office desk behind a plastic shield,
The stockers in the grocery aisle unloading cases
Of gingerale or flavored tea.

We hurry in and out of wherever
People gather, even though they obey
The taped lines—six feet? It’s said the virus
Can ride the airways for hours or days
Or months or years, who knows?

Everything we’re told is uncertain,
Hopeful, bold or despairing.
We hasten away from those
Who might somehow touch us.


Joan Colby’s Selected  Poems received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize, and Ribcage was awarded the 2015 Kithara Book Prize. Her recent books include Carnival from FutureCycle Press, The Seven Heavenly Virtues from Kelsay Books and Her Heartsongs from Presa Press. Her latest book is Joyriding to Nightfall from FutureCycle Press.

FOR THE OLD WHITE POETS

by Joan Colby

     “But I’m also torn between my pleasure at seeing part of American culture take significant strides toward equality and my sorrow due to the diminishment of interest in my work.” —Bob Hicok (above left), "The Promise of American Poetry,” Utne Reader, Summer 2019.

     “Why did a white poet see the success of writers of color as a signal of his own demise?” —Timothy Yu, “The Case of the ‘Disappearing’ Poet,” The New Republic, August 7, 2019

Dedicated to Bob Hicok

So now you know how those sonneteers
Must have felt, quietly posting along the
Bridle path with their rhyming dictionaries
And penchant for inversions, when you came along
Riding your free verse helter-skelter, breaking
Lines without regard like a mounted militia
In full rebellion. With your red wheelbarrow
And petals in the metro. White men of privilege,
You’re passe as the people of color race by on motorbikes
Down the crowded lanes where you used to
Summon a rickshaw. Plus ça change. And women
Shouting hands-off! Poems by non-binary
People who use the pronoun they
And where are you now with your forlorn
Confessions that cannot be absolved. This
Is penance contributor: the immigrants
Crossing the river on innertubes
Taking the risk you took once
Writing the word fuck flat out as a racehorse
Hitting the wire and snorting blood.

Joan Colby’s Selected  Poems received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize and Ribcage was awarded the 2015 Kithara Book Prize. Her recent books include Carnival  from FutureCycle Press, The Seven Heavenly Virtues from Kelsay Books and Her Heartsongs from Presa Press. Her latest book is Joyriding to Nightfall from FutureCycle Press.

THE SOLSTICE OF 2018

by Joan Colby

Image source: Vox

The Ursid showers cursed
With the Cold Moon—final fullness
Of the year. Its harsh reflected glow
Effacing the ten meteors
We hoped to see.

We hoped the solstice
Might bring a ring of charity.
On TV, he said plainly

“I will take the mantle.
I will be the one.”

To shut down the nation for a wall
To keep out all those who aspire.

Citizens, you will not walk
In the national forests thick with snow.
The gates of the great parks will close
Upon the canyons and the geysers.

If we stare into the universe
To see the Ursid showers,
A scowling face will blot
That smallest desire.
A metaphor of our sad future.


Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press), Dead Horses and Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press), and Properties of Matter (Aldrich Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.

THE PRIEST BELIEVES

by Joan Colby

Pope Francis with Cardinal McCarrick. File photo by Jonathan Newton-Pool/Getty Images.

“I cannot fail to acknowledge the grave scandal caused in Ireland by the abuse of young people by members of the church charged with responsibility for their protection and education,” [Pope] Francis said. “The failure of ecclesiastical authorities – bishops, religious superiors, priests and others – adequately to address these repellent crimes has rightly given rise to outrage and remains a source of pain and shame for the Catholic community. I myself share those sentiments.” —The Guardian, August 25, 2018

The host in the ciborium is transfigured

By words into Christ’s body,

The wine to blood.

He drinks ceremonially,

Offers the communicants

The chalice of redemption.

He believes in vocation,

In the holy calling

Of the spirit. He reads

His breviary, recites the

Apostles' Creed.

The sacristy where he dons

The vestments. The boys in lace

Surplices, their voices

Not yet deep as echoing wells.

Christ forgives all sins, even these.

He thinks of the thieves on the crosses.

The promise of paradise.

Of John the beloved disciple

And Leonardo who knew so well

How to paint that yearning.

“Suffer the little children,” Jesus said.

All who repent will be absolved

The priest thinks of Augustine

Who grappled with midnight angels

And prayed “Lord make me chaste,

But not yet.”

Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press), Dead Horses and Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press), and Properties of Matter (Aldrich Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.

THE SNOWY OWLS

by Joan Colby

Researchers believe there are far fewer snowy owls than previously thought, and they worry the birds' long-term survival could be affected by global warming. —U.S.News, December 21, 2017

They have arrived from the north
Exiting the tundra and the lemmings
To hunt along the lake shore
Overlooked by high rises where
They perch noble as statues.

Yellow eyes fasten on a bridge
Where the ghost of Clarence Darrow
Is said to return each anniversary
Of his death. A wreath is placed in the
Lagoon where the arctic birds
Survey prospects like the Vikings
In the long ships headed for the Mediterranean.

What is it about the south that lures them—
These voyagers—the hunger for expansion
Or to be lauded as myth?

Each summer a woman in a Boundary Waters cabin
Awaits the visitation of the snowy owl
She rescued as a fledgling.
He comes wingspread as a westerly wind
To the familiar perch on her veranda.

Here, the photographers, out in force,
Capture the invasion. On barn roofs,
Streetlights, electric poles, they land
With a taste for rats and gulls.

The Greek priests extracted
The entrails of owls to seize upon the future.
Now, the warming world foresees
White feathers floating past the towers
Of condominiums and offices
As the owls descend to warn us.


Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press), Dead Horses and Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press), and Properties of Matter (Aldrich Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.

BANNED WORDS

by Joan Colby

When words are banned freedom is vulnerable
As an undesired fetus.
Its existence is not an entitlement.
We thought freedom was science-based
Comprising the diversity
Of race, religion, gender, even the transgender

Of nuance. Not written in stone, transgender
Employs choice in a  way that is vulnerable
To the notion of diversity.
Imagine that a fetus
Could be both science-based
And mystical. An existence less an entitlement

Than a desire. Those who feel entitled
To condemn the idea of transgender
Don’t reckon with what can be science-based
Or perception. If even language is vulnerable
To such dictates-- say the personhood of the fetus—
Then all political diversity

Will be challenged. The world is nothing if not diverse
As Darwin proved. Shape was not an entitlement
But subject to mutation like a fetus
That could be male, female or a transgender
Complexity once entirely vulnerable
To the decisions of science-based

Physicians who assigned gender scientifically based,
Or so they claimed, on diverse
Characteristics. Just like language is vulnerable.
In fact, they felt entitled
To manipulate sexual identity. Transgender
Would not be permitted. The fetus

Was a poltical victim. Its fetal
Nature denied any science based
Authenticity. Words like transgender,
Philosophies such as diversity
Would not be entitled
To exist. Thus we are vulnerable

To the designs of the pseudo science-based ideologues. Vulnerable
As the entitlements. As the fetus,
Male, female, transgender—the very concept of diversity.


Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press), Dead Horses and Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press), and Properties of Matter (Aldrich Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.

THE PANEL

by Joan Colby

“CNN dismisses Jeffrey Lord after Nazi tweet,
instantly upgrades panel discussions.”

—Erik Wemble, The Washington Post, August 10, 2017

Grid of heads.
Former congressman. Aide to a
President twice removed.
Retired General. Snarky blonde.
Outspoken Latina. Ex-chairman
Of a political party. Sports
Figure. Billionaire. Secretary of
Defense in a former administration.
Familiars of talk show hosts who moderate
Or instigate. Night time birds
Pecking and screeching. Disembodied
Heads stuffed with opinions.
The once-was or might-have-been.
Solemn or verbose.
Each day’s outrage invokes
The squawking panel.
A zoo of exes. A new career
For reincarnated experts.
Patchwork quilt of somebodys
Revived to quote or quibble.
Opening their addictive
Testimonies. Sphinx.
Cassandra. Sage. Ghost.


Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press), Dead Horses and Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press), and Properties of Matter (Aldrich Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.

CHOSEN VENUES

by Joan Colby


Where you are dancing.
Where you celebrate.
Where the bands play.
Where you congregate for coffee
Or conversation. Or to view the match
Or the marathon.
Anywhere you go to enjoy
Invites the strike. The explosive vest
Or car aimed at the thick of things.
What they seek to destroy is this:
Free pleasure. The authoritarian shift
To beheadings in an arena
Where you learn what to expect.


Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press), Dead Horses and Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press), and Properties of Matter (Aldrich Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.

ELEMENTS: CUBIC ZIRCONIA

by Joan Colby

The authentic from the fake;
Even experts find it hard.
The man-made crystal
8.5 on the Mohs scale.
The diamond a perfect 10.

The naked eye cannot discern
Brilliance from brilliance.
The cheap version vs.
The blood diamond men die for.

Consider this ring: the 5 carat sparkler,
How it is envied
Or suspected.

The zircon entirely colorless
As a man without character.
The diamond leans into the prism
Of faint hues, like a man
Who still has doubts.

When it counts
Who can tell
The real glitter from the falsehood.
Facts of the matter
Or fake news.


Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press), Dead Horses and Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press), and Properties of Matter (Aldrich Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.

FALSE SPRING (OR NOT)

by Joan Colby

Giraffes at the Brookfield (IL) Zoo enjoyed the unseasonably warm, spring-like weather on Saturday. —WLS, February 18, 2017.

It might feel good, but February’s intense heat is a very bad sign. The United States hits record high temps, as a climate change denier takes the reigns at the EPA. —Jeremy Deaton, ThinkProgress, February 23, 2017

The giraffes have exited their enclosure
To frolic at the Brookfield Zoo and rollerbladers
Score the lakefront with their raspy scales
While dog-walkers dodge and cyclists bail.
The waves lap at the breakwaters
As records shatter, volley ballers
In shorts and tanks leap and twist
While political appointees continue to insist
Global Warming is a left-wing myth.

Examine the glaciers from the satellite,
Splotches where ten years back there were acres.
The polar bears grow thin on thin ice.
Denials are simply words. The earth doesn’t care
As it continually gets hotter and hotter
And the open-water swimmers breaststroke
To the Crib far out in the blue waters
Glittering in the mid-February mild air.

Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press), Dead Horses and Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press), and Properties of Matter (Aldrich Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.

RESISTANCE

by Joan Colby



You learn to build strength
By resistance. Hoisting the 10 pound weight
With your shattered wrist,
Screwed and bolted into a titanium plate
Inscribed with a disaster you’re
Overcoming.

If passive resistance means folding
Your hands in the semblance of prayer,
The resistance you are practicing
Is one of cold steel clutched
In your fist and lifted
Like the torch of liberty.

Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press), Dead Horses and Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press), and Properties of Matter (Aldrich Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.

THANKSGIVING 2016—A RETROSPECTIVE

by Joan Colby

Image source: Cooking with Drew

Sky of beaten tin
Addressed by the bare
Limbs of the hickories.

We gather to eat
Tradition—our politics
Aligned in fortune.

We plan to march in the new year
Against dark forces
That lean like barbed wire
Upon the liberty
Of an open range.

Today, the pasture has gone
Brown and dormant. Like
Those who say give him a chance.
Those who hunker down when the Nazis
Pound on a neighbor’s door.

It won’t be us, we vow,
Unfolding our napkins,
Slicing the breast and the
Good dark meat,
Ladling the gravy
Of our lives so far.

Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press), Dead Horses and Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press), and Properties of Matter (Aldrich Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.

THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

by Joan Colby

With apologies to T.S. Eliot

August is the deadliest month, breeding
400 shootings, 78 dead in the city, mixing
Memories of 20 years past, stirring
The dull ache of lodged bullets.
A ten-year-old boy covering
What he can’t forget with questions. Feeding
His small life. Have they found who shot me?
Summer brings the surprise of killings to Chicago,
A shower of ammunition. The colonnades
Of viaducts are not safe even in sunlight.
No one is protected drinking coffee or talking
In the language of their forefathers.
The children in any neighborhood
Are at risk. Bicycling, sledding,
They are frightened. Hold on tight. You can go down
In a single moment. No one here is free
Even if they read all night. Even in winter
The guns are clutched like branches to grow
In the stony rubbish of the hearts of these Sons of Man
Who only know a heap of broken images.
How bodies find no shelter. The sun beats
From the waterless shadows. The red rock
Of a fury that strides behind them,
That rises at evening to meet them.
A surge in violence. So far this year
2,800 shot and still four months to go.
I will show you fear in a handful of bullets.

Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She was a finalist in the GSU Poetry Contest (2007), Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize (2009, 2012), and received honorable mentions in the North American Review's James Hearst Poetry Contest (2008, 2010). She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press) and Dead Horses and Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press. Selected Poems received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize.  Properties of Matter was published in spring of 2014 by Aldrich Press (Kelsay Books). Two chapbooks are forthcoming in 2014: Bittersweet (Main Street Rag Press) and Ah Clio (Kattywompus Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.

ADULT COLORING BOOKS

by Joan Colby

“Indiana University Press will release the first five titles in a series of adult coloring books, titled Color Your Campus this summer. The five campuses featured are Indiana University, Harvard University, Louisiana State University, Stanford University, and the University of Notre Dame. In a surprising move for a university press, Indiana University Press joins the adult coloring trend to the early delight of college students, parents, fans, and alumni alike. Hobbyists will take pleasure in transforming artists’ black and white masterpieces into colorful flagship campuses while indulging in the comfort of a childhood stress reliever.” —Indiana University Press blog, March 4, 2016. Image source: Global News.

This is what we’ve come to in our dread.
Thumbs fed up with texting.
Vibration in the pocket
Like an IED. Someone’s head
Cut off on TV with a sword.
Red hands of history. So many dead
Of casual bullets. We are consumed
With terror, Sharia law in the hymnals,
Shoe bombs under the bed
And the demand for specialized knowledge,
Who to vote for,
What to buy next.
The world is dishonest. The wiring
In the house not up to code.
Floods on the coast and the caldera
Of Yellowstone that might explode.
We pick up the crayons
Carefully staying within the lines.
Making sure the colors are right.
Blue skies. Green grass.
The sun a peculiar yellow . . .


Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She was a finalist in the GSU Poetry Contest (2007), Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize (2009, 2012), and received honorable mentions in the North American Review's James Hearst Poetry Contest (2008, 2010). She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press) and Dead Horses and Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press. Selected Poems received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize.  Properties of Matter was published in spring of 2014 by Aldrich Press (Kelsay Books). Two chapbooks are forthcoming in 2014: Bittersweet (Main Street Rag Press) and Ah Clio (Kattywompus Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.

UNION RAT

by Joan Colby

KOHLER, WIS. — Talks have been resumed between the Kohler Co. and the union that's been on strike for nearly three weeks in Wisconsin. Tim Tayloe, president of Local 833 of the United Auto Workers, said in a text message Friday that the union and the company met this week, and will meet again next week. A Kohler representative confirmed to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that negotiations have resumed. Local 833 represents about 2,000 workers at Kohler's kitchen and bath-ware plant in the Village of Kohler and at a generator factory north of Sheboygan. The union went on strike Nov. 15. The union wants to do away with a two-tiered pay scale that it says unfairly limits new employees to roughly $13 an hour. Kohler has said its contract offer was fair. —The News & Observer, Dec. 5, 2015

The inflated rat sits outside the fence
Where strikers protest unfair wages
Or conditions no human would endure.
The rat has a pink snout, sharp fangs
And a large round eye, orange as a
Setting sun, lacking a pupil, soulless.
Its jaw is ajar, its claws
Like those of the wicked bosses
Who rip up contracts that say
Workmen deserve to make a living.

I wave, thumbs up, as I drive by.
My grandpa was a Wobbly,
Back in the copper mines, back in the day
When men were hung for protests
Like this one. I’d like to have a rat
To blow up every time I feel abused
By a misguided friend who thinks a fascist
Is what we need to restore law and order.
How satisfying it would be to park
That big ugly rodent in her driveway.
Better than just unfriending her on Facebook.


Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She was a finalist in the GSU Poetry Contest (2007), Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize (2009, 2012), and received honorable mentions in the North American Review's James Hearst Poetry Contest (2008, 2010). She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press) and Dead Horses and Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press. Selected Poems received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize.  Properties of Matter was published in spring of 2014 by Aldrich Press (Kelsay Books). Two chapbooks are forthcoming in 2014: Bittersweet (Main Street Rag Press) and Ah Clio (Kattywompus Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press. 

TITUM ARUM

by Joan Colby



  The "corpse flower" at the Chicago Botanic Garden was manually opened Sunday morning after it failed to bloom, but the flower did not emit its trademark odor as expected. —NBC Chicago, August 31, 2015


At the Botanic Garden,
The corpse flower was getting ready
To bloom—a once in a lifetime affair.
Fifteen feet high, its vast hulk bulged
Ready to release the stench
That dung beetles adore,
That maggots desire.
But at the seminal moment
Spike decided it could not
Compete in a state rotten
With the stink of politicians:
Four of the last seven governors
Did time—fraud, bribery,
Racketeering, corruption.
The putrid fly leaves in the book
Of their chicaneries
Overwhelm any official flower.


Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She was a finalist in the GSU Poetry Contest (2007), Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize (2009, 2012), and received honorable mentions in the North American Review's James Hearst Poetry Contest (2008, 2010). She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press) and Dead Horses and Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press. Selected Poems received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize.  Properties of Matter was published in spring of 2014 by Aldrich Press (Kelsay Books). Two chapbooks are forthcoming in 2014: Bittersweet (Main Street Rag Press) and Ah Clio (Kattywompus Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press. 

FAIRDALE

by Joan Colby

FAIRDALE, Ill. — At least two tornadoes unleashed incredible destruction through north central Illinois. Two people are dead, and several others are injured. Some people are also unaccounted for. Photo: A lone horse is staying close to what used to be his barn. Owners aren't being allowed back yet. —Sean Lewis @seanlewiswgn via WGNNews, April 10, 2015

The bloodied horse walks in small circles
Where the barn stood with the stall.
Straw, timothy, sweet feed
A bucket of spring water.

From the chopper, he’s observed
In a slow practiced rehearsal
Like a monk at his devotions,
Head bobbing, lame in the forehoof,
Miserably alive.

All that’s left of structure:
Splinters. The body of the mare,
His companion, thrown
Into a nearby field with the
Defeathered chickens. At dusk

The twister plowed a fifty mile
Path like a rogue
Tractor. Huge dark wedge
Of rotating force. Shingles
From the barn’s roof plant a pasture
Thirty miles away. This horse, bewildered
Knows only to stay
In the place that he knows.

All those whose homes are smashed
Pick through the ruins
For the one surviving thing—a photograph,
Quilt, child’s toy—that confirms
The lives they had. The horse
Keeps walking.


Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She was a finalist in the GSU Poetry Contest (2007), Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize (2009, 2012), and received honorable mentions in the North American Review's James Hearst Poetry Contest (2008, 2010). She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press) and Dead Horses and Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press. Selected Poems received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize.  Properties of Matter was published in spring of 2014 by Aldrich Press (Kelsay Books). Two chapbooks are forthcoming in 2014: Bittersweet (Main Street Rag Press) and Ah Clio (Kattywompus Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press. 

AFTER SANDY HOOK, NEWTOWN

by Joan Colby

Crews have torn down the home of the man who killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Mass. The school was demolished in November, 2013. AP photo via Time, March 25, 2015.

Nothing will bring them back.
The shooter killed himself as well
So the marble hand of justice
Cannot signal. There’s no one left to punish
Except the building where it took place.
Halls of learning. Books and desks
Stained with the memory of what happened.
Then the house where he planned the monstrous
Acts of unreason. Nothing left but to
Tear it all down. To burn the ground where they stood
And then maybe in time to plant
Something green and tend it.
It seems reasonable, doesn’t it?

I can’t help but be reminded
Of my friend accidentally kicked
By her horse and then lay comatose
For weeks on the narrow ledge of dying.
Her husband in his grief
Had the horse killed. What else could he do?
What could relieve this? Nothing. Nothing.
She woke to the empty stall of loss.


Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She was a finalist in the GSU Poetry Contest (2007), Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize (2009, 2012), and received honorable mentions in the North American Review's James Hearst Poetry Contest (2008, 2010). She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press) and Dead Horses and Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press. Selected Poems received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize.  Properties of Matter was published in spring of 2014 by Aldrich Press (Kelsay Books). Two chapbooks are forthcoming in 2014: Bittersweet (Main Street Rag Press) and Ah Clio (Kattywompus Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press. 

MEASLES

by Joan Colby

Anti-Vaxxer Kristin Cavallari

A darkened room. Venetian blinds
Slatted like a stern mouth.
No reading. No coloring books
Or paper dolls. I shut my eyes
Reddened like the polka dots
Of my fevered body.
The doctor with his satchel
Of uselessness. Two weeks
Or longer. It’s the hard
Measles.

Two infant boys born before my father
Died of it. They were both named
For their own father, an unlucky
Name as it turned out—he too would die
Young in a gunfight. They called my father
A different name. So names must
Matter. My own means Gift of God
According to my mother who never wanted
Such a daughter, one spotted
With original sin, who must be
Worried over, hot and sulky in the dark
Demanding one more chapter.
My father’s weary voice as Jim
Hides in the apple barrel
Listening for the thump of a peg leg.

Once a third of the tribes crawled
To the cooling waters where they expired.
I get better. A neighbor child
Loses smartness, burnt away in a conflagration
The way conifers on the mountain
Turned into ashy witches.

There’s such a thing as herd
Immunity. The few protected
By the many. How penguins huddle
Against weather, changing places constantly
For the good of all.

Age of enlightenment.
Lords of miracle: Lister, Pasteur,
Jenner, Finlay, Reed, Salk.

Yet in the forest where the children stray
The house of the witch still beckons,
People believe in angels, in green men from mars,
That evolution is a lie, that the moon is a hologram,
That science is a devil’s plot
Against the faith of conjecture.


Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She was a finalist in the GSU Poetry Contest (2007), Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize (2009, 2012), and received honorable mentions in the North American Review's James Hearst Poetry Contest (2008, 2010). She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press) and Dead Horses and Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press. Selected Poems received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize.  Properties of Matter was published in spring of 2014 by Aldrich Press (Kelsay Books). Two chapbooks are forthcoming in 2014: Bittersweet (Main Street Rag Press) and Ah Clio (Kattywompus Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press. 

CONCEALED CARRY

by Joan Colby

HAYDEN, Idaho — A mom shopping at a Walmart store died Tuesday after her toddler, who was left in a shopping cart, reached into her purse and accidentally discharged her handgun, authorities said. Veronica J. Rutledge, 29, of Blackfoot, Idaho, had gone to the store in this Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, suburb with four children in tow at mid-morning. Her 2-year-old son, who was sitting in the shopping cart, reached into his mother's purse, causing the small-caliber handgun to discharge one time, said Lt. Stu Miller, Kootenai County Sheriff's Office spokesman. "It appears to be a pretty tragic accident," Miller said. Rutledge was dead by the time deputies arrived. --USA Today, December 31, 2014. Image: Veronica J. Rutledge Facebook Photo via The Independent (UK)

A purse is a lure, a bright magnet
For fishing fingers. All kids know
The mom keeps stuff they shouldn’t have,
Shiny car keys, loose change, the tube
Of pills that look like candy.

Grab at her purse to irritate
The mom, to get her attention
As she drifts from aisle to aisle
Deliberating, saying no
To whines and pleas.

This kid, only two, sitting in the cart,
Swung his fat legs and seized
Her purse. A toy like the cops
Have on TV. Says bang
And pulls the trigger. Wow, mom
For just a second, looked mad.
He shut his eyes.

Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She was a finalist in the GSU Poetry Contest (2007), Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize (2009, 2012), and received honorable mentions in the North American Review's James Hearst Poetry Contest (2008, 2010). She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press) and Dead Horses and Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press. Selected Poems received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize.  Properties of Matter was published in spring of 2014 by Aldrich Press (Kelsay Books). Two chapbooks are forthcoming in 2014: Bittersweet (Main Street Rag Press) and Ah Clio (Kattywompus Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.