I WANT TO LOVE WAKING UP

by Lynne Schilling

after “I Want to Love the World” by Christine Potter

I want to love waking up again, but for months

I’ve been waking up to thoughts of being a day 

closer to death, to images of the bony ribcages 

 

of starving children, to the blankness of hope. 

I want to be light as birdsong at dawn, but instead, 

I am the heavy keening of families of deportees. 

 

I want to love waking up, but joy evades my grip,

drips off my fingers and evaporates, like drops 

of water on a hot pan. I want to wake up happy, 

but doom is leaning on her horn under my window, 

making thoughts of anything else impossible. I force

myself to get up, and only then, when I feel my feet 

 

on the floor, do I remember poetry—a few lines

I want to revise, a poem I want to reread & that 

is enough to get me down the stairs to my coffee.

While Lynne Schilling has been writing poetry on and off for forty years, she began writing it seriously four years ago at age 75. Her day job was as an academic in an entirely different field. She has published poems in Quartet, The Alchemy Spoon, Rue Scribe, The New Verse News and others. She has poems forthcoming in Lucky Jefferson and MacQueen’s Quinterly.

WAR

by James Bettendorf

“Suffer the Children” by Janice Nabors Raiteri (2007)

I cannot see the sun rise
            red white yellow horizon
                        I see blood of children
                        form rivers in the streets.

I cannot hear the muted moans of lovers
            passion arms legs tangle
                        I hear keening of mothers
                        Sons, daughters ripped from their arms.

I cannot taste the melon or berry
            sweetness tongue juice chin
                        only the dry residue of lead
                        cannon smoke clouding my face.

I cannot smell the aroma of lilacs
            roses garden blues lilies
                        only the acrid cordite of gunpowder
                        copper odor of innocent blood.

I cannot feel warm breath on my cheek
children grandchildren friends lover
                        only the sharp pain of shrapnel
                        tearing holes, shattering bones.


James Bettendorf taught math for 34 years at various levels and in his retirement begin writing classes at the Loft in Minneapolis, MN. He was accepted for a two-year poetry internship in the Loft Master Track program in 2006 and has been working on a manuscript with his mentor/advisor, Thomas R. Smith.  He has had poems published in Rockhurst Review, Light Quarterly, Ottertail Review, Talking Stick Vols. 18 - 23 and Free Verse.