Category Archives: Love Poetry

Winston Plowes… Oath & Quaver

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Oath

There is no mathematical proof for love
no OS map to recovery.
Too many footprints in the snow treading water
too many blank faces that follow
without pausing to gauge the wind
or crush a leaf in their fingers.
But every person has a name,
every tree, every flake of snow…
 
 
 

Quaver

 
Your hands search for my keys
through smoke
and jazz grows through their fingers.
 
I want to feel the weight
of you, on me.
to mark my heart this night.
 
Instead
I hold your purple coat –
up.
 
As it grows heavy
with copper coins.
 

Winston Plowes lives aboard his floating home in Calderdale with his lucky black cat, Fatty. He teaches creative writing and his collection of surrealist poetry Telephones, Love Hearts & Jellyfish, Electric Press was published in 2016.

https://www.facebook.com/winston.Plowes
http://www.winstonplowes.co.uk

 

Copyright © 2017 by Winston Plowes

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Jared Pearce… Prognostication

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Prognostication

On the day you came home
I am hustling one place
To another, sweating on
The air that won’t lift and won’t breathe,
 
And there are three blue jays
In the oak up third, younger,
I think, and quieter, chuffing
Softly and letting me near,
 
Fanning their tails to match
The blistered sky, looking askance
As I perambulate by. I hope
They’ll stay and believe
 
In the love and the need in me.
Yet the blue in them wasn’t heaven’s
Grace, but the blue of your eye,
The blue of deep space,
 
And without a shout, without
A race, they spread the day and hurtled away,
With nothing of cruelty
And nothing of hate.
 

Some of Jared Pearce’s poems have recently been or will soon be shared in Marathon, A Quiet Courage, DIAGRAM, Inlandia, and Poetic Diversity. His first collection is due from Aubade Press in 2018. He lives in Iowa.

 

Copyright © 2017 by Jared Pearce

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Valentina Cano… Hunting

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Hunting

A question hovered
like paper in a breeze,
without direction, flat.
I looked at you
with your shirt of fishing nets.
Your smile tucked
like a gun on your face.
Your eyes, knife blades.
I wanted to speak.
I wanted to pry my lips open,
to allow the bubbles to surface
and burst open with screams.
Watching your hands
drop the work you carried,
scattering the fragments of thoughts like scents.
I closed my mouth again.
The trap was already sprung.
 

Valentina Cano is a student of classical singing who spends whatever free time either writing or reading. Her works have appeared in Exercise Bowler, Blinking Cursor, Theory Train, Cartier Street Press, Berg Gasse 19, Precious Metals, A Handful of Dust, The Scarlet Sound, The Adroit Journal, Perceptions Literary Magazine, Welcome to Wherever, The Corner Club Press, Death Rattle, Danse Macabre, Subliminal Interiors, Generations Literary Journal, Super Poetry Highway. You can find her here: carabosseslibrary.blogspot.com.

 

Copyright © 2012 by Valentina Cano

 
 
 
 
 
 

Valentina Cano… Purgatory Around a Table

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Purgatory Around a Table

How is it this feeling has taken
over my very veins?
I am thrown out,
disposed of myself,
and filled with swamp water,
dark and brimming with flies.
I cannot sit still,
but rising burns my toes, my calves.
Even breathing has lost its charm.
My hands are stiff
and held at my sides like plates,
ready to smash themselves
to pieces against the wall.
My voice slashes upward in a scream.
The only sign of its sound,
the teetering of wine glasses.
 

Valentina Cano is a student of classical singing who spends whatever free time either writing or reading. Her works have appeared in Exercise Bowler, Blinking Cursor, Theory Train, Cartier Street Press, Berg Gasse 19, Precious Metals, A Handful of Dust, The Scarlet Sound, The Adroit Journal, Perceptions Literary Magazine, Welcome to Wherever, The Corner Club Press, Death Rattle, Danse Macabre, Subliminal Interiors, Generations Literary Journal, Super Poetry Highway. You can find her here: carabosseslibrary.blogspot.com.

 

Copyright © 2012 by Valentina Cano

 
 
 
 
 
 

Norah Vawter… Lie Next To Me

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Lie Next To Me

That raw poison used to shake my soul.
I am no longer angry at the world —
Now, lie next to me, and I am whole.
 
When I was very young, I felt so old,
With scars on my body, caught in the swirl —

That raw poison used to shake my soul.

Now we bob in the sea and shake off cold,
I am like a dancer. I spin and twirl.
Now, lie next to me, and I am whole.
 
I am lucky to be alive, I’m told
But I am no ordinary lost girl.
That raw poison used to shake my soul.
 
You showed me all the beauty in the bold
Ones who laugh until the pain is unfurled.
Now, lie next to me, and I am whole.
 
In your soft arms I am a newborn foal.
Into this new, fresh life I twist and curl.
That raw poison used to shake my soul.
Now, lie next to me, and I am whole.
 

Copyright © 2014 by Norah Vawter