Wild Goose Poetry Review, No 34, Spring 2018
SUNDAY PAPER
My three-doors-down
neighbor saunters
on Sunday out to get
his paper––fat wet
bundle of dew-smeared
ink. He shivers
the elastic down
the tube, unravels grey
sheaves of New York
words. How dull
a life he must lead
to pour over letters,
never whirling them
into the blender,
pushing the button––
spin rising to a howl––
only to click it off,
pour the frothy mix out
the spout into a freshly
mint-topped glass
of a poem.
WHAT TO DO ABOUT WINTER
Cinch your skates. Ankle up to wobble
down to the pond, sniff gelid air, huff
crackled vapor, toe the blade, cast off and skirt
the crusted rim. Halt with hiss of ice
and watch lithe twirlers spiral. Wipe your bangs
from eyes with frosted mittens, chisel grooves
crosshatched on glass ––no rails, no rules,
no rink slick sheen to glide you through. Wrap
your knitted scarf around you twice as sun
descends past spiky trees tinged tangerine. Skim
to center; join the dancers––their swirling skirts
the hues of popsicles, their glossy lips aglow––
who reach to take you by the hand
as if they knew you long ago.
Bio: Music professor Joanna White has works published (or forthcoming) in The Examined Life Journal, Ars Medica, Healing Muse, Abaton, American Journal of Nursing, The Intima, Earth’s Daughters, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, The MacGuffin, Cape Rock, Chariton Review, Pulse, Temenos, Measure, in the Naugatuck River Review as a poetry contest finalist, and in the Poetry and Medicine column of JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association.
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