Not Potpourri by Janet Buck

Featured Writer: Janet Buck

Not Potpourri

Clearing a homestead of love gone bad.
Inside every clump of dust
I'd find some sour memory.
A rusted shaver, picture frames.
Wedding gifts like
picnic baskets never used.
Its bamboo shredded by the dog--
a rickshaw bombed by hours of war.
Cranberry blood on pillow cases
lacing fights that gutted evenings
suns could never bleach enough.
I was picking grapes, I thought.
You were burning down the vines.
The arching back of joblessness
began as aches--
then colored all we did and said.
Conversing was a bleak frontier
with hidden worms in every
apple hands would pick.
I'd leave for work, return at dusk--
find your body gaining width,
packing cushions on the couch.
Thinking all those promise acorns
had to grow a tree in time.
Earwigs of resentment played
between our meals. Their pincers,
tongs for cubes of ice.
We were a sculpture I wanted to melt,
but tea bag storms had busy minds--
hail pebbles added up.
Guilt was a filter for dirty air.
I climbed up ladders, meaning
to change the fibrous swatch,
discovered levers out of reach.
Roses plucked by grieving yodels.
Peppercorns not potpourri
in craters of a closing wound.

First Signs of Spring

Sunlight trills in rainbow palette
meant for only witnessing.
Warm is a doctor
and rays are grafts
applied to clouds.
Quite uncanny miracles.
Winter's dregs--
an ethered prologue
to the stage.
I feel my planter's hands
in a flat of yellow marigolds,
breaking the roots
of tiny squares.
Watch the worms
make space for birth.
Curtain calls for actors
greater than our parts
in solipsistic monologues.
First signs of Spring--
telephone poles of daffodils
undoing earthly impotence.
Rhyming starts
at the center and spreads--
peacock fans
that stalk a barnyard,
cocky with blue muscle fire.

Lucky Concerts

A sympathetic symphony
when times are cruel--
the bus gaining speed
and wheels when others
would have given up.
A crew of well-tuned violins
playing strong on all four decks
of sinking ships.
Slipping into fateful seas,
not succumbing to the ice.
My body is at home with you
as leather rides a saddle's lip.
Through thick and thin
grows dense at times--
mud makes worms
that leave the dirt
a way to breathe.
I remember my wrists in hospital days,
connected to a morphine drip.
Looking in your sleepy eyes
toothpicked open by my pain.
Your smile like sprays of lavender
drowning out ammonia scents.
Sunlight's skin graft over winter.
Nurses heard the lucky concert
of our love, padded
jealous down the hall.
You've treated
severed bones and such
as complications of your own.
Pulling curtained grief away
on pulleys of devotion's palms.
Even trouble's memories
are rafts of sorts--
Buddha postures in a mantra--
praying never mantises.
I dedicate my writing life
to capturing our oxygen.

Janet Buck, Ph.D. is the author of four collections of poetry. Her work has appeared in CrossConnect, Zang Spur Review, Pif Magazine, The Dakota House Journal, The Melic Review, Stirring, Countless Horizons, Ascent, Tapestry, The Rose & Thorn, Avatar Review, pith, Perihelion, In Motion, OffCourse, and hundreds of journals world-wide. In the year 2000, Janet was of ten U.S. poets to be featured at the "One Heart, One World" Exhibit at the United Nations Exhibit Hall in New York City. Her poem "Acrylic Thighs" was translated into five languages and paired with original artwork. The tour traveled to France, Australia, Vietnam, Brazil, and Japan. In 2001-2002, Buck's poetry is scheduled to appear in PoetryBay, The Montserrat Review, Runes, The Pedestal Magazine, Concrete Wolf, The Carriage House Review, Swagazine, PoetryRepairShop, Slow Trains, Verse Libre Quarterly, Wicked Alice, Facets, Southern Ocean Review, Artemis, The American Muse, and The Pittsburgh Quarterly. Recent awards include The H.G. Wells Award for Literary Excellence, First Place in Kimera's Poetry Contest 2001, Editor's Choice Award for Sol Magazine, and the 2001 Kota Press Anthology Prize. In 2001, Janet's poem "The Teapoy" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by The Pedestal Magazine. Janet Buck is a three-time Pushcart Nominee and the author of four collections of poetry. Her work has recently appeared in Three Candles, Red River, Pierian Springs, Stirring, PoetryBay, Offcourse, Ascent, The American Muse, and hundreds of journals world-wide. In 2002-2003 Buck's poetry is scheduled to appear in Zuzu's Petals Quarterly, Mississippi Review, Gin Bender, Artemis, The Montserrat Review, Recursive Angel, The Foliate Oak, Southern Ocean Review, The Pedestal Magazine, Coelacanth, Cordite, CrossConnect, and The Oklahoma Review.

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