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Featured
Poet: Cathy Ackerson
My Husband
A
large man, tall and bearded,
you scare the old ladies:
you, who stand in a stream hipboot deep
with unhooked fishing line,
catch the cloud,
a funny fish from the
swirling blue wind,
throw it into your creel
to bring home and mount on paper
with your typewriter.
published
previously in Caprice
Swallowing Sleep
I swallow sleep
a gulp at a time,
trying to take in enough
to sink to the bottom
where the dreams lie.
Later,
my husband's voice
pulls me up from sleep
like a deepwater fish
being dragged upward
to where I'm drowning in air.
published
previously in Caprice
The Stepmother
Short squat
her breasts hung to her waist.
She croaked that antique doll
would be mine when she died.
We would visit her on her birthday,
Christmas And Easter.
My father would carry the check in his pocket.
We would wait while they talked;
until, the magic paper given,
the spell was broken.
When she died
the church inherited her belongings;
they sent us a family album.
Younger than I remember,
she still sits, lips pursed,
waiting for the kiss.
published
previously in Poets West (Perivale Press; 1975)
from "Pocatello Paranoia"
In the desolation
of this high, dry altitude,
I want to climb
the carved table leg,
escape into the cool,
chambered shell
and float back
into the understanding waves.
Shell
A ghost
unable to haunt the water
lies on the beach,
whispering a memory.
Idaho
Why is it
that you can see pine
grow in the grove with poplar
and the granite
crumble with shale
yet cannot leave me alone
till I am like you?
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