Poetry
Painting with Words
"Poetry is the sister art of painting."
-Dr. Wayne Cox
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Maybe that explains why I use both of them to express my creativity.
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Regardless, I have a passion for poetry, and have spent the years since college creating an anthology of poetry that is nearing the point of publication.
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In the meantime, I have shared below two poems published in the past year by Z Publishing House.
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I have been published twice by Z Publishing House - in South Carolina's Best Emerging Poets and America's Best Emerging Poets.
Z Publishing
(Originally published in America's Best
Emerging Poets).
Summer swept in with a wind
that flung the beating waves
against the pier and kissed
our cheeks with salt.
The girl sold baskets
made from marsh grass by the sea
or roses, for the couple.
She offered one to me,
for him to buy.
"Or two," she said. "If that's how much
you love her." He bought two
not minding the ploy.
I slipped one into his buttonhole --
the other I saved:
a memory of this summer night
that would slowly fade.
And so we stood, each with a rose
and watched the sun decline,
melting golden in the Southern sea.
The lights came out -
some white, some red, one green
upon some distant dock
blinking a beacon of hope
that slowly faded as night
drew down upon the sea.
Marsh Grass Rose
It is my great honor to have published both poetry and prose in my alma mater's award-winning literary journal, Ivy Leaves.
Ivy Leaves Journal
(Originally published in South Carolina's Best Emerging Poets).
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They filled your grave with Carolina clay -
the earth that bore you now becomes your tomb.
The winter sky is silver in the gloom,
the ash trees and the oaks are tombstone grey.
The twilight mist has cloaked the road from sight
and hung a curtain shimmering with rain
that coats the crumbling markers of the slain -
and you keep company with them tonight.
The wind tears off one last November leaf -
I enter your cold house and shut the door,
and darkness sweeps inside across the floor -
the silence and the night bring no relief.
I move along - you said that would be best -
and learn to bury sorrow in my chest.
You, My Grandfather
On First Looking Into Lords of Discipline
You handed the book in, half-read -
Why? because it had too many descriptions
of the Southern landscape.
You turned your back, I checked it out
to myself - librarian's privileges.
I smuggled it home and kept it by my pillow -
A talisman against the ice air of German winters.
And when the time afforded, I brought it out
and opened the weathered pages
and let the damp marsh air
and the salt sound of cicadas,
the gurgle of slow coming tides,
and the wind creaking the deck pylons drown
out the soft fall of snowflakes
against the fastened window.