Suppose it’s there after all, blank and bright.
Uncertain you’d grope through the only-light.
Sight ceding to scents — rain, sandalwood, oats –
And to feeling your heft as you’re hugged quite
Near — breasts to chest, cheeks nuzzled, feet afloat.

Sounds surround with bleats, coos, brays and lowing,
Insects trilling, waters flowing, chitchat
Natters, plates clink platters. Then, from glowing
Kindled springs, wells fragrant wordless Shabbat.

An acrostic arising from her choice after many years treating primary and secondary cancers to stop chemotherapy and accept. May her memory be a blessing. @susansink

For background on the poems I’ve published on Medium see “about these poems”.

Laughing hikers crossing cloud-bliss cliff trails
Joke carefree above somber lush silence.
Ears grin impulsive to hear woven tales
Retied with wry smiles of jade-eyed dragons’
Knotted tongues, wrapping round souls wrung unrhymed.
All emptied, a bare body still beckons,

Ache’s anthem sings feral, slurred and mistimed,
Need spills from gut hollows swollen with lack.
Instinct’s lone boulder pressing floods back
Chants open throated for mountains once climbed.

An acrostic

For background on the poems I’ve published on Medium see “about these poems”.

T L Oberman for Poetry in Form.

Cut through a vast vat of rising dough
And it swallows the knife, your hand, your arm
Rolls over your head and torso like low
Organ notes and seals behind in mellow
Lipid folds falling closed to smother alarm.

Quilts at home summon the sensation when
Used warm and fresh from the dryer. We throw
Idle furls through the air which roll and bend
Round the head, wrists and feet. Then, quilts flatten
Keeping close to breathing skin. When they grow
Earthly stale, the wash can bare them again.

An acrostic

For background on the poems I’ve published on Medium see “about these poems”.

T L Oberman for Poetry in Form.

Now let all our beloved immortal sleep.
The swollen Milyatska flows under the bridge at the II Girl’s High School.
Tomorrow is Sunday. Take the first tram to Ilidzha.
Of course assuming it’s not raining.
Boring, long Sarajevo rain.
How did Chabrinovich live in the dungeon without that rain!
We beg, we curse, and yet until the Fall
schedule romantic rendezvous like we were in the Mayest May.
We beg, we curse aware that never
will the Milyatska become the Guadalquivir or Seine.
So what! Because of that my hunger will be less
for you and less bitter my right
not to sleep when the world is threatened by plague or war
and when the only words become not “forget” and “goodbye?”

After all, perhaps this is not the city in which I will die,
but in any case I do not deserve one brighter,
this city in which maybe I was not the happiest,
but in which all is mine, and in which I can always
find at least some of you that I love
and tell you that I am lonely from despair.
In Moscow I could also do that, but Yesenin is dead
and Yevtushenko is for sure somewhere in Georgia.
In Paris how do I call an ambulance
when she, herself, did not respond to calls of Viona?
Here, if I call the poplars, our dear fellow citizens,
even they will know my pains.
Because this is a city in which maybe I was not the happiest,
but in which when rain falls it is not simply rain.

Dawn does not start the day, so fresh its skin
Unwashed of night like milk in coffee blooms,
Bread dipped in honey suns slumbering rooms,
Rays glisten amber on cheeks, lips and chin.
Awed we drink gulping noon’s fertile frank grin
Viewed tear eyed immersed in quenching perfumes.
Kissing day’s shroud, nightfall blindly exhumes
Animal rumbling grunt shoving within.

Bathed in sea salt full we licked savored lips
Unsunned untongued unsweet untold until
Lock-legged tied-tongued bent-held bound-souled joined-hips
Earth squeezed stone sweat shone beaded, bright and still.

Again I walk stone modest river bridges
Now twenty and more winters have fed its springs.
I cast my eyes on rippling stream ridges
Chasing rose gold sun flecks evening’s echo brings.

An acrostic

For background on the poems I’ve published on Medium see “about these poems”.

Exquisite σαπίλα whose grave bouquet
Zephyrus and cold Boreas convey
(Rather would shun) mixed with must and dry clay
Along with floating flakes of rufous hay.

Puffs of no substance flare nostrils in dread
Of browning petals and shriveled drupe spread
Under wet boughs, fruitless, black, wholly bled.
Noxious airs from guts nourishing chyme fed
Darkest breath that razed our dead, lovely, fine.

An acrostic of admiration and disgust. What a difficult man.

For background on the poems I’ve published on Medium see “about these poems”.

Again the mud-moist lips of river scent
Moves me to dig into drunk sunk stream dank
Earth; washed, bathed, yet never cleansed of milling,
Lingering sweet black bubbling green breath, pent
Inside yeasting, still and always willing,
Always stone floating far from either bank.

Gentle umber wraps close under, filling
Afflicted hollows, sopping and sore, rent
Raw with scraped heat. Palms stared stunned from that yank
Drawn rind peeling slow with pooled juice spilling
Namelessly mute and heart curled indifferent.
Embers when doused swathe sparks in stone black coals
Reserving light like breath in ancient scrolls.

Families know that breath inside words uttered
In half crust sentence, floating cookie crumbs
Tender in a glass of milk, love muttered
Zen vacant wrapped thick in bathrobes becomes
Peapod calm, gardener unearthed, sprouting
Aloe salve, palm frond shade, oak-firm rooted
Trunks beaming straight to branch leaf heights scouting
Renewed wind sown hills, feral and fruited.
Immense floods roil silt to feed nursing
Children soft-lipped nuzzled hands traversing
Kind with sighs and sated skin answering.

An acrostic

For background on the poems I’ve published on Medium see “about these poems”.

Told presuming the scrubbed forecast after,
Origins and endings knead together
Dough whole unloaved; their globed nethers gather
Draped and yielding bridled in tamed leather.

Loose reins on such pliant heft cannot draw
Either right or left, neither east nor
West, so I spin potential poise to straw.
It is swept, sorted and bundled before
Stone grinding with a plumb alchemist claw.

Origins and endings bleed together
Bitter and sweet, so balanced we crave more
Each gristle filled cream pie we see and saw.
Rock cleansed, or not, fields fruit, or not, whether
Man, or not, plans with skill, or not, to store
All bounty, or not, for famine and awe
Not present but expected fresh and raw.

An acrostic self portrait

For background on the poems I’ve published on Medium see “about these poems”.

Burns supposedly harm only the flesh
Underneath the skeleton remains whole
Not touched by summer’s moist consuming mesh.
Nor does heat dig deep to fracture the soul
Yearning for soft wine in an icy bowl.

Nature has gone awry with its plans.
Everything simmers inside while my skin
Freezes and numbs. My empty untouched hands
Fold calmly, intertwine and pray on sin.

An acrostic penned in a beat-up spiral notebook during a hot humid St. Louis summer while courting a far-off friend in distant Sitka.

For background on the poems I’ve published on Medium see “about these poems”

T L Oberman for Poetry in Form.

Long stems make awful arcs when heads inhale,
Invert, and strive to earth with its stern pursed
Simple lips and tempting tan breast well versed
And content in curves running head to tail.

Many gardeners do not choose to veil
Inspecting eyes. Oh, where they may have nursed
Growing decline, they quickly think the worst,
Leap forward, and prune the round plants which fail.
In the center of reflecting tables,
Or on the sunny edges of curtained sills
Roses rooted in urns spire toward gables
And wilt to moist folds despite plant food pills;
Then they are pressed thin in books of fables
Or preserved in freezers filled with stark chills.

For background on the poems I’ve published on Medium see “about these poems”

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