|
Click title to download microchap
'Sleight of Hand' was selected
for this commemorative collection.
Photo by Richard Benjamin
- by kind permission -
//richardbenjamin.zenfolio.com
|
Sleight Of Hand
the free-fall ride
soft ice cream store
wood planks whose undersides
played my weekend passageway
through puberty
where I tried my first French kiss
drank warm illegal beer
smoked my brother's cigarettes
my favorite summer span
seagulls pelted with clam shells
my childhood cotton candy
jelly apple jamboree
my home town boardwalk
slashed crashed pulverized
by earth's chaotic sleight of hand
taste of the greenhouse gassed future
I have no doubt we'll confect again
•
Joan Fishbein © 2013
|
•
On April 21, 2013 The Origami Poems Project
held a wonderful poetry reading at the
Narragansett Towers (RI) at the invitation
of Kate Vivian, Events Manager.
This compiled collection
reflects the meaning of the event
to our guests.
•
Poets include
Joan Fishbein, Helen M. D’Ordine
Pat Larose, O.R. Gami
Jen Slater
|
|
|
Click title to download microchap
Cover art by
Jill McLaughlin
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
|
1.
Japan counts
as a consequential nuclear consumer
fish water trees fundamental
humans are
the country’s principle resource
2.
August 1945 at ground zero
hit the earth Fat Man Little Boy
birds and butterflies ignited in flight
3.
like white graffiti
on remaining steps sidewalks walls
bodies left shadows
|
4.
the first year after a death
Japanese relatives don’t send or receive
New Year cards
5.
in Fukushima during the 2012 holiday
post offices
will need merely a fraction of their staff
•
Joan Fishbein © 2011
|
|
|
Click title to download microchap
Cover art by
Jill McLaughlin
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
|
Interior Modifications
a dream kindled
by some sublime candle
a jade crane grounded
on a glass top table
views of tumbling objects
a white cat flipped upside down
clothes cleaning in a washing machine
swept pebbles that make a garden
I fall through feet first
as I watch flying roaches
smash against sun porch windows
a voice says you have abandoned me
piece by piece
make interior modifications
unlock the clock
behind the wall
rewind yourself
More Than A Sign
time appears to contract
less light more color
beside our slate walk
children skip and trample
brittle leaves
I sit on the basement floor
play Ma Rainey Bessie Smith
their songs slash the air
blues whose lyrics I know by heart
you carve a seal
from driftwood
salvaged last summer
snow and sleet forecast today
mirror my mind
your silence seems more than a sign
hands can shape anything
|
Framed Life
through a dance of detached legs toes
thighs cut from trunks colored red orange green
we swirl floor by floor in the spiral museum
where artists stretch extremities
and couples who wear faded jeans
pass before paintings
as they hold hands
you trail me
don't speak
later on the street
elms and poplars bleed
resins which smudge car windows
while we wait for the bus to move us
away from the art
we stand side by side
the starlings sing
At Sea
we take what we can
from each other
quick kisses
touches that don't swim
below the skin's surface
after so many years
sharing bed and board
we're no longer anchored
but float
in space we splice
we need no compass
to know the direction
we're always at sea
just treading water
|
Designs
the leaves on the lower branches
of the sugar maple and yellow birch
crackle in the November wind
catch the late afternoon sun
form designs on the grass
fall lingers beyond its time
through pine bedroom blinds
light burnishes the captain's chest
as I pull the down quilt
over sheets where our bodies meshed
last night
flowing and contained
like the ironstone cup
whose snake handle I grasp
when I drink my morning tea
•
Joan Fishbein © 2010
'I picture my poems as
small abstracts of emotion.
I don't punctuate so meaning,
sound, and rhythm can become
flexible elements.
The reader can play
with the poem on the page,
or in his or her mind.
And, if I succeed, my work will
endorse and, perhaps,
enhance personal experience.'
|
Helen M. D'Ordine was a retired teacher, adjunct professor at Rhode Island College, a member of The Writers' Circle, a Block Island Poetry Project participant, an Ocean State Poet, and a RI Writing Project Fellow. 
Ruth Siperstein is a retired English teacher of both high school and Community College. She has been published in the Newport Review, Crone's Nest, the Heartbeat of New England, and other journals. 
Joan Fishbein's work has appeared in The Southern Poetry Anthology: Volume One, The Kennesaw Review, The Devil's Millhopper, Helicon Nine, Poetica, The Reach of Song,The Best of Sand Hills and other small literary magazines. She won first prize for poetry at the 2008 Chattahoochee Valley Writer's Conference and graduated from Vassar with a BA in English and from Warren Wilson College with an MFA in poetry.
Margo Roby spent the first twenty years of her life in Hong Kong, where her parents met and married and stayed. She spent the second twenty years of her life following her army husband around the world with their two children. The second twenty overlapped with the third by two years. Her husband’s last posting was Jakarta, Indonesia where they lived for twenty years while Margo taught at the international school. Now retired and living in Atlanta, Margo can concentrate her energy on poetry for the next twenty.
