Edward Hopper’s Early Sunday Morning: A Collaborative Poem, by Bill Waters and Zee Zahava city Sunday . . . occupying the sidewalk long shadows outside the barber shop my father’s ghost smokes his last cigar open window -- an Italian aria on the record player thin walls -- my next door neighbour has a cold achoooooooo! behind shop windows only darkness city Sunday . . . into the shadows a black cat vanishes Bill Waters (stanzas 1, 3, 5) Zee Zahava (stanzas 2, 4, 6) Bill Waters is a longtime writer of short poetry and compressed prose. He also runs the Poetry in Public Places Project, a Facebook / real-world group interested in creating and promoting poetry in public spaces to increase the richness of everyday life. Bill lives in Pennington, New Jersey, U.S.A., with his wonderful wife and their two amazing cats. Zee Zahava was born in the Bronx but has lived most of her adult life in Ithaca, New York. She was the Tompkins County Poet Laureate in 2017 and 2018. Her book of short poems, here i am, was published by wildflower poetry press in 2017.
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Posing With Mister Arnolfini He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t speak to me. I wonder if he knows who I am? Probably not. When he grasped my hand the painter said (eventually) Easy, man. You’re hurting her. Now he holds it like a haddock. It was always like this. He never talked to me, just came and went, the same sour look on his face. They say Costanza died in childbirth. Is that why the painter chose me? Do I look like her? What happened to the kid? You’ll be wondering why he holds his hand up like that. It means peace, painter, enough of your questions – I don’t chat to artisans. No, nor working girls, neither. This maternity dress is nice. Fits, too. Perfectly. Bill Holloway Bill Holloway is an 83-year-old retired gardener, living near Cheltenham. Literary near-misses include being long-listed in the National, short-listed for The Plough Prize and the Bridport flash fiction competition. He has just published his first book, Natural Causes - Poetry and Prose (1994-2019), which includes the poem above. He features fairly regularly in The Oldie magazine's competition page. Orphan Train The year is 1920. It is February or maybe November. The monotony of work, church and prayers before bed makes you lose count. Sleep crusting your eyes, the cows have not been milked yet, but you are pulled roughly from your bed, the comfort of scratchy sheets. Now you are sure you will be whipped for not cleaning up the cow patties, for sketching a bird you saw in a tree, using a stub of stolen charcoal and a piece of wood you found on the ground. But the lady says you are going. Off, she says. Away. She’s hired new help, two strapping boys, bigger than you put together. You find that is fine with you. The porter asks you where you are going. Somewhere is better than nowhere, you think, because at least it has a name. All that you carry of your own is your body. You cannot even call the scuffed shoes on your feet or the brim of the hat pulled down low yours because as the lady said, they were gifts, hand-me-downs. Like everything else, these items showed you did not belong there or anywhere. When the porter asks if you will miss it--home—it takes a moment for you to understand what the word means. Home is comfort and security, the opposite of loneliness. You do not answer. Instead you watch the sky fade like a lady’s soiled handkerchief from petal pink to gray. Candace Hartsuyker Candace Hartsuyker has an M.F.A in Creative Writing from McNeese State University and reads for PANK. She has been published in Trampset, Okay Donkey, Heavy Feather Review, The Hunger and elsewhere. |
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