WINTER’S ALOE

is the sun,
it burns off the tops of trees,
and the points of snow that cast light
over the branches

I like to walk between the torsos
of oak, before the colors lift
their ruddy spirits from skin of leaf
wait for the sky to shed
itself into the face of a different bird
Do you ever long for mid-summer,
a backwater pond slumped [...]

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SHADOWFALL

A man once spoke the way a yellow sky rolls back.
Often our laughter would echo,
pull us along
into rows we needed to walk through
as if the journey could somehow surpass our steps:
We walked past white houses, 
retaining walls, windows with azure curtains
 and deep cherry wood sills. Books opened 
during October, yellowed, never read,

All the [...]

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Paper Tree

Its roots are the roots I have come to know.
Gray sheet of graphic paper,
purple branches gesture to the stars but not for light.
A tree that wants to live outside these margins.
It will yellow as other trees do,
but differently. 
No autumn gold left behind.
Only itself, folded inside the corners of a book.
Its color turned again and [...]

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Credits and Publications

Upcoming:
Two poems to be included in Chickenpinata,
a journal of poetry,
4th issue October, 2009.

Breadcrumb. Scabs, A Poetry Magazine, 9th issue.
Third Anthology : MEOW, pub. by Jeff Winke,
October 2005, IBPC HR, Judge David Hernandez
March, 2007 IBPC HR, Judge Pascale Petit
October 2007, IBPC HR Judge Ethelbert Miller
March 2008, IBPC HR, Judge Fieda Brown
Oak Bend Review, April 2009,
Rust [...]

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STEPHANIE

Thanks IBPC for the Honorable Mention, July, 2009 for Stephanie and to Judge George Szirtes whose insight into the poem will be a considerable help in future work.

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Pelican of the Wilderness

You’re all that’s left, peripherally,
in a place where no one else recognizes you. 
in between the halo colors that wave,
my eyes still moist from the blood that redeems,
you’re the vision that dries around my brow.
And as I look up, you’re all I need to see.
A pelican of the wilderness:
who holds the floodwaters inside his beak,
the [...]

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We Found Her

Do you remember being lost as a child and hearing
someone say we found her!
Do you remember the excitement
in that voice that you instantly try to identify. A voice that maybe
you’d heard many times but never paid any attention to. It could be a memory from being five or six and hidden inside the coat [...]

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PIRATE IN AN EMPTY HOUSE

The house we sold now sits and waits
for early autumn rain;
a pirate with a tooth of metal
languishes in pain.
Its haunted, so the townfolk say
but I cannot believe.
Those rooms, those silver photographs
the drapery’s spotted sleeve.
So hard to close the door and walk
away on cobblestone.
Oh pirate, if you’re hungry, mate
its best you live alone.
kathleen vibbert 2000

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BEE IN ANAPEST

If the bee is my friend in the spring,
then his genius falls weathered in rain.
He will open the flowers and bring
every color alive once again.
From his labors I fare and applaud,
how his focus and drive see him through.
There’s perfection from everything flawed
when he comes and he knows what to do.
In late summer he fades off [...]

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Forward with Hester

I learn something from every person who enters my life,
leaves my life and remains in my life. Something
about them remains with me. This is especially noted
for those who make a lasting impression on me,
those I felt strongly about. Years ago, about thirty-two
to be exact, I met a woman named Hester. She was a mother figure
to [...]

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