Recent Release From Round Barn Press
(cover illustration by Jim Spitzer)
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.
-W.H Auden “In Memory of W.B. Yeats”
Eternal Gardens
Had my father written me poems,
Nasturtiums would have sprouted from my navel,
Dahlias from my rectum, and, of course, he did not,
But my children and their children
May walk in all my colors—
So many gorgeous beckoning gardens!
The most moving part of your reading was from Family Matters; I'm really enjoying the poems on the page, too. They're so honest and heartfelt without being sentimental.
- Lynne Knight author of Night In the Shape of a Mirror
2 Unrelated Coletti Poems
Kiki Smith Takes On Politics
If the sculptor or print maker
recreating the body perfectly
as pain, as pain the body is,
could apply the same chisel
to any politician’s cardiovascular
digestive and nervous systems,
she would attempt to capture only
that deep clenched grimace under
lying all such unrelenting
hyper extended artifice.
Center of the Universe
In an expansive universe similar to our own,
eyes and tongues staring speaking,
distant little planets move about
you their center star
certain all is for you,
all critiques directed towards you,
“too hot” “not enough”
Whether you shine or hide,
smaller planets hold
little sway over the sun,
perhaps a bit of a tug on a ray here or there
a deflection, an errant beam set straight.
You are all about light
but dim noticeably
when you strain to imagine
what some tiny unnoticed planet
might soundlessly
extract from you today.
And please don't forget
2008 Marin Poetry Festival - May 14-18 - including May 18th reading by Robert Bly, Eavan Boland, and Jane Hirshfield at Dominican College in San Rafael.
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