LATE INTO THE NIGHT[ for Elihu Burritt, the Learned Blacksmith]
It’s past my bedtime. I turned the lamp out
an hour ago. Outside, not even the call
of the owl. Still, you keep turning in my mind,
you won’t let me sleep.
I think of you, head bent to your lantern-light
of languages, sailing the ship of geography
under so many stars. Application
or Genius, Elihu? What bird or angel-muse
sang in your ear so late into the night?
Sleepless, I need to make you
a poem. You keep whisper-prodding
in my ear to try just a little harder.
UP HERE IN THE MOUNTAINS
Late summer. An oak leaf falls
still green as a shamrock.
No, it’s pocked and splotched
with shades of mold or rot,
melanoma, leprosy. Ozone
does that, they say, scientists
who know the secret ills
of trees, how man’s errors
write their wrongs on leaves.
No luck of the shamrock
in this green.
Bio: I’m a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler. My poems have appeared in
The Iowa Review, The New York Quarterly, Poetry International, Southern
Humanities Review, and elsewhere, and I’m included in the anthology,
California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara
University, 2004).
Editorial Comment: I have to spend alot of time pissing around in a dictionary and
thesaurus to understand your poetry try to be as good with simpler
language. I don't like to work. I'm just a dummy here.
Congrats-to a very talented poet.
BECAUSE I WAS OBSTINATE LAST FRIDAY
By Ashok Niyogi
they’re not for me
these girls with fashionable breasts
already under strain
of school going children
not mine
those toes
with painted nails
hopefully slipping
from heeled sandals
onto asphalt road
where pebbles meander
under police stare
monitored by media glare
engineering
is what meditation whispers
into shirt shoulders
that the tailor has narrowed
assuming a certain
individuality
a refreshing
intellectual unnerving
with the unfolding
of a ladybird’s
most colorful wing
in an optimistic winter sun
Bio: Ashok Niyogi is an Economics graduate from PresidencyCollege, Calcutta, India.
He now lives in California. He has published a book of poems, TENTATIVELY, [ISBN :0-595-33935-2] and has been extensively published inprint and on-line magazines and in Chapbook form inthe USA, UK, Australia, India and Canada.
Editorial Comment: I enjoy diversity of culture and the way it interacts with poetry.
