This week's Poet of the People is Elizabeth Robin. She speaks the past into the future with descriptive poems that engage the reader's memory and senses: there is a kindness that engages and you ask for more.
STEPHANIE ELLEN SILER MEMORIAL PRIZE
Omens
The Alarm
The earth shakes me awake.
The fifth tremor in five days.
Foul Warning
rain hastens the de-camp
and a knee-knock in the rush
replacement time
lunch
coconut should feel exotic
aromatic and tropical, the grit-grain
slivers chew like shredded wood
the commute
i follow the chicken truck
miles down I-26, baffled
jammed ten-high, box-huddled
feathers fly, shit sprinkles
behind the ride to slaughter
windshields grow snow-spots
house call
cookie cutter cottages clutter
acres cleared for golfing clusters
club joiners locked into homogenized cells
white milk
bland custard
down time
noodling a poem in the rain
a roofer’s nail-gun ruins the rhythm
Tequila!
lick salt from the rim
slurp salsa from the chip
slam that shot
down
half moon dents riddle the bar
The Wedding Tree
after “Heaven and Earth” by Patricia Sabree
melding heaven and earth under
a Grandmother Tree, a family expands
in Sunday bests, not broom-jumping
but a rite recast with tree as witness, backlit
by spirits She captures in hanging blue
bottles among the moss: ghosts fire the sky
gold-orange to shock-pink, their dance
slow, save one livened ring-shouter, arms
raised in splayed finger joy, hands outstretched
wide hats shade the facelessness of their story
What do they mask? asks Mr. Dunbar. What
magnet draws them together, knotted
in a seedling branch, to a faceless love?
A Lesson in Sea Glass
tumbled in sea, salt, sand
random rubbish recycles
smoothed and pitted bits
transform noxema jars and skye
vodka, beer bottles, dead crystal
and french wines into shore search
and discovery, gleaning the beach
for the ocean’s spilled-out trophies
blue: slightly unique
well-worn, hard to find
and easy to treasure
everyday whites and greens and browns:
a rare vestige of print or rim or logo
proof some things, spent
old and odd-shaped
attract the discerning collector
The Nose Knows
On July 15, 2022 KRCC reports: Colorado Springs Man Becomes
Fourth Person to Push a Peanut up Pikes Peak with his Nose
if my quest seems silly, why, then, all the tourista
photo-ops? why the headlines: NPR, NBC
Colorado public radio, even? i did it, set a record
seven days up Barr Trail—thirteen miles, mind you—
don’t call me crazy. i planned it out, went through two
dozen peanuts and fought dehydration: life on the edge
how rugged pioneers and champions power-push
peanuts by the nose uphill, to fourteen-thousand one-
hundred fifteen feet: HA! ask me if i’m insane, or bored
or a cheater, pushing not really with my nose, but
a plastic spatula duct-taped to my face, used a CPAP
mask to affix—i am American ingenuity at work—no nut
here, just a man, Bob Salem, proving why i was born
not to solve a pandemic. or close ozone holes. not
to worry over fires floods famine
S U P E R B U G S
nitpick away, pass judgment, “the poster boy for human absurdity”
frivolous goals, you say? but i’m a headline now: who are you?
Elizabeth Robin, an award-winning poet, has three books: To My Dreamcatcher (2022), Where Green Meets Blue (2018), Silk Purses and Lemonade (2017). In 2023 Robin established the 24-stop Hilton Head Poetry Trail and appeared at Piccolo Spoleto as a Sundown Poet. See her website.