Home Planet News Online

The Literary Review

Page 54

← Swipe left ↓ Swipe down

Home
Table of Contents
Contact
Editorial
Matthew Paris Susan Sherman
About Us
Submissions

spring tulips float

a wintry sunday in vermont floats
a bowl of daylight that never touches
ground, an endless rope of time rocks
in the lounger, so we read books till’ finally

the sun, strong as a bull, evaporates into fizz

and we barely touch on our way in or out the shower

splotched and crepey though we dream-
but really can oldsters change into spring
tulips, shoved close enough to shuffle
even dance, around

the newly built box structure
set in the field, next to the dump?
and, against slats of winter sky lift
its peaked roof, like a cap into space?

it’s an american icon rising up
against the gaude of self interest,
vinyl siding waving its belly in the wind,
like every humble house,
america,
you’ re beautiful

vermont, march, 2016

ellen 'windy' (aug) lytle __

pink slip / 0ctober 20, 2019

what if she begs to stay w/you forever
in that tiny flat w/out daylight or a garden?
you might thrash at each other the first week

instead find ways to divide chores
let her job pay for a room elsewhere
before the night rearranges the stars

and you are talking to the moon, or flat out
on some edgy corner in a strange place
where only potatoes grow

yet that tuesday she sold her soul for a buck thirty-nine

some guy w/a pack of six cigarettes and a few matches-
but underneath her pink slip she felt his warm hand
unclasping the back hook of her bra, luckily

it was locked, but what a way to issue
romance, she frets, he grouses, tugs, and
everyone, who is anyone is there, when she steps

out in pink,
unabashedly coy,
if that is possible,

w/out bending

ellen 'windy' (aug) lytle __

incorrectly shelved

ah, a pastel plaid jacket is all it takes
to believe spring’s coming
any minute, and maybe,
it’s revisiting easter

in fourth grade

but how long will soundless colors play out
how long can the old stay wrapped
inside a day of winter sun, on
an afternoon that takes

them far into fantasy, if you call it that
far into planned excursions where yellow is
first to color the cold ground, or where summer
already landed, and what do you say about the way

      a road rolls out,
       flat as cardboard
          right in front of them

as if a purple sun setting sea to sea, creates
parity across earth, but in a display of chaos; a
snarl of snakes, and the aloneness of dreams are
again incorrectly shelved the night before

everyone steps away from a world they once knew

winter/ 2019

ellen 'windy' (aug) lytle__

ballet of leaves
summer , 20019

everything in life
must be written
somewhere…

****

the building barges thru summer’s bloat
see its art nouveau sconces, and
ramparts forming a frieze

thru pleached clouds, purple as iris

these mountainous old buildings
in graying light, fleecy w/ gold
dust, are meant to lead us

into a september where bags,
slung low across hips, and
loaded w/school supplies

swing, in the insufferable beauty of fall
floating in reserved motion
thru a haze of hands

and, its ballet of leaves

hardly has time to inhale
suburban shrubbery, leftover
and sliced, around tidy porches

when function (our savior)
chooses us
to settle

inside the dark