I’m thrilled to have my poem A Tandem Hang-Gliding Pilot Fails To Clip His Client’s Harness On included in Volume 8 of The American Journal Of Poetry! Many thanks to Robert Nazarene for his enthusiastic acceptance of this poem! This poem is my short take on a real incident – my longer take on it actually won the Difficult Fruit Poetry Prize in 2016. I am in the company of many poets I’ve long admired, so please check them out (Stephen Dunn, Bruce Bond, Robert Wrigley, Kyle Laws, Alexis Rhone Fancher, to name a few). And Happy New Year!
Author: Lynne Burnett
Cave Without A Name
Here’s another of my poems included in the wonderful anthology “Through Layered Limestone”, edited by d. ellis phelps and available for purchase from Amazon here
I’m honoured to be in the company of Robert Okaji and Stephanie L. Harper, and many others who know the Texas Hill country well.
Gray Hairstreak
Here’s the first of three poems included in the entirely wonderful anthology “Through Layered Limestone”, edited by d. ellis phelps and available for purchase from Amazon here
Also in this anthology are wonderful poems by Stephanie L. Harper and Robert Okaji!
Willowy Rose and Chrysanthemum
At a table, over wine, two women
bent their heads toward each other
(willowy rose and chrysanthemum),
hushed words drifting down
upon two hands entwined
above the gift of a ring,
as steadily they leaned
into the garden
that chose them,
young stems glorying
in the bud of a caress, full bloom
of love upon their faces, and we,
a table of husbands and wives,
were as helpless as them
to turn our heads away
from such a graceful rain of light,
so firm a reach of roots
across forbidden ground.
This much older poem recently found the perfect home in the anthology “Smitten – This Is What Love Looks Like”, a hefty volume of over 300 poems, edited by Candice L. Daquin and Hallelujah R. Huston and available for purchase on Kindle and Amazon here
Joy Is A Liquid
Call joy a liquid detergent, washing
the worst away, and it becomes
my soul’s iodine, deterring a dark night.
Of all the emotions, it’s the ruby
that can’t be bought, the jam that’s
passed, spreading over my daily bread.
Call it love’s lava, as bold as a smear
of lipstick on a cheek, and it’s the wax
that seals us together, like an envelope its letter.
Call it a river, and it’s as necessary as blood,
branching from my heart into the body
of the world.
This is an older ekphrastic poem, inspired by the late artist Lenore Conacher’s painting “Joy Is A Liquid” and has now found a home in the 2019 Joan Ramseyer Memorial Poetry Anthology, edited by Brett Ramseyer, the theme of which was joy.
Trust
TRUST was Poem of the Month in September 2017 on Nina Alvarez’ poetry site and is presently included in the anthology “the spirit / it travels” which is available for purchase on Amazon here
Nominated For A Pushcart Prize: One Sunday, Slow To Wake
Let us grant that the pulsing rain wells
from a cavernous heart. Now the tulips
peering redly through my basement window
stoop slowly, nodding amid the blades of grass
as I curve to red yawns and the green stretch
of a lip, artfully shaping soundless appeals
to these guardian sentinels, this crimson grail
from which I drink and dream. Let us believe
there are upheavals in the dark: a bell ringing,
tears gathered in the urgent arch of my heart,
the congregation, at last, rising to sing.
I’m thrilled to share that this poem has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize by editor Robert L. Penick of the print journal “Ristau: A Journal Of Being” where it first appeared in January of 2019! Oh happy day! Here’s what the Pushcart Prize is about.
Too Long On The Vine
This is one of two poems of mine included in an anthology of transcendent poetry: “the spirit / it travels”, edited by Nina Alvarez and available for purchase on Amazon here
“The Colour of Bruises” – Joint Winner of the Jack Grapes Poetry Prize!
I’m absolutely thrilled and honoured to have this particular poem considered a winner by contest judge Eric Morago! Each of three judges chose a winner and two finalists from a pool of 2000 individual poems. You can read my poem and the judge’s comments HERE
The other winning poems and links to them can be accessed from the main page here
Autumn Flow
The west windows of the house cannot open
far enough to hear the backyard river
but the one east window, by which I sleep,
lets every murmur in, brimming on the early
morning tide with night’s collected songs
and a wind for dreams to sail on, in red and
yellow and green boats, past the branches
of the only trees they know, to land on the
shores of an earth that needs them, my earth.
To go forth into the day
in the wide pull of that current,
belonging deeply to the world.
The chill of autumn is in the air today. Made me think of this poem, first published in North Shore Magazine way back in 2005!
Lynne Burnett 