Botero’s Dreamy Dance, by Debi Swim

Botero’s Dreamy Dance
by Debi Swim

Fernando Botero, Couple Dancing

The lady in red, she in the chile con carne red
and he, dapper with a neat pencil moustache
danced with their eyes closed tight
and the music played and they happily swayed
long into the carefree night

and for a short time this lady in red
danced with a Carmen Amaya air
and the man of the neat moustache
and dapperly dressed
was the dashing Fred Astaire.

First line from Dancer by Carl Sandburg

Editor’s note: Written in response to Prompt 41, Red Wolf Poems.

Debi Swim writes primarily to prompts. She is a wife, mother, grandmother and happy poet from West Virgina.

Lost Among Wonders, by Tom Montag

Lost Among Wonders
by Tom Montag

The storms roll through.
One day. Another.

Against the front
edge of summer.

Against the trees,
their leaves. Blossoms

of flowers. The bees,
the noisy birds.

The poet is lost
among wonders.

Will he ever
find his way home?

Tom Montag is most recently the author of In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013. In 2015 he was the featured poet at Atticus Review (April) and Contemporary American Voices (August), with other poems at Hamilton Stone Review, The Homestead Review, Little Patuxent Review, Mud Season Review, Poetry Quarterly, Provo Canyon Review, Third Wednesday, and elsewhere.

Every Poem, by Tom Montag

Every Poem
by Tom Montag

Every poem worth its salt
has in it a red-tail hawk,
or the idea of a red-tail,
or the memory.

                           Or the sound
the hawk makes before it drops
down, before something small is
taken, is lifted into heaven.

Tom Montag is most recently the author of In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013. In 2015 he was the featured poet at Atticus Review (April) and Contemporary American Voices (August), with other poems at Hamilton Stone Review, The Homestead Review, Little Patuxent Review, Mud Season Review, Poetry Quarterly, Provo Canyon Review, Third Wednesday, and elsewhere.

In The Darkness, by Tom Montag

In The Darkness
by Tom Montag

a flailing
motion,

the awk-
ward gesture,

searching all
night for this,

the last word.

Tom Montag is most recently the author of In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013. In 2015 he was the featured poet at Atticus Review (April) and Contemporary American Voices (August), with other poems at Hamilton Stone Review, The Homestead Review, Little Patuxent Review, Mud Season Review, Poetry Quarterly, Provo Canyon Review, Third Wednesday, and elsewhere.

Starry Night Over The Asylum, By Debi Swim

Starry Night Over The Asylum
By Debi Swim

Is anyone in the village below awake?
It is late, late, sleepers in houses dark and quiet.
How can they rest when overhead there is a riot?

Stars and worlds ringing like church bells,
moon ablaze throbbing in hi-hat jumps
a galaxy of milky white tambourine thumps

I cover my ears against the dissonance.
Why aren’t there people in the streets
wailing in anger for the noise to cease?

Oh, starry night. Oh, raucous, strident, starry night,
your beauty bellows in discordant din
and I, I fall to my knees in your poignant orbital spin.

Vincent Van Gogh, The Starry Night

Process notes: I’ve admired the beauty of this picture many times and written about it but as I looked this time, I thought, this scene is LOUD. A cacophony of sounds, like each member of an orchestra tuning up individually before the start of the concert and I imagined Van Gogh with his hands over his ears. Written in response to Prompt 30, Red Wolf Poems.

Debi Swim writes primarily to prompts. She is a wife, mother, grandmother and happy poet.