Portrait of a Kansas farmwife
by Jenna Pashley

Calico housewife, mother hen
pushes sweaty bangs away
with a fleshy hand. Those
heavy hips in
sensible shoes
rock children, bear burdens
shake cotton sheets to the wind.
She is a sturdy tower, Sunday School teacher
potluck supper staple,
this saint of cornfields and the practical.
Rarely complains.

But her soul is that of a Himalayan nomad,
the tent of her heart hung with multicolored
woven tapestries, exotic and unrestrained.
She leads her flock of
unanswered questions
on narrow paths above the tree line,
waits for God in the stillness of the tundra,
the knife edges of these heights
inducing prayers like vertigo.

Plainswoman, nomad, kitchen mystic,
beloved child of a mountainous god.
She carries her contradictions like icons,
kneads bread dough,
wrestles with the Divine.

Remembering Robert Frost
by Helen Sewell Johnson

Collegially ingathered for a week,
We listened breathless for the poet to speak.
We clustered near his famous feet. Our skirts'
Pleats petaled the floor with circular blooms,
Our sweatered bodies: flowering centers. We sat.
He spoke, said what he had to say, then offered
To answer any questions we might proffer.

        That was many years ago
        When we were still girls.

He came each year to visit our professor
Who pelicaned out our literary fare
Through puffy lips as tight-pursed as the back
End of a chicken. She managed his schedules,
Prompted favorite readings, interrupted
Our shy silence to instruct, intoned:
"They want to know what makes a pome a pome."

        That was years and years ago,
        And we were only girls.

He made response; my memory is clear:
His aged face, stooped shoulders, snow white hair,
Her lips, her tight bunned hair, brown tweeded suit.
And blasted into memory as well
Her words, enunciating pome, not poem.
Yet of his sharp heard wisdom my bereft
Brain imprints no inkling of his gift.

        It all was so long ago
        When I was but a girl.

Now, years later, curiosity intense
A deep desire to know how poems make sense
Elbows its way to consciousness and pleads
For information on that critical question.
Truths, drowned in air of youth's preoccupations, Taunt stale imaginings. Memory, inform
my age! What makes a poem a poem?

    Unanswered question, answered years ago

            When I was just a girl.

NWCC Corporate Gallery
500 North Hicks, Suite 120
Palatine, IL 60067

Escaping to Cuba
by Shah'e Mankerian

You tell me about the streets
overflowing with balconies,
and T-shirts of Ché hanging on telephone wires.
You want to sell me Cuba.
You tell me about the hotel
the color of banana peeling itself,
the paint disappearing slowly
like the extended days of the revolution.
No need to convince me.
I would sell my Honda
and buy a ticket on a single engine cargo plane;
I would sell the Buddha
I found at a garage sale.
I will follow you even if you're Castro,
even if you kiss me like a Marxist
kissing Lenin's feet,
even if you pull me away from my mother's glance...

[poem continues here]

The Genius of Capa
by Jamie Crichton

I forget the month (January), the day (Thursday) and the time (3.03pm).

I park on Health Centre Road and walk in torrential happiness
through a series of push pull automatic doors.
The daily special is Honey and Ginger Pork with Noodles
and Murray Walker is enthusing about Villeneuve's thirty second,
forty-five second gap (was it him they had on This is Your Life last week?).
Happy to see me? I ask and your
very is very quiet very
cold.

The Naked and the Dead is reluctantly shut
and I try in my mind to blame Mailer for your mood
and I'm listening to the couple behind you
they're talking over each other and
neither seems able to finish their sentence.

It's at 3.07 that I notice my nearest fire extinguisher is located at the foot of the stairs
(adjacent to the office), and when we kiss
I can taste syrup sponge and can that be tequila?
then through the market place in Union South,
you resist the lure of stolen Kickers and Fred Perry clothing
and I see Laura Valentine
and I swear she's mouthing something
yes she's mouthing
Serve Yourself
or something similar.

At 3.12 we stand in front of "Loyalist soldier killed whilst stringing
telephone lines, Teruel (Aragon front) December 1937"
You insist that Robert Capa is the greatest photographer that ever lived
and almost in the same breath you destroy me utterly.

Poems of Romance (September 1, 2008): Poems are grouped by courting, unrequited love, beauty, love, separation, redemption, and commitment.

Modern Nursery Rhymes (March 1, 2009): Updated children's nursery rhymes in the tradition of Mother Goose.

Poems of Inspiration and Faith (June 1, 2009): Poems are grouped by Western religion; Pagan religion; Eastern religion; Questioning religion; and Inspiration.

Poems of Ghosts, Evil, and Superstition (May 1, 2009): Poems are grouped by Haunted Buildings; Ghosts; Supernatural; Murder; and Death.

Poems of Nature (September 1, 2009): Poems are grouped by Animals; Insects; Earth; Wind and Storms; Landscape; and Trees.