PSH: Poets of the Week

Nick Petrone
nickpetrone13@hotmail.com

Bio (auto)

Nick Petrone is an American history teacher and professor in Syracuse, NY. When he is not writing, meditating, pushing his kids on swings or reading, he is generally losing at tennis or drowning the sorrow of these stinging losses with a pint or two. His poems have appeared or are scheduled to appear in Poetry Super Highway, Epiphany Magazine, Word Salad Poetry Magazine, Willows Wept and in notebooks crammed into boxes in his attic.

He is the first place winner in the 2010 Poetry Super Highway Poetry Contest with his poem "Beauty Unsung."

Beauty Unsung

You can’t brag to the guys at the bar about banging your wife
romantically, frantically, upside down in paradise drunk inside a cage a cave or on the
                                                                    moon
                                                in a monsoon or
                                                           tenderly for the first time in weeks
it’s still your wife and
no one wants to hear about old stable sensible affections
when their lives have so many chains already

but bang the bar-slut that’ll bang a billiard cue
in a pinch                                                                                 or for kicks
and there is not a Mount high enough for your Sermon –

Jesus, they’ll never see the way she runs
            when she doesn’t know you’re watching her first step toward the twilight
                        never know the taste of the marathon salt that flavors her neck
                                    because I wouldn’t let her shower first
                                                the way her mop in the morning reminds me of childhood
                                                the way her unmade face divulges her freckled cheekbones
                                    the way she wears a pregnancy like Prada
                        talks and tenders wit every time the wind blows somewhere
            with lips so full the moon gives up at half for fear of failing to move us
            the way she trains headscarves to handle being sexy
and teaches heels how to walk with grace –

but there’s no one else to sing her which is sad –
of course the fool that tries to hum my tune
may find his teeth a passing fad.

C.W. Emerson
drchrisemerson@sbcglobal.net

Bio (auto)

C.W. Emerson is a a Licensed Clinical Psychologist from Beverly Hills, California

He is the second place winner in the 2010 Poetry Super Highway Poetry Contest with his poem "In the Form of a Question."

In the Form of a Question

There have always been questions and
always will be. They come in multitudes.
Some fall gracelessly, easily forgotten
but some burrow in deep,
breaking every silence, bisecting memory.

Those are the ones that stay with you
lining your veins like plaque,
intractable, taking you out of
who you were into
who you are and will be.

Questions, threats and riddles,
or answers phrased in the form of a question
like Jeopardy
with Art Fleming or Alex Trebek.
Some are simple questions but some are

stars of gas and granite
exploding, multiplying
snowflake lace with shrapnel edges
or just lace
or just shrapnel,

questions across ages
and lifespans and stages
like:

Who the hell do you think you are? and
Chris will you bring me my cigarettes? and
Don’t you want another drink? and
Did you think I wouldn’t notice?

Why’d you skip school and go to the track?
Can you see me for less? Do you have a minute?
Did you pull out in time?
How can I believe anything you say?

Who the hell do you think you are?
What makes you think you’re so goddamned special?
Who is that man in the driveway?
You want another? You want another?

Can’t you just hold me?
Why did you break down that door?
Do you feel it? Is he breathing?
Is it in?

Aren’t you over that yet?
Who the fuck do you think you are?
How did you get that scar?
And that one? And that one?

Why are you leaving? Why don’t you die?

Does it get any harder?
Could this be any harder? and

What was your name again?

Kathleen Tyler
mktyler@me.com

Bio (auto)

Kathleen Tyler lives in Los Angeles where she teaches English at a local high school. Her publications include The Secret Box from Mayapple Press, and My Florida from Backwaters Press. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals including Visions International, Runes, Solo, Poetry Motel, Margie, Seems, Cider Press Review, and others. She has been the featured reader at many Southern California venues such as Beyond Baroque, Skylight Books, Coffee Cartel, World Stage, Venice Grind, and the Church in Ocean Park. A poem from My Florida was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Most recently, a poem of hers was a finalist in the 2009 dA Center for the Arts Poetry Prize.

She is the third place winner in the 2010 Poetry Super Highway Poetry Contest with her poem "Poem Talking to Itself."

Poem Talking to Itself

remember the names of everything
hollyhock vermilion zephyr hatchet

those which I can never
quite recognize
as in this Painting on Light Ground
what could be houses
pivot toward a sky
that exists only

as something once known

yesterday beckons
me into a landscape like clipped
grass easing into evening’s
intention. what does the brown border
signify if not the frontier between
this moment
and my death

every form bends toward it
the tentacled hills
white sweeps of opposition
I have forgotten

what these creatures that look
like birds are called still
they shimmy down the side
of the canvas trying
to take root

among purple green yellow lines
each sways
into the tilting interior
is lost

I lose the most simple words
dust ball salt cellar mortal fear

dusk

will it be as beautiful stripped
of that by which
we know it