Tara A. Elliott
Tara A. Elliott’s poems have appeared in The TAOS Journal of International Poetry & Art, The Shore, and The American Journal of Poetry, among others. As the founder and director of Maryland’s Salisbury Poetry Week, further community outreach includes her role as co-chair of the award-winning annual Bay to Ocean Writers Conference. She serves as President of Eastern Shore Writers Association (ESWA). The 2018 recipient of Maryland Humanities’ Christine D. Sarbanes Award, she has also twice been awarded the Light of Literacy Luminary Award by Wicomico County Friends of the Library (Adult Literacy–2020), and Education–2016). She has served as Poet-in-Residence for the Freeman Arts Pavilion, is a fellow of Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and recently received an Independent Artist Award by the Maryland State Arts Council. Poems are forthcoming in Gargoyle, The San Diego Annual, and Ninth Letter. Visit Tara on the web here.
The following work is Copyright © 2022, and owned by Tara A. Elliott and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.
Rain
Nights, you watched for me—
searched the skies for flashes of light,
for my sheets of silver.
You learned to gauge my distance
by counting the seconds between sight & sound.
Leaning sideways against the wind,
how I bloom from this
sweaty-kneed heat,
my first
drops
small fists
pummeling
the pavement. Soon, I’ll thrum rooftops.
Soon, I’ll gather myself into a curtain
so thick
I’ll close in on all that surrounds me—
a glinting wall of wetness,
whitewater
down the edges of these curbed streets.
And just as I break, I’ll dissipate—
soaked sidewalks—
steam
rising.
Emile Umbriate
Emile Umbriate is a French teacher and quiet soul. His pleasure is to ruminate and read. He is searching for the perfect line of poetry–the search continues.
The following work is Copyright © 2022, and owned by Emile Umbriate and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.
Of Dust and Love
Bare feet on thick grass
falling deeply into
the burning eye
push out a rosy trickle of tear
like a baby wrapped in yesterday
then yawns a gaping breeze
before blessing the
marriage of fantasy and regret.
I am the red hair of your burning forest
pulling at your rickety cart
standing alone in the sun
like a beautiful painting of
dust.
