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ANNA SCOTTI WAS RECENTLY ANNOUNCED AS THE WINNER OF

THE FRANKLIN-CHRISTOPH POETRY PRIZE and THE LUNCH HOUR STORIES COMPETITION

The poet resides in Santa Monica, California. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. Examples of her work include the following:

ONOMATOPOEIA

So promise is a girl in a loose summer dress

Hands folded neatly into heart shaped fists.

Fist is a boy, clenched tight and hard

With bitten nails, scuffed and scarred.

Promise is a girl with scars at her wrists

Hands folded neatly into heart shaped fists.

Heart is a muscle, thick and veined with blue

Blue is her dress, and her eyes, and a bruise.

Bruise is the taste of a plum or a peach

A stone at its heart, but yielding and sweet.

Stone is as hard and as smooth as a fist

Clean like a promise, like that first sweet kiss.

- Anna Scotti

FAIRGROUNDS

Turning back, you find

That the fat orange candy coated moon

Is just that, a moon. The wheel that spun and dropped

And rocked – where you threw your head back

And screamed dares at the purpling sky -

Is just a wheel, metal and paint, gears ground smooth,

No longer trusted not to slip and lose their way on

What ought to be a simple trip, really. Around

And around. A stopped wheel. A cold moon.

And where the carnival was, asphalt and spilled soda,

Wind-whipped flyers advertising something bright and shiny

As the coins that jangled in your pocket yesterday.

- Anna Scotti

New England poet Gawaine Caldwater Ross is a frequent contributor the Chickasaw Plum.

She

She conquers me

with a glance of the eye,

an arch of the lip,

a swell of the breast,

a flip of her hair.

In thirty seconds flat

I’m ready to declare

My undying love and loyalty;

She looks at my nails

Examines my teeth

And thinks me far beneath her.

Why do I always fall

For women who

Are unavailable?

My sights are set too high:

Louise said:

"You get what you settle for."

Well, it’s been ten years now,

I won’t be very vigorous

Much past 60.

Dee

Stood for disaster:

I’m still

Licking my wounds.

Is there

Any hope?

Of course there is,

I’m in love with 3 women,

All of whom

Are unavailable.

There’s a certain sweetness to sadness

That makes it difficult to leave;

The void

Is completely perfect.

ON “JESUS’ WAR:”

Marvin Bell, former poet Laureate of Iowa:

    …The ironic term for it is that it's "right on target." I'm going to read from it to a "senior college" class here in which we have been talking about politics in poetry.

By John R. Guthrie: Jesus’ War: Contemplation of Shock and Awe in Iraq. This compendium includes, but is not limited to, poems about the war in Iraq.

John R. Guthrie is a former Marine infantry rifleman. He them garnered a formal education to include medical school and became the commanding officer of a U.S. Navy Reserve Shock Surgical Group before going into private practice in the Smoky Mountain foothills of Appalachia. He is the editor and publisher of the monthly webzine The Chickasaw Plum: Politics and the Arts Online.

Published by Partisan Press, Norfolk, VA; ISBN 1883458773; 38 pages

$8.99 + $2.00 S & H: GFPC Publications, 3424 Palermo Court, Simi Valley, California 93063

Or e-mail: johnrguthrie@roadrunner.com

The Chickasaw Plum - Volume V - Number 4 - April 2008

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