POETRY CRITICISM FEATURED ARTIST CONTRIBUTORS GUIDELINES ABOUT TIMELINE
Barbara Crooker


Fenestration

an anagram

Where should we place the windows? I don't know where to start.
All I know is, I need light, like the spike of an avocado rising from stone.
Then there's the space the surgeon creates in the bony inner ear
to restore hearing, let a person hear tones
that've been muffled for years. Or the pore, the tear
in a membrane that lets gases pass, restores
equilibrium. The dark spaces in the soul, lost in the forest
of grief. Even there, light filters through the leaves, faster
than the eye can glimpse. Relentless, it strafes
the shadows, hits the duff. Doesn't leave it up to fate
or luck. Without intent, it shines on everyone.




Stone Fruit (A Sevenling)

Now they come in, all at once:
peaches, nectarines, plums; thin skins
that can barely hold the fruit, the juice.

But what I'm hungry for is cold soup:
cucumber with dill and yogurt, fiery gazpacho,
velvet avocado, with a curl of shrimp on top.

And at the heart of all flesh, a pit.

































AUTHOR BIO

Barbara Crooker has new work appearing in The Valparaiso Poetry Review, Persimmon Tree, Christianity & Literature, Crannóg (Ireland), and The Tampa Poetry Review. She is the recipient of the 2007 Pen and Brush Poetry Award. Radiance, her first full-length book, won the 2005 Word Press First Book competition and was a finalist for the 2006 Paterson Poetry Prize; her new book, Line Dance is out from Word Press. Garrison Keillor has read 14 of her poems on The Writer's Almanac. Visit her website. Earlier work in Mezzo Cammin: 2007.2 & 2007.1

POETRY CONTRIBUTORS

Sarah Busse
Barbara Crooker
Jehanne Dubrow
Annie Finch
Ann Fisher-Wirth
Dolores Hayden
Melanie Houle
Michele Leavitt
Diane Lockward
Charlotte Mandel
Ann Michael
Tatyana Mishel
Jennifer Reeser
Wendy Sloan
Diane Arnson Svarlien
Marilyn Taylor
Kathrine Varnes
Terri Witek
Marly Youmans

FEATURED ARTIST
Marion Belanger: My current project, Continental Drift: Iceland/California, is structured around the geologic boundary that forms the edge of the North Atlantic Continental Plate. I was particularly interested in the fact that this geological boundary has no political allegiance, was not determined by wars, by financial interest, or national demarcation. It is a boundary that cannot be controlled or contained by human intervention.
ARCHIVES
LINKS
POETRY
32 Poems
The Academy of American Poets
The Atlantic
The Christian Science Monitor
The Cortland Review
Favorite Poem Project
The Frost Place
The Iowa Review
Light Quarterly
Modern American Poetry
Measure
The Poem Tree
Poetry
Poetry Daily
Poetry Society of America
Poets House
Raintown Review
Slate
String Poet
Valparaiso Poetry Review
Verse Daily
Women's Poetry Listserv
The Yale Review

CONFERENCES
AWP
Bread Loaf
Poetry by the Sea
Sewanee


PUBLISHERS

Barefoot Muse Press
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BOOKS
Alibris
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Tattered Cover Bookstore

OTHER RESOURCES
92nd Street Y
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Poets & Writers
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