tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63661926391896606462023-07-17T22:00:18.708-07:00Selections Plum Tree Tavern Number TwoThe Plum Tree Tavernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05982784593505028994noreply@blogger.comBlogger21125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6366192639189660646.post-47289264701233832082017-06-10T02:48:00.004-07:002017-06-10T02:48:30.890-07:00Aprilby Sayeeda T Ahmad<br />
<br />
The perfect time to hike the trails of the Bandarbans,<br />
“dam of monkeys” in Bangla.<br />
Be wary of capped leaf monkeys, and capped langur,<br />
as you clamber up the grassy peaks of Keokaradong and Saka Haphong.<br />
Goat on nimble feet,<br />
thickset branch clasped in one hand,<br />
instinct in the fingertips of the other.<br />
You must know to skip past the rotting leaves,<br />
hiding python or king cobra princelings beneath,<br />
on your way down to Sangu River, and back on the trail.<br />
Thin spirals of smoke linger in the air as the jhum chaash goes on,<br />
slash and burn, slash and burn.<br />
Better to hike now, climb now in the dryness,<br />
than let the monsoon mudslide kill you next season.The Plum Tree Tavernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05982784593505028994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6366192639189660646.post-19927844644815082922017-06-10T02:48:00.003-07:002017-06-10T02:48:24.008-07:00Sand Harbor, Nevadaby Stefanie Bennett<br />
<br />
When nobody’s shore-<br />
Watching<br />
The unspoken<br />
Stones<br />
Wing it<br />
And sing...The Plum Tree Tavernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05982784593505028994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6366192639189660646.post-84731688831170021882017-06-10T02:48:00.002-07:002017-06-10T02:48:14.902-07:00Sangres Morningby Maury Grimm<br />
<br />
Sun, curling up from the Sangres, the red blood of morningThe Plum Tree Tavernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05982784593505028994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6366192639189660646.post-78403887914382223292017-06-10T02:48:00.001-07:002017-06-10T02:48:08.379-07:00Gray Hopeby Tricia Knoll<br />
<br />
I fold back our bed sheets this morning<br />
to match the rolls of cloud billows<br />
sliding like pillows into the naked hot sky.<br />
<br />
My feet slip to the tuck at the mattress<br />
to test the cool slickness that may be rain<br />
on a horizon of gray hope<br />
<br />
this drought might end.The Plum Tree Tavernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05982784593505028994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6366192639189660646.post-34508937657679321952017-06-10T02:48:00.000-07:002017-06-10T02:48:00.819-07:00A Golden Threadby Julie Ramon<br />
<br />
Only the people that live on the outskirts<br />
of town, down long roads littered with<br />
shadows and cows understand when you’re<br />
mid-recipe and need an egg, you can’t leave<br />
to buy one. Instead, you walk through fields<br />
and listen to the sound of drought crunch and notice<br />
the way grasshoppers lead the way. And, neighbors<br />
know the squeak of their gate opening at the end<br />
of the drive. They meet you half way and ask<br />
what you’re making, and you return home<br />
egg in fist, following the step you made before,<br />
the parts through grass. You, the thread<br />
that weaves from one place to another<br />
always headed home to finish what you started.The Plum Tree Tavernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05982784593505028994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6366192639189660646.post-61095316999217635982017-06-10T02:47:00.002-07:002017-06-10T02:47:54.143-07:00'through the open temple door'by Stephen A. Rozwenc<br />
<br />
through the open temple door<br />
a jade Buddha glints<br />
like an emerald jelly fish<br />
swimming the ocean<br />
of benign munificence<br />
<br />
the intrepid rapscallion<br />
peers down<br />
down down<br />
all the way down<br />
to where foolish attachment<br />
lets go<br />
of its chattering monkey selfThe Plum Tree Tavernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05982784593505028994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6366192639189660646.post-1788672197566092802017-06-10T02:47:00.001-07:002017-06-10T02:47:42.482-07:00Linesby Ali Znaidi<br />
<br />
desert sun…<br />
even scorpions<br />
chase the mirageThe Plum Tree Tavernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05982784593505028994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6366192639189660646.post-5592930012117451922017-06-10T02:47:00.000-07:002017-06-10T02:47:32.680-07:00Curve Windby Joe Hess<br />
<br />
The devil’s latest commitment<br />
to global warning is a strange ocean<br />
concoction with a cocktail<br />
<br />
umbrella the size of Texas<br />
growing in the Pacific. It’s been<br />
pretty impolite to suggest the devil<br />
<br />
is anything but a sweet and sexy<br />
taboo artist, ever since<br />
Rita Hayworth first suggested<br />
<br />
in the forties to: “Put the Blame<br />
on Mame,” as she peeled one<br />
white, satin glove down her arm.<br />
<br />
Now mother nature pays<br />
for our seductive game of chicken<br />
with the Mr. Big—in blood<br />
<br />
as his final event horizon creeps<br />
like a curving zephyr<br />
through our half-tapped<br />
<br />
wilderness, touched irrevocably,<br />
profanely naked, and all<br />
the sacred veils are falling away.The Plum Tree Tavernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05982784593505028994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6366192639189660646.post-42856166618831610472017-06-10T02:46:00.005-07:002017-06-10T02:46:48.870-07:00Doppler Farmsby Todd Mercer<br />
<br />
They dance to make rain, seed clouds with silver iodide. They pray<br />
over cracks in the field, summon up a freelance climatologist,<br />
but saturated air won’t condense to drops to save the crops. The loan looms<br />
like a scythe overhanging the end of October. They skirt the sharp edge of it,<br />
kick up dust that was topsoil. Before. Water—they pack it by buckets<br />
from the well-head to mist the crop rows. The brute labor,<br />
his and hers, passes days quickly, but the drought holds on.<br />
The green-screened TV rain-man lacks answers. He’s primed<br />
to evaporate, dissolve into the atmosphere, where farmers<br />
can’t find him. Like them he’s losing precious sweat<br />
at the mercy of the Fates, the Guy Upstairs,<br />
and the Southern Oscillation.The Plum Tree Tavernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05982784593505028994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6366192639189660646.post-34687510191409342842017-06-10T02:46:00.004-07:002017-06-10T02:46:37.762-07:00Successionby Laurinda Lind<br />
<br />
Two hours south, it is not as dry and the grass<br />
in the median of the interstate is actually green<br />
or something like it. It is the same in the overflow<br />
parking lot next to the funeral home, chlorophyll<br />
coming through and even water scattering from<br />
the sky and across the windshield. But behind<br />
the back walk between the lot and the building,<br />
the Little Salmon River has turned into a mud<br />
meander with a pond at one end where every<br />
thing alive in there must have come to coexist<br />
in the same way we who just parked are about<br />
to be alive together in a room with a dead cousin.The Plum Tree Tavernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05982784593505028994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6366192639189660646.post-3773587264722160732017-06-10T02:46:00.003-07:002017-06-10T02:46:27.687-07:00Afternoon with Closed Windowsby Olga Moskvina<br />
<br />
Today the house burned down with me in it.<br />
The smoke smelled like incense or something<br />
far away, and I went back to sleep,<br />
though it was afternoon and avocados<br />
were rotting idly on the counter,<br />
while fans turned like skeletal sunflowers<br />
toward bottles of warm beer.<br />
<br />
Were those the objects I was secretly waiting for,<br />
trying to close suitcase after suitcase<br />
to protect myself from them? The past tense<br />
with avocados comes naturally,<br />
and I no longer need to open windows<br />
that are no longer there.The Plum Tree Tavernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05982784593505028994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6366192639189660646.post-73908481495421427022017-06-10T02:46:00.002-07:002017-06-10T02:46:19.798-07:00Drink the Ramenby David Lohrey<br />
<br />
It rains every day but there is no water.<br />
<br />
In Chitose-Funabashi, the puddles are fine and the river runs wide,<br />
But showers are on timers.<br />
<br />
Take the wrappers off the bottles, keep the lettuce in the larder,<br />
The neighbors eye our bin.<br />
<br />
This summer, lightning strikes harder but the rains lose heart.<br />
<br />
Locals don’t taste the noodles, the flavor’s in the broth.<br />
<br />
It rains every day but there is no water.The Plum Tree Tavernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05982784593505028994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6366192639189660646.post-68139485622158207412017-06-10T02:46:00.001-07:002017-06-10T02:46:11.572-07:00A Dry Countryby David Chorlton<br />
<br />
The vultures claim their portion of the sky<br />
each day, and surrender it<br />
with grace when the pines on the mountain<br />
draw light through their roots<br />
and a glow<br />
spreads from inside.<br />
You can see them from the porch<br />
of an old house, built before convenience<br />
when the miners arrived thirsty<br />
and left without finding<br />
what they came for. The roads<br />
they used have outlived them,<br />
still winding up and around<br />
to where a shaft begins<br />
its descent into darkness, still turning<br />
to the dust a truck kicks out<br />
on a day when the light is so dry<br />
you can peel it away from the suede<br />
colored slopes and watch<br />
Whitetail Canyon erode.The Plum Tree Tavernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05982784593505028994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6366192639189660646.post-26652111139758857672017-06-10T02:46:00.000-07:002017-06-10T02:46:02.985-07:00Dryness acrostic middleby Clinton Siegle<br />
<br />
I am the dry years turned to beauty<br />
dried plants turned ashes of grass and trees to desert beauty<br />
rain not forthcoming waterlessness area's deserted beauty<br />
yearly no rains creating the areas to beauty<br />
non open clouds draining plant's beauty<br />
ever forever a parched beauty<br />
season of a dryness beauty<br />
season of whether desert beauty.<br />
Never changing beauty.The Plum Tree Tavernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05982784593505028994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6366192639189660646.post-56318315994545727532017-06-10T02:45:00.005-07:002017-06-10T02:45:55.023-07:00Arrival & Ascent of Autumn Immigrantsby Terrence Sykes<br />
<br />
I am an immigrant<br />
I am not from here<br />
I don't own this piece of land<br />
This small piece of Quartz<br />
Grasped from the sandy soil<br />
Taken in my hand<br />
From beneath this canopy of<br />
These PawPaw trees<br />
These were not here<br />
When I discovered & claimed<br />
This as my own solitude<br />
This enclaved fifty acres or more<br />
Have kept my sanity from urban chaos<br />
Who or What brought the first seed for<br />
This clonal gathering must be content<br />
A late frost prevented progenies<br />
That pungent aroma of fallen ripened<br />
Fruit upon the forest floor<br />
<br />
Those silent shiso plants<br />
Seeding again to scatter ascendants<br />
Remind me of the Korean women who<br />
Were at odds with me when gathering<br />
Wild greens that grew<br />
Upon the banks of this creek<br />
Bitter greens of their own where rooted<br />
Flourished in the swamp<br />
Waxed then waned<br />
Like a lunar eclipse<br />
Their departure<br />
Before the arrival of this shiso<br />
Reluctantly then revealing<br />
Established itself amongst<br />
Others unlike themselves<br />
<br />
These touch-me-nots<br />
They too were not here when I came<br />
Gems of orange fleck with gold<br />
Emigrate me home<br />
Remembrance of my hometown<br />
Memories of my grandmother<br />
I always think of her<br />
A rose herself<br />
Her garden of<br />
Irises<br />
Hydrangeas<br />
<br />
Amongst flora & fauna<br />
Here I have seen women<br />
From all over the world<br />
From where and when<br />
In their native garments<br />
Colorful & brilliant<br />
As autumnal flowers<br />
Today I walk alone<br />
Along these paths<br />
Who will scatter the next seed<br />
I am not from here<br />
I am an immigrantThe Plum Tree Tavernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05982784593505028994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6366192639189660646.post-30459699187476789662017-06-10T02:45:00.004-07:002017-06-10T02:45:45.708-07:00Reflectionsby Ginny Short<br />
<br />
Uncertainty riding west<br />
The sky clear<br />
The ridge the south side of lightning<br />
Find and gather self before noon<br />
<br />
Red earth rocks branding the intersection<br />
Of sun, sky and earth Time moves slowly<br />
Forgotten<br />
<br />
Long wet trails up Wolf Creek Canyon<br />
An eternity Urging the distanceThe Plum Tree Tavernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05982784593505028994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6366192639189660646.post-24364856540763180482017-06-10T02:45:00.003-07:002017-06-10T02:45:35.853-07:00The Old Godsby Ed Hack<br />
<br />
The old gods of the fields, of wheat and corn,<br />
of rye, of vegetables, are dying back<br />
into the earth. The autumn's silver horn<br />
of knife-edge light rings out the time of lack,<br />
of ice as pitiless as life can be,<br />
of frozen ground entombing old spent earth<br />
that sleeps exhausted as the naked trees<br />
that wait, like ice-bound earth, for their spring birth.<br />
The shriveled tassels of the corn are brown<br />
and limp, tied to the bridge to celebrate<br />
the harvesting of Time. The river sounds<br />
like all that crashes to its end to sate<br />
the hungers of its life. A rush. A roar.<br />
And then an evening as it spreads out<br />
and leaves the falls behind. Now less is more<br />
as water calms, a mind without a doubt.<br />
The old gods do not say a thing. They wait.<br />
They know that Time's another word for Fate.The Plum Tree Tavernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05982784593505028994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6366192639189660646.post-89381195152809284002017-06-10T02:45:00.002-07:002017-06-10T02:45:25.320-07:00Aleppoby Laughing Waters<br />
<br />
temperature<br />
suddenly drops<br />
red camelia's flowers<br />
covering ground<br />
fresh snowThe Plum Tree Tavernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05982784593505028994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6366192639189660646.post-25110477852047308762017-06-10T02:45:00.001-07:002017-06-10T02:45:16.292-07:00Droughtland Smoothieby Elizabeth Kuelbs<br />
<br />
Beat sun up. Blend 2 cups fresh<br />
ash, 1 billow smoke, 1/4 manzanita<br />
bone, 1 heat-scarred flight feather, hawk<br />
or owl, 2 tablespoons doomy noon<br />
twilight, 1 chlorinated<br />
bee, ice.<br />
<br />
Drink.<br />
<br />
Hairline to navel (ignore sunburn tenderness) unzip skin.<br />
<br />
Wait<br />
for lush tumble<br />
of mist, of river, of willow, wait<br />
for singing oak canopy, for poppy, for mallow, for<br />
coyote mint. Wait in the dark<br />
for rain.The Plum Tree Tavernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05982784593505028994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6366192639189660646.post-47214096180038640202017-06-09T02:48:00.000-07:002017-06-10T02:53:59.000-07:00The Mutts of Dhaka are Survivorsby Sayeeda T Ahmad<br />
<br />
These mutts lap up spilled tea or snack crumbles on the footpath,<br />
curl up in a spot of sun near a streetside tong,<br />
till the tong owner kicks them away<br />
for disturbing his customers.<br />
These mutts trot down every alley and road they know,<br />
next to and through piles of rotting refuse,<br />
till nearly or fully run over by careless chauffeurs,<br />
driving their owners’ to the next NGO meeting.<br />
These mutts scramble under empty pull carts in the rain,<br />
till chased away by goons or street kids<br />
intent on cutting off their tails for kicks.<br />
Just another nonentity, infested with fleas and welts.<br />
Just another beggar with no bowl.<br />
Just another carcass among the millions.The Plum Tree Tavernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05982784593505028994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6366192639189660646.post-77992223852249091332017-06-08T02:45:00.000-07:002017-06-10T03:40:52.064-07:00Expressionismby Sneha Subramanian Kanta<br />
<br />
<i>how</i> you eat the fallen figs<br />
your body full of soil scents –<br />
arm clutched to my side,<br />
bare bodies of autumn’s pride.<br />
<br />
your fingers, opening a map –<br />
nail pointing eastward<br />
moving subtly, then all at once<br />
over the body of the large Pacific.<br />
<br />
<i>how</i> your mouth, partly open<br />
devours my mouth, in exploration –<br />
then, like ancient forest-dwellers<br />
sing ourselves to sleep, meditating.<br />
<br />
<i>how</i> chants, escape your tongue,<br />
lick my senses into molten clay –<br />
<i>how, </i>in a world of immigrants,<br />
we find – a land unknown, to stay.The Plum Tree Tavernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05982784593505028994noreply@blogger.com0