JBuck22874@aol.com 

Janet Buck teaches writing and literature at the college level. Her poetry and poetics have appeared in The Melic Review, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, Kimera, 2River View, Tintern Abbey, Southern Ocean Review, Niederngasse, Lynx: Poetry from Bath, The Horsethief's Journal, salon D'Art, and hundreds of journals world-wide. In 1998 and 1999, she has won numerous creative writing awards and has been a featured poet for Seeker Magazine, Poetry Today Online, Vortex, Conspire, Poetry Cafe, Dead Letters, the storyteller, Poetry Heaven, Athens City Times, Poetik License, 3:00 AM e-zine, Poetry Super Highway, and Carved in Sand.

Janet's first E-Book, entitled Reefs We Live, is now available at Word Wrangler Publishing: http://www.wordwrangler.com

On December 1st, Newton's Baby Press released her first print collection entitled Calamity's Quilt: http://www.newtonsbaby.com/calamity.html. She is one of ten poets to be featured at the "One Heart, One World" Exhibit at the United Nations Exhibit Hall in New York City in April, 2000. Her poem "Acrylic Thighs" will be translated into five languages and paired with original artwork. The tour will travel to France, Australia, Vietnam and Japan.

The Reticent Turtle

That chases the dove.
We push the edge--
succumb perhaps.
Wild geese in flocks
of windy need--   
eager to test 
the color of two.
A step ahead
of gypsy velvet
time and men
will hull and crush
like peanut shells
in circus tents.
The first love fence
is fun to climb.

Risk stands up 
to stab the dance--
the maybe silk 
of wedding bands.
Disappointed calluses
have not yet bloomed--
like croutons suspended
above the steam in bowls 
of wishful chicken soup.
The tough of the crust-- 
still delicate--
dart boards waiting in a bar
for arrows to align themselves.
It will get roughed.
It will get missed.
But turtles tucked
in reticence will never
taste that flawless kiss.

Reciprocal Angels

Dreamscape dirge of fish fried love.
Acquainted with edges of rainbow 
blades that cut our flesh and left long scars.
Blue-black eyes and crimson bruises--
hair balls choked where marriage failed.
Passion was a birthday cake
sitting on the hood of a car.  
Youth spaced where the frosting sat,
drove off in pulsing certainty-- 
the rest a history of rock-studded sugar, 
wasted Spackle, turning dry.

This time 'round's a different pace.
We watch the trees for falling leaves--
unwrap days like Christmas gifts,
saving bows to stick on holes.
Even the dickey of wronged divorce
becomes a coat of mindfulness.
"I'm Sorry" (if it needs a voice)
is spread in blood-red lipstick grease
on bathroom mirrors to block the curves 
of hurricanes that might just 
render dawn a roach of loneliness
in decimals of time's review.

Yanking all white widowed webs 
from brushes with a dirty head.
We don't play pool without thought's chalk.
Forcing rhyme to arm's extent.
Reciprocal angels in drafts of clouds.
Remember lights for reversing dark.
Pockets torn, but softer 
cashmere brands of will;
raw birth canals of old mistakes
as covenants for renaissance.

Swiss Alps and Cheese

Wish back to age nine.
On a train sailing 
razor-edged cliffs
of Swiss Alp snow.
I'd rather play cards
than watch the view.
You smartly seized
my chin, turned
it gently toward
windows caked
in frost we didn't own.

I missed TV.
God, how shamed
I feel at mourning
that malignant lump
in office space
belonging now to pastures
waltzing retrospect
with dream-soaked quills
not made of games or exit plans.
I wonder now
if Swiss makes cheese
with all those holes
to comment on
the scenes I missed.

Car trips made--
for taking notes
on veils of rainfall,
bales of hay.
A cow is a prune
on a plate of dirt.
Olding ages ears I guess:  
I hear its moo
and stroke its hide--
like ornaments
on evergreens that
curtsy to a freezing wind.

A Treasure's Base

Gratitude was always there
like threads on oriental rugs.
To watch you open gifts--
a gift beyond all others wrapped
in glitter, ribbons, velvet bows.
Your thumbs wore every sign of time.
Ballerinas pirouetting in a slipper
turned to dry baguettes in bed.
As you crumbled, I would sweep.
When I read you sonnets in a hurry,
life stopped cold; you winced in pain.
I knew I'd sinned.

You couldn't see my needlepoints,
but eyes were not the issue here.
Eclectic taste reigned, rained hard:
the old clay pots slept at peace
on the polished mahogany--
appraisal wasn't done in dollars.
Egg-salad with dill and celery stalks, 
cross-wise sliced for elegance,
10,000 calories of mayonnaise and salt--
three leagues beyond their caviar.

Red lipstick in your purse melted like
crayons bleeding in the August sun.
We were, after all, planting tulips.
Busy with the life of the earth.
Mirrors mattered little these days.
Those rugs, that art, belonged
with you in immortal tombs,
for you both had the power
of intuiting a treasure's base.

Scraped Coal

She was one of those gifts
who turned wisdom
into a batch of butterflies.
Treated a puppy whining
at the door as the
Queen of England.
Made lessons fit in 
pretty little pill box stanzas
that rendered
a point digestible,
but still a point.
Her mouth was 
a moving quill
that trembled in
emotion's arms,
a drug-bust for honest,
a slip-stitch 
for stray threads.
She scraped coal
off burned toast
with a remarkable lack
of condescension
lyrics cannot imitate--
but if they don't try,
so much will be lost.

Momentary Mistletoe

Your life erased before my birth.
I knew nothing beyond 
your photographic charm 
in tinted sepia that
lit her study's roaring fire.
But you were put on pedestals--
the knight in shining armor's tails 
on carousels she couldn't stop.
Florence said you carried 
warnings to your grave.
Worked your fingers 'til they bled,
only to retire in talons of death
at the magic age of 55.

You had your shelters stocked with cash,
your travel plans, priorities.
Bought a Mexican villa with lovely gardens--
those walls were dreams you'd never see--
but ones that she would always grieve.
She said, you said:  "Human is a ferryboat 
that pushes through deceiving fog,
only to reach a rocking pier or
lose the fight to find the shore."
When you left, her heart dissolved,
but pilgrims rarely quit the quest.
Her diary--collected sorrow put to use--
became a harbor for my tears like
winter barns with nests of straw
and Bandaids for my absent knee.

What a stunning ballerina--
making morals, money too--
a music box to wind and play.
"Kiss a moment's mistletoe
as if it is your very last..."
The canyon of our mortal pose
is such a hollow place at times.
She never let an aching heart
roll desert dust with tumbleweeds.
I asked her why she never dated.
This was her red brick defense:
"Paradise that's genuine cannot be matched 
by mediocre efforts etched in mourning sand
around perfection's Parthenon.
It's trading passion's Staffordshire
for Matchbox Cars in Christmas socks.
It's filling in a sonnet's lines
with nothing but ellipsis marks."

© All Copyright, Janet I. Buck.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.