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Liz Huck is now retired from the Illinois Department of Human Services, where she
sharpened her Web skills on the Department’s Intranet and by maintaining the
online Policy Manual. She combined these skills with her love of poetry in
creating the web-book “Party of One” (http://userweb.springnet1.com/ehuck/
), and looks forward to life as a full-time writer. She is a long-time member of PWLF, and the author, with Al Perry, of the
novel The Lanyard (http://www.lanyard.com
). She also edited our 2006 anthology Vintage Visions.
The poems in this selection
are all the result of ten-word challenges, from PenChant or from other forums.
“The process of connecting the unconnected sets off sparks,” Liz says. “I never
know where I’m going to end up when I tackle one of these things, and that’s
what’s so exciting about it. It’s totally different from starting with a
subject I want to write about. I find the subject as I write, and go places I
would never have found if I’d looked for them.”
He stays away
as long as he can; papers
to sign
in the back office, muted
voices and clouded colors,
and then people
to greet, suits and furs
and jeans and sneakers,
hands to shake,
words to repeat. The
photo collage
takes a good hour; he can
tell
every scene’s story, his
voice
unwavering, his smile
stretched out like old
elastic.
Until he can’t
put it off any longer, the
walk
to the front of the room,
the weight
of flower-scent and the
gaping lid.
Rosary beads weave
a shimmer of glass
between posed fingers.
Onto the still face,
painted and waxed
into flawless repose,
one red tulip petal falls.
It was a lemon Tuesday,
citrus tang in the dining
room.
I couldn’t remember
how to spell your name.
Ink squiggles crawled like
bugs across the envelope.
You hushed me, watching
your reflection on TV.
I gathered the lemon-sharp
leaves
and crushed them in my
hands.
Signing the credit slip,
she leaves no trace on the
carbon.
Her slippers do not dent
the indifferent green
carpet.
A furnace hums
just below hearing,
chants the evening prayer
her lips refuse.
She carries her own alarm
clock.
She twists the key
with all her fingers’
strength,
and ties her robe tight.
Morning will bring no
music –
nothing to wake for,
everything to do.
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Your voice on the phone
stripped all defenses. My
glass heart
crumbled into sparkling
fragments,
scattered like snow on the
carpet. Now I’m wondering
where the music is coming
from,
the wail of a harmonica
threading through juicy
bass notes,
wild and lonely
on a cold wind from the
west.
Not for you
the fragility of varnish,
the glossed surface
that mirrors and hides.
Your possessions lock
deep past inside them.
Your pearls
plucked from the shells
of wild oysters
by youths who treasure
the free fall and the
plunge,
the cobalt depths;
your linen’s roots
run to blue flax flowers
opening day-eyes
to an Irish sky.
And ivory, ah, ivory,
not only real but ancient,
long parted from
a shattered gray head.
Gathering in an uptown
flat,
furnished with iron and
regrets.
Robeson album on the
record player,
banned talent turning
through the clink of ice
in highballs,
through shivers of
laughter.
Launching the holiday line
–
Christmas in the summer.
“Them that plants ‘em
Is soon forgotten,
But Old Man River ...”
and I roll
through the supple legs of
adults,
plumbing the down side
of lipstick simpers
and shaven smiles.
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