Tag: Poetry

Our Featured Poet in the Winter Issue of Third Wednesday is Caroline Maun.

Caroline is associate professor of English at Wayne State University. She teaches creative writing and American literature and is Director of Graduate Studies. Here is our poem of the week.

Geode

So much cosmic time to fashion
an aggregate of anguish.
We want to smash it open,
stroke the blades of crystal.
This could be your self
halved, your calcified sphere
cleft like a glistening delicacy.
Privacy shattered, exposing
the secluded methods of jewels,
molecules aligning, growing fierce

     – Caroline Maun

Our featured poem for this week appeared in the Fall Issue. It’s by California poet, Kat Lewis.

Sully’s Hair  

The scent of honey drops swirled in milk
billowed from perfect waves of brown hair.
I always tried to convince myself
that Sully’s hair was the color of raisins,
greasy paper bags, or shit, but underneath
all my internalized lies, I knew that it was brown
like hickory, like Devil’s food cake, whiskey,
or grizzly fur. Like my father’s baby grand,
the butt of revolvers. In my boarding school days,
I dragged my fingers through the knots
in her Maker’s Mark locks, and held
the straightener there until I smelled the hair burn.
Even the smoke streaming from the strands
smelled like honeycombs.

 – Kat Lewis
 Berkeley, California

Dream back how you waded
a Montana stream, at each bend
cast brown-bear-blacks

toward the far bank. Until dusk.
Until cold crept in. Fire reflected red
on meadow grass when you got back

to camp. Rainbow alive a few hours ago
sizzled in the skillet, gold stripes
still bright on their sides. Out-fished
again,

you devoured her form layered
by growing shadows where she bent
spatula in hand. Mint along the creek

sent sweet scent into gathering night.
Willows waved themselves
into black pickets around your tent.

Full, the day spent, you were happy
to press against her back
as the moon rose and she slept.

    Timothy Pilgrim
    Bellingham, Washington

From Third Wednesday, Volume  IX, No. 4