Down the Shore
August arrives, round as a melon
bursting with juice,
carnival nights, the lights
dancing in water that
eddies around the pier, reflects the
fat moon's shimmies, a disco
globe revolving in a dark dance
hall, where waitresses and lifeguards
in cutoffs have come to
jitterbug, looking for a
kind of
love, that summer
memories are made of,
nothing for a lifetime, just
one night, when everything's
perfect, your body firm as a peach, no
quarrels, no
running out of the car
slamming the door, just
this simmering night
under the boardwalk of stars,
velvet sand on bare feet,
waves kissing ankles, toes, tiny
x's marking the spot where
your lips finally meet, on the
zenith of summer, watermelon August.
Skied Beauty
Glory be to God for travel-sized
three-ounce containers of hair
spray, foaming face wash, shampoo,
pearly conditioner, red eye
reducer, deodorant stick, aloe vera
hand cream, body lotion, tooth
paste, all miniaturized
and safe (O holy ziplock!). Air
safety makes it difficult to spruce.
Deliver me from danger in the skies.
Praise youth.
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| AUTHOR BIO |
| Barbara Crooker's work has appeared in magazines such as Yankee, The
Christian Science Monitor, Highlights for Children, and The Journal of
American Medicine (JAMA). She is the recipient of the 2006 Ekphrastic
Poetry Award from Rosebud, the 2004 WB Yeats Society of New York Award, the
2003 Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, three Pennsylvania Council on
the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships, and has been a twenty-four time
nominee for the Pushcart Prize. Radiance, her first full-length book, won
the 2005 Word Press First Book competition, and was a finalist for the 2006
Paterson Poetry Prize. Line Dance is forthcoming from Word Press in early
2008. Recently, Garrison Keillor read eleven of her poems on The Writer's
Almanac, National Public Radio. Visit Barbara Crooker's website.
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| POETRY CONTRIBUTORS |
 Debra Bruce
Maryann Corbett
Barbara Crooker
Rachel Hadas
Kathryn Jacobs
Michele Leavitt
Charlotte Mandel
Annabelle Moseley
Traci O'Dea
Shanna Powlus Wheeler
Gail White
Marly Youmans
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| Judith Taylor: No one seems to disagree with me when I say there's something compelling about these images. Maybe it's because we're so inundated by the media with narrative that is manipulated and inflated that these honest little private struggles to say something touch us at the core. The eye with which we see them now is not the eye of the young writer, and that distance is interesting, surprising. Maybe the connection between the adolescent girl and the adult woman, or the diary page and the studio wall, is closer than I think. |
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