Myrna Stone
Never Kid a Kidder
Because he seems bored today, but alert,
I tell him about the mouse who's made our antique
cupboard his home away from home, his covert
flop house, latrine, and larder. "He's no meek
rodent," I say, "for weeks he's kicked our butts."
Mighty Mouse, Pop gushes, delighted with himself.
"No joke! He stole at least twenty candied walnuts
from my study. They were in a bag on a shelf
and that bugger moved them, one by one--
some into the cupboard, and doubtless all the others
into his gut." He's dining like we do. . . . The bum
runs on sugar, Pop snarks. "So did the mother
who ran up your pants when you were praying,"
I remind him. It never happened, Pop says, braying.
What He Did for Her
Abruptly he found himself middle-aged,
his children despondent, and his beloved Ruby--
after her surgery and her radiation--still ravaged.
Always the realist, never before the patsy,
he began a desperate, last-ditch assessment
of unconventional types of treatments, settling
at last on a New York doctor whose holistic bent
combined meditation, organic foods, and stinging
nettle tea with pledges of I can cure her.
Our mother, in too much pain to ride for days
in a car, refused to fly, and nothing he said to her
changed her fear of it. In the end, no display
of his love moved her more than his acceptance
of her wishes: no plane, no clinic, no pretense.
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| AUTHOR BIO |
 Myrna Stone is the author of three full-length books of poetry: The Casanova Chronicles, which was a Finalist for the Ohioana Book Award in Poetry; How Else to Love the World; and The Art of Loss, for which she received the 2001 Ohio Poet of the Year Award. She is the recipient of two Ohio Arts Council Fellowships in Poetry, a Full Fellowship to Vermont Studio Center, and the 2002 Poetry Award from Weber--The Contemporary West. Her poems have been featured on both Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, and have appeared in such journals as Poetry, Ploughshares, Boston Review, TriQuarterly, The Massachusetts Review, Nimrod, and River Styx. Her work has also appeared in seven anthologies, including Flora Poetica: The Chatto Book of Botanical Verse; I Have My Own Song For It: Modern Poems of Ohio; and Beloved on the Earth: 150 Poems of Grief and Gratitude. Stone is a founding member of The Greenville Poets, based in Greenville, Ohio, where she lives with her husband in an 18th century Rhode Island farmhouse.
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| POETRY CONTRIBUTORS |
 Maryann Corbett
Nausheen Eusuf
Anna M. Evans
Rebecca Foust
Nicole Caruso Garcia
Karen Kelsay
Michele Leavitt
Laura Maffei
Susan McLean
Annabelle Moseley
Jennifer Reeser
Myrna Stone
Wendy Vardaman
Doris Watts
Marly Youmans
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| Holly Trostle Brigham: My paintings are rich with symbolism. I include flowers, butterflies, and other things from nature that communicate messages about the subject. These elements are interconnected with biographical references to tell a larger story about the sitter's life or place in history. | |
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