INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
Lyn Lifshin
Richard Kostelanetz
Karyn M. Bruce
Duane Locke
Michelle Bailat-Jones
Laszlo Slomovits
Kufre Udeme
Michael Lewis-Beck
A. J. Huffman
Nugent Karhu
Fred Wolven
Shutta Crum
Fatmir Terziu
Steven Gulvezan
Kyle Hemmings
Adeeko Ibukun
Chris Cialdella
Paul B. Roth
Fahredin Shehu
Chris Lord
Dike Okoro
Jennifer Burd
Alisa Velaj
Joanie Freeman
Jeton Kelmendi
Richard Luftig
Dzekashu MacViban
Mike Berger
Al Ortolani
Ndue Ukaj
Alan Britt
Jennifer Burd &
Laszlo Slomovits
Diane Giardi
Running Cub
Ann Arbor Review
is an independent
International Journal & ezine
Copyright (c) 2013
Silver Grey Fox
All rights revert back to each poet.
--editor / Southeastern Florida
------------------------------------------------
staff:
Silver Grey Fox
Running Cub
Fred Wolven
Submissions via e-mail:
I don't know how to say
goodbye. I run after you, a grip
on sound, seconds counting, it's here, it's there
a shutter closed, one is lost, no, found,
remembered, forgotten, circles of losing
and recovering.
I take close pictures to hold down memories,
keep albums, diaries, memoirs...you
must not go. This is how to pose to
be remembered.
Holding the negative, it is good to be able to read you
like book, dreaming. I linger till night on the shore,
it gathers in clouds and darkness, lens impaired
I put down my camera. God! How good
moments slip. The past is always lost
no matter how much we try, we only remember,
and remembering is never it, never real.
Looking so sure in the vacant horizon of smiles
I know you will be gone, everyone must return
home in the end. I know. But if you are still here
sing, touch me, touch me on every string
let me hear it in the silence that comes.
ME ACROSS
When I welcome me, across
In a mirror as an eye, I saw it all:
The deep hollow rimmed by
Collar bones, bare matchstick fingers
Wizened and jutting, sickle neck,
Sunken eyes counting my bones,
32 teeth and jaws, spindling legs
And sways, a crack of smile
Burning reasons for mucky frown,
Coarse pout lusting to kiss
My smooth cheeks closing its buds.
I am just an eye.
Like the coming season
I am longing. The mirror did it.
But mirrors are not guilt, we are.
Held down by Images, groping,
Stretching, looking at ugly me,
Holding towards me bright flowers.
Nothing is in between but round faces,
What we are told beauty is, hanging on
Billboards of bright streets
Always smiling never old,
Never, never old.
For fifty years he had always returned
And I was always ready too, but
Now he returned and feels not the same.
His silence said it; you can see
As an eye, you can see it all
Through the familiar mirror
You can see it all.
I saw it, shedding old leaves,
Cringing of memories, I saw it,
Through the old familiar mirror,
How like memories I stand apart,
How like foe I can not take love
From me across
Knowing, no other intruder
Nothing is truer,
Nothing is acceptable,
Nothing but beauty and youth.
Adeeko Ibukun, Abeokuta, Nigeria