INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
Deji Adesoye
Changming Yuan
Violeta Allmuca
Beppe Costa
Engjell I. Berisha
Narendra Kumar Arya
Akwu Sunday Victor
Michelle Bailat-Jones
Laszlo Slomovits
Stefania Battistella
Agron Shele
Lana Bella
Fahredin Shehu
Alan Britt
Silvia Scheibli
Shutta Crum
Running Cub
Alex Ferde
Irsa Ruci
Jennifer Burd
Paul B. Roth
Richard Gartee
Elisavietta Ritchie
Peycho Kanev
Helen Gyigya
Amit Parmessur
Sneha Subramanian Kanta
Robert Nisbet
Jeton Kelmendi
Duane Locke
Richard Lynch
Jean McNerney
Fred Wolven
Ann Arbor Review
is an independent
International Journal & ezine
Copyright (c) 2017
Francis Ferde
All rights revert back to each poet
--
editor / Southeastern Florida
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AAR history note: in print 1967 - 1980. Irregular publications 1980 - 2004. As ezine 2004 - present. Most of 47 years all together....
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staff:
Francis Ferde
Silver Grey Fox
Running Cub
Fred Wolven
Submissions via e-mail:
COLLECTOR’S ITEMS
They’re ranged out on his sideboard,
where he can see them through the day.
The whisky glass. He hasn’t had a drink
for years now, but it was inscribed minutely
by the regulars in the Nag’s back bar
before he left for retirement. Then
the photograph of the one racehorse
he once part-owned, Autumn’s Reign,
be-decked after his one win, at Haydock Park.
There was as well the brown tobacco pouch,
but they’ve thrown that out. He doesn’t smoke now,
for God’s sake, but they’d sniffed and sulked
and said it smelled. So he just has the whisky
glass and Autumn’s Reign. He tells the girls,
the carers, about them. But he knows damn well
(he’s not daft yet) that in the world of talk
Spin ‘em a yarn sometimes gets knocked back
by Boring old fart. But he chats the
girls gently
and they listen, he tells them of Jack McGuire,
Jack the Lad, the jockey (they’d have liked young Jack),
and characters in the Nag’s.
His nieces are the trouble
(his nieces, for God’s sake, that one who’s
a therapist is worst), now they’re snuffling about
the whisky glass and the photograph.
Sometimes he’s badgered till he’s querulous,
but then his eyes will glitter and he’ll shout at them.
And then they’ll scurry off, conceding him
his thoughts of the Nag’s back bar, good cheer,
and Autumn’s Reign thundering wonderfully
down that long home straight.
BLUES IN A GREEN COUNTRY
He was her first love, a forester.
He planted spruce along the high Preseli hills.
She’d sometimes dream with him
of majesties of green on mountain ridges.
After their parting, she did well enough.
She married, raised young, played bridge,
consorted even, more latterly,
with ladies who lunch.
They’d not have thought
that once, teaching English to teenagers,
she would flinch from William Blake:
Tyger, tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night.
Sometimes now, driving over the Preselis,
she’ll wince with wonderment,
seeing those forests, their green
and their grandeur, matured now
and confident upon the sky-line.
Robert Nisbet, Haverfordwest, Wales, UK