INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
Lana Bella
Laszlo Slomovits
Amit Parmessur
Elisavietta Ritchie
Michelle Bailat-Jones
Yuan Hongri
Yevgeniya Przhebelskaya
Alex Ferde
Karyn M. Bruce
Rajuish Mishra
Alan Britt
Patrick Ashinze
Shutta Crum
Fahredin Shehu
Paul B. Roth
Helen Gyigya
Aneek Chatterjee
Joanie Freeman
Gale Acuff
Robert Nisbet
Fred Wolven
Sreekanth Kopuri
Michael Lee Johnson
Silvia Scheibli
Richard Gartee
Ali Znaidi
Jennifer Burd
John Grey
Running Cub
Peycho Kanev
Ann Arbor Review
is an independent
International Journal & ezine
Copyright (c) 2019
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 51 years all together....
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staff:
Francis Ferde
Silver Grey Fox
Running Cub
Fred Wolven
Submissions via e-mail:
Just Because, Bad Heart
Just because I am old
do not tumble me dry.
Toss me away with those unused
Wheat pennies, Buffalo nickels, and Mercury dimes
in those pickle jars in the basement.
Do not bleach my dark memories
Salvation Army my clothes
to the poor because I died.
Do not retire me leave me a factory pension
in dust to history alone.
Save my unfinished poems refuse to toss them
into the unpolished alleyways of exile rusty trash barrows
just outside my window, just because I am old.
Do not create more spare images, adverbs
or adjectives than you need to bury me with.
Do not stand over my grave, weep,
pouring a bottle of Old Crow
bourbon whiskey without asking permission
if it can go through your kidney’s first.
When under stone sod I shall rise and go out
in my soft slippers in cold rain
dread no danger, pick yellow daffodils,
learn to spit up echoes of words
bow fiddle me up a northern Spring storm.
Do you bad heart, see in pine box of wood,
just because I got old.
Canadian Seasons
Exiled Poet
Walking across the seasons in exile
in worn out house slippers, summer in Alberta prairies-
snowshoes, cross-country skiing winter in Edmonton, Alberta.
I'm man captured in Canadian wilderness, North Saskatchewan River.
I embrace winters of this north call them mercy killers.
Exiled now 10 years here I turn rain into thunder,
days into loneliness, recuperate loss relationships into memories.
I'm warrior of the trade of isolation, crucifier of seasons
hang torment on their limbs.
Ever changing words shifting pain to palette fall colors and art.
I'm tiring of Gestalt therapy, being In and Out the Garbage Pail.
I'm no longer an Aristotelian philosopher seeking catharsis.
My Jesus is in a vodka bottle soaked with lime, lemon juice and disco dancing.
Pardon amnesty I'm heading south beneath border back to USA-
to revise the old poems and the new, create the last anthology,
open then close the last chapter,
collected works before the big black box.
I'm no longer peripatetic, seasons past.
Michael Lee Johnson, Itasca, Illinois and Canada