r l swihart: three poems

Montage | Nottiteln #5 | Nottiteln #6

Montage

An ogling lens reluctant to leave
an Italian doorway

An osteoporotic woman
climbing the stairs to the Siena Duomo
or stretching to push a bottle
into Der Grüne Punkt

A boy peddling his bike up the street
to crouch behind a hedgerow
and hear her sighs

Her face frozen in anguish
turned to soak up the sun

A poet wandering in fog

Another lens circling a house in flames
or a pathetic tree

The candle he carried halfway
across the churchyard
before it expired

Nottiteln #5

I.

The moment he
caught a glimpse of
her

he ran like the dickens
(try mixing
oil and water

fire and ice
vowel and glottal
stop)

II.

Stranger still
the roots of
children

and that the
marriage should
last

Nottiteln #6

Swallowing fear
the young boy built a lean-to
beneath the expansive
tall oak

Emptying his pockets
he shelved their contents
in a hollow of the tree

On a tick and pillow
of leaves he curled up
for the night

His eyes darted
from thread to thread
in the redundant fabric
until the whole went
black

Poet's Biography:

r l swihart currently resides in Long Beach, California with his lopsidedly feminine family: his wife Ania, and his two girls Katia (7) and Nadja (4). He teaches high school math to pay the mortgage; writes poetry just because; travels whenever he can. A few of his recent poetry credits include: Arbutus, Richmond Review, Adirondack Review, and Niederngasse.