San Diego Poetry Annual -- 2008: The Best Poems from Every Corner of the San Diego Region

By William Harry

The 3rd edition of the San Diego Poetry Annual features the celebrated Dorianne Laux, Steve Kowit, Sam Hamod alongside those who are published here for the first time, revealing the diversity of talent throughout San Diego, across every plane: race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, language, economics, location, occupation.

To ensure the permanence of this collection, copies of each edition are donated in the name of contributing poets to public and college libraries in San Diego County and to select private libraries nationally.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 16, 2009
• ISBN: 9781467849753

Book preview

San Diego Poetry

Annual -- 2008

2008

The Best Poems from Every Corner

of the San Diego Region

William Harry Harding

publisher

regional editors

Brandon Cesmat

Harry Griswold

Seretta Martin

Robt O’Sullivan Schleith

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AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive, Suite 200       

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2009 William Harry Harding, publisher. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 4/13/2009

ISBN: 978-1-4389-4953-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4678-4975-3 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009902384

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

Contents

In This Recession

To Older Woman from Older Man

The Best Laid Pamela

Shattered Image

Bazooka

Surface Tension

Side By Side

Janus

Ahmad Jamal and Miles Davis Intersections

Happy to Say After the 2008 Presidential Election

Balboa Park

Bakersfield, 1969

Jewels

saving you

The Rose

When Jesse James was a Baby

Llano Estacado

Turn

The dark side of the wind

Reading Ginsberg While Waiting For the #27 Bus

The Gold Standard

Slipknot

The Sunglasses

Ode to Askale

The Moon Canyon Fire

Little Sister

with endless apologies to e.e.

Picture Album

Moon Man

Power

His 20’s, Told In Rumination

Mojo

Surf to Plaster City Via Winnebago

Overcoming Attachment

Madwoman’s Nouns & Verbs

Leos Play with Their Food

Crystal Beach, Texas, September, 2008

Whisper 60

We Lean This Way Forever

Meeting Place

The R’s Island, Plight of the Plovers Pantoum

Razones De La Dama Infiel

Reasons from the Unfaithful Lady

To The Unknown Woman In Starbuck’s

The Wild Parrots

Here-There Spring (or Why A Truce)

Crows

Borrowing Babies

Petals of Silk

Vibrational Meditation

Power OF Attorney

Tones

After Listening to Brian Wilson’s Caroline, No

Life’s A Party

Perfect Fit

Hypothesis

Dark Hair

In Atlantic City

Jokes

Ere the Peach and Plum Saplings. . .

The Countess from Hong Kong

Vlad

Ars Poetica

Clouded Windows

Ventanas en Tinieblas

Sun Moon Lake (1)

Yesterday

How We Were: A Lullaby

Parting, Renewal

Finding

The Death Knell

Eyes that see too much

Lane Called Canyon

Portrait With Lilacs

Endless Sins

Trinidad Poems

Atotonilco, Mexico

The View Is Always Better

Shades of Love

There he goes

Forgotten

(Untitled)

The Coffee Is Cold In The Bottom Of My Cup

Circles and Lines

Walking Close to Cliffs

Three Haiku

invisible hiding

It Was Not As If

Epigraph for the Irish Cop

The Feast Of Trees

State and Ash

Happy Days Revisited

Neruda’s House

The Moment Before The Moment

War

Seabirds and Pigeons

Nocturne

Pleasures of the Grey Garden

Unconditional Love

Judgment

Return in a Blue Pickup Truck

The Acception

To The Whore Who Took My First Husband

Famous Poet

I Find Po Chu-i in the Mountains

November Remembrance

Reading Palms

Vindication

First Bible

Forest Falls

The Clock Strikes One

Learnng to Drive

Stuckism

The Garden

The Man With The Black Baseball Hat

Marriage, Like War

Peacock Feathers Blue and Green

I Told the Police

Failed Crossword Puzzle

At the Israeli Checkpoint: Palestine

Specular

Gray Cheek

Sadder Than Guess Work

Little David

Ceremony

Having faith

The Garden of Her Body

The Eros Chimera

On Channeling Philip Larkin

The Answer

Homecoming

yen love

Laundry

At Boney’s Market

An Ageless Drama

Roadside Cross

On the Surface

Where It All Began

Approaching Rut

Postcard from the Garden

Emerald Memory

Publisher’s Note

This third edition of the San Diego Poetry Annual has been made possible by the efforts of our four Regional Editors: Brandon Cesmat, Harry Griswold, Seretta Martin and Robt O’Sullivan Schleith. Each of them took on a variety of tasks — from finding the best poems from poets known and unknown, to editing each work, collecting updated biographies and responding to what must have seemed like a constant stream of e-mails from me. The result is 145 of the best poems we could find from 97 poets.

A few of the artists featured here are internationally known. Some are highly regarded throughout Southern California and the West. A handful are being published for the first time. Each of them has something valuable to share.

There are no taboos on subject matter, language or form. Our goal is to celebrate the diversity of talent throughout San Diego, bridging every divide — race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, language, politics, economics, age, location and occupation.

No poet is charged a fee to be included in this annual. No contributing poet is required to buy a single copy or to give readings from it. No one is paid for poems, editing or publishing. We turn the customary practice of giving copies to contributing poets on its head: to ensure the widest possible readership, copies of this and every edition are donated to all public libraries in San Diego County, including colleges and universities, in the name of the contributing poets.

We go to press as the country experiences a change of leadership in our nation’s capital. In difficult times, when hope and faith are needed most, poetry and the arts offer more than reflection, nourishment, solace or even beauty — they offer fuel to ignite the promise in each of us.

—William Harry Harding

San Diego Poetry Annual

2008

The Poems

Garden Oak Press

Rainbow, California

[e-mail]

sandiegopoetryannual.com

The San Diego Poetry Annual — 2008,

along with the first two editions (2006, 2007)

are available from authorhouse.com,

barnesandnoble.com, target.com and amazon.com

Megan Webster

In This Recession

I’m sorry I feel such delight

when your dad’s just passed away --

I’ve been there, know the pain

& scold myself for letting

joy flare up my world

while yours shrouds with gray.

Yet . . . I cannot deny

that your morning call --

requesting my new address

to overnight the five grand

you owe me -- has lifted

my heart to delirious heights.

Fred Longworth

To Older Woman from Older Man

The general call for cliffs

gathers more sand than stone.

Newborn moments

rise from beds of rotting kelp.

* * *

Newly friended, we stroll

along the beach,

while blabbering phantoms

of history shuffle beside us.

* * *

We shed our exoskeletons

and save them in ziplock bags.

Archetypes hold hostages

in forlorn sea caves.

* * *

The shoreline harbors neither

timepieces nor lamps,

yet we turn an hourglass, adjust

the sun to blank our fingerprints.

* * *

Breakers roll and splash

inside our heads.

We want each wave to be the first,

but it never is.

Trish Dugger

The Best Laid Pamela

If you’re stepping out of your panties,

it’s too late for Plan B. Trust me.

Actually, I never had a Plan B or

any plan at all. I maureened

down the farley path to where his

lips led. That was humphreys ago.

Losing the keys to my car, house,

indeed my life, ended in reginald.

Had I known the final phylllis, would

I have said, vince instead of when?

His lester and loretta philliped me

with a cynthia i’d never imagined.

Now I’m stranded at the janice craig,

glass shards of yesterday scattered

behind me. It’s clare that I must brock

and bleed to return to the other side,

to get back to candace where brad

began, before the bruce of bridget.

It would be easy to remain in hillary,

to wendy my time in painless walter.

I’m no good with blood and gordon.

So look for me in the garden of denise.

The weather is pleasantly pauline and

I’m learning to clancy with new clydes.

Jem Geran

it was easy to mistake babies

for new pairs of shoes

jumbled among thin strapped

fallen gowns

but there they

were eyes as shiny as

the new pennies among the

dull

I found them again

floating bubbles rubber duckies

then winding wetly through your ankles

cheeks fat confident

and distracting

I could give directions to that memory

like an old timer I could

carefully mark where everything

used to be if only you wouldn’t

mistake

babies for handbags

and if only I wouldn’t look with my mouth

because babies don’t know that they aren’t:

movie stars,

president,

royalty, heart or glory

which might as well mean:

they are

Arlene Neubarth

Shattered Image

Not my father

Still authority

Still respected

Until he yelled at me over the pickles

I knew he liked pickles

ButIlikepicklestoo

A lot.

It’s not as if I intentionally broke the jar

It wasn’t my fault really.

Who keeps bananas in the fridge anyway?

Gordon Johnson

Bazooka

A sanderling, mottled wings tucked back,

smooth as a greaser’s duck-tail,

dips forward to peck, not at