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Vanek - Poetry and Prose - Published Works |
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POETRY - Sample poems |
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The
Poem I Would Write If I wasn’t
so damn tired, I would
compose a symphony
of sounds, unleashing the
evening’s dark desires
as a tympani of consonants drumming the hair on
your neck to attention and before you realized
what was happening, march you double-time
to the second stanza, where I’d introduce
the melody, disguised as the whisper
of a silk dress dancing between long
legs, then counterpoint with
the music of a nightingale, sliding into a minor
key to make you weep, each
word an echo of your
longing, watching you
sigh between stanzas, breathe between lines as I seduce you with the subtle
harmonies of rhyme, flutes
of champagne and the
moon’s satin shoulders, until
the staccato of high
heels across marble, of full lips untouching, create a crescendo
of urgency, and you begin
to see
what we all know
engulfed in the darkness,
not of the nightingale, but the little
black dress
fluttering
to the floor in the final stanza, having
served its purpose,
at rest at last.
—John Vanek © 2005 Awarded Another Found Poem
Christmas lights of red and green twinkle on the monitor, flash pulse and pressure, proclaim the baby in this crib will live for now. My gloved hand hovers above the only vein on his hairless scalp, ‘til the butterfly needle finds courage to land, and I tape the tube to sallow skin that wants to tear away. Blue fingers fist with the whoosh of each breath, as bellows fan this fading ember—a warm blanket and a mother’s sleepless song, gifts for the newborn child. She huddles with her husband as if cold, his blue blazer now her shawl, limbs and lives entwined, nestled forehead to forehead, exchanging a dialysis of toxic hope. I want nothing more than the sleep of a silent night filled with dreams of places other than here, heedless of her cradlesong. In this strawless manger of sorrow, below a fluorescent star, I wonder how to tell this couple the baby they never could bear will be gone by New Year’s. I fiddle with knobs, gauge how much they understand, snatch glances meant for each other, stare at my blood-spattered shoes, then tell them— and all is lost but these words and the haunting hum of a mother’s never-ending lullaby.
© 2004
Published in Natural Bridge - A Journal of Contemporary Literature (University of Missouri) in 2004 Bordeaux Simple On a
hillside, on a blanket, on
our third glass of red,
as I
listen to her hair whisper
on bare shoulders, she leans
into mocha dusk and asks: What
first attracts you to
a woman? And there
is no escape. Curves sashay
through my mind as night
binds
me like a straitjacket.
I want
to say the answer is
more like Burgundy than Bordeaux,
complicated,
though it’s not.
I
think I might tell her the "eyes” but can’t
see hers in the darkness and have
not yet learned their color. She carefully
breaks the bread and my
silence, my body stuttering,
as I flick away crumbs
like doubts. Then a truth I
never knew existed
tumbles
from my lips: The
smile, I say. Not
the window to the soul, but the
gateway. And in
that moment, life is Bordeaux
simple, as Burgundy
lips part, the door
swings open bright
and white,
and
she welcomes me in.
—John
Vanek © 2008 Published
in The LLI Review (University of Southern Maine), Volume 3, Fall 2008. Mood Music A barstool clairvoyant alone on the deck, hair
combed back by a petulant gale, I look upon a storm-stirred
sea rabid with foam, flotsam tossed like tea leaves, and try to divine our future. I tilt my long neck Molson
Golden so the wind’s
weathered lips blow a somber sound across its cold glass
mouth, each note lower than the sip before,
falling with my mood.
—John Vanek © 2009 Published in SLANT in 2009. She
is the freckled evening sky,
He, the shooting
star, their nights dazzling meteor showers. He
is the swirl of the storm,
She,
the calm eye, dancing in step with his lead. She
is the doe in dawn stillness,
He,
the owl, restless eyes searching the night. He is the river’s
current, She,
bedrock,
his foundation.
She is the acorn
nestled in loam, He,
the maple seed
whirling over rocky soil.
He
is the wild strawberry in the briar patch, She,
the ripened peach, reaching toward outstretched
hands. She
is the frost-kissed fir, He, the fire-bush
burning red on the grass.
He is the match
at the kindling, She,
cupped hands in the wind,
both warmed. She
is winter wheat,
He, the scythe—together they are the harvest. —John Vanek © 2009 |