Christmas lights of red and green                      

twinkle on the monitor,

flash pulse and pressure, proclaim                    

the baby in this crib will live

for now.

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.

My glove 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.

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.                            

They huddle 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.

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.    

Published in Natural Bridge - A Journal of Contemporary Literature (University of Missouri) in 2004 -  “Another Found Poem” was also a finalists in the 15^th Annual Lorain County Community College Literary Festival Poetry Competition (judge: William Greenway)

The People’s Republic

A communist, half a world away

from his terra-cotta life in Xian,

Lai never actually said

that he loved America;

he just savored her

like a concubine.

From my deck we watched

an arrowhead of geese

pierce a cloud,

as sunset melted over the marshland

and warm breezes launched lake ripples

like a comb through hair.

Total-body baptized in the Church

of Capitalism, Lai looked up

from his New Testament,

Consumer Reports,

to watch swallows

swirl like a waterspout across the bay—

then he returned to a gospel so foreign

it seemed written by a higher power.

He said he had faith that someday

his government would grant him a refrigerator…

but stumbled mid sentence

as the distant crack of a rifle

emptied the marsh,

and saturated the sky

with birds proclaiming

their unalienable rights.

He recoiled, then sighed,

as a hundred sorrows floated

in his half moon eyes.

He said that in his province

there were no birds.

His angular features wilted,

and from a place of silk and sadness, he added:

"We ate them all."

—John A. Vanek

©2002

Published in Heartlands 2003 Fall; Charter Issue; 1(1):59 (the annual literary magazine published with the support of Bowling Green State University, Firelands College and the Ohio Arts Council) – Reprinted by The University of Iowa Press in Red, White, & Blues: Poetic Vistas on the Promise of America (edited by Virgil Suarez and Ryan G. Van Cleave). I was invited to read “The People’s Republic” at the George Bush Presidential Library in Texas in 2002, where the poem was added to the permanent collection.

Good Friday At The Allen Memorial Art Museum

Caught in the eye of the brush,

Mary sits at his limp right hand,                        

cradles his head,

the burial shroud at her feet.

Torchlight flickers placenta-red                        

off eyes rolled toward                          

the bruised-plum heavens,                                            

an indifferent Ohio sky.                        

This isn’t Michelangelo’s Pietà             

hung in the town of Oberlin,                             

but one by a nameless                                                  

eighteenth century Italian.                                 

Stains on her cloak suggest                              

the paint has been retouched,

or are those teardrops?                        

If you stand just right, you glimpse

a hint of her halo, though

she doesn’t look blessed

as she plucks thorns from his scalp,

washes dried blood from wounds

she could not prevent,

wounds more painful than childbirth,     

her last embrace held for the same eternity

it took your blue shirt

to convert to a deep wine,

bathed in your blood, as I held you,

waiting for you to move,                                               

to say Mother.

—John A. Vanek

© 2004

Note: Pietà is derived from the Latin pietas, meaning "a profound love that death cannot destroy." It usually refers to paintings or sculptures of Mary holding Jesus before burial. The painting referenced

in this poem is part of the permanent collection of the Allen Memorial Art Museum, in Oberlin, Ohio.

Published in Heartlands (the annual literary magazine published by Bowling Green State University, Firelands College and the Ohio Arts Council) 2005 Fall; Issue 3; 3(1)

Always, Autumn Leaves – A Villanelle 

It is strange how life clings to the last:

The red one is stoic, knows the way of the seasons,      

yet looks warily down at green grass.

The brown one is wrinkled and lives in the past,

considers deserting the family as treason.          

It is strange how life clings to the last.

The yellow remembers all those who have passed,

views the end as mere fate, not logic or reason,

so lies willingly down in the grass.

The dark one flies like a flag on a mast,

more purple than black, in sunset’s last crimson—

it is strange how some cling to the last.

From my hospital window, fall’s colors bleed fast,

for this tubing’s my stem, both lifeline and prison,

as I wait for parole to green grass.

This evening, I’m fragile and pale as veined glass,

yet reach out for my lover, our daughter, her son.

It is strange how I cling to the last,

yet look longingly down at green grass.

—John A. Vanek

Published in Turtlequill Journal of the Literary Arts (University of Rochester), Spring of 2008.

September Bloom

The canoe slices

dream-thick fog

toward curious blood red flowers

blooming in absolute stillness

among the lily pads.

Camouflaged amid

autumn's flotilla of leaves,

black eyes stare

from an iridescent green head.

Chestnut breast and slate body

speckled scarlet,

wings edged in night.

Sunrise yellow bill,

sunset orange legs.

Still, floating,

capsized—

a mallard

scuttled,

slender neck

ringed in winter white

sharply angled,

bloodied.

Pluck a blood red flower,

half filled with water,

and the plastic petals read:

Bismuth Cartridge Company.

Feel the weight

of the brass base

with its single strike mark

and bold imprint: "twelve gauge"

—John A. Vanek

© 2002

First Place in the 2002 Summer Solstice Contest, sponsored by the Ohio Poetry Association (Judge: Dalene Stull). Published in Common Threads (Vol. 62, Number 2, Fall / Winter 2002 – 2003 edition).

Sea Shell     ***

Your brine-hardened back

is arched against a ruthless world,

yet firelight seeps through scars,

gouges chiseled on careless days.

I recognize our brotherhood—

marooned vagabonds

who both prefer liberty

to the shelter of the coral reef.

Your black etched grooves

show scrimshaw character,

like dirty fingernails or the wrinkles

at the corners of my eyes.

Ivory ridges stand in relief,

square as teeth

smiling along your edge,

a seafarer’s shore-leave grin.

My fingernails strum

while you return

a syncopated,

washboard rhythm.

Surging wave riffs and seabird laments

join our makeshift reggae band,

as I wail the blues rock steady,

sipping moonlight and rum.

 —John A. Vanek

©2002

Published in Pebble Lake Review Vol. I, Issue No. 3, Summer 2004

1^st Prize in the 2002 Rising Sun Poetry Competition (sponsored by Rising Sun Magazine – Judge: Dr. Frank Hajcak)

Mr. Fix-It

One little Swiss couple

has stumbled from the dance hall, so I

glue them on their pedestal

to the cheers of the cuckoo, then

rehab the delinquent towel rack

that slouches like James Dean,

shrugging off facecloths,

a pair of her stockings.

The alarm clock blinks 12:00, yet time

is but a concept, sleep a nightmare.

And why bother to attach the white king’s head,

gazing from the board at the dark queen’s feet?

Though, I must repair the red clay ashtray

our daughter made,

missile-launched by her mother

in our latest battle—another casualty of war.

It’s strange that I know how to fix leaking faucets,

yet have no idea how to stop the trickle

from my eyes, or what to do with these ten nails,

bloodied, gnawed to the quick.

—John A. Vanek

©2008

Published in Soundings Review (Whidbey Island Writers Association and Northwest Institute of Literary Arts MFA in Creative Writing Program).

Twenty-One Gun Tanka

Seven set their sights                

on Heaven; each fires three rounds

of blanks at God’s eye,            

brass jackets arcing to earth     

like His electrified tears.

—John A. Vanek

 ©2007

Published in the Sandhill Review, Spring 2007 (ISSN 1930-9244) by St. Leo University.

The Tough Trek Home

From my dark basement corner, I half-expect

Dante to descend the stairs

as I read the braille

of battered lives.

Brutish truth shuffles by in scuffed shoes.

Folding chairs and folded lives,

cold and hard, creak

as they start to unfold again,

heads bowed in prayer, resignation

or acceptance.

Fred combs yellowed fingers

through remembered hair,

his belly the size

of the kegs of beer

he’s chugged for years.

Dan is drunk again on frosted jiggers

of self-pity.

Rose, our resident arsonist,

lights bonfires

of cigarettes and prayer candles.

I do the twelve step shuffle

into the fluorescent flicker and hum

of discontent,

tap the microphone, say

Hi, my name is Nora…

while outside the window, feral need howls

like a coyote calling my name,

reminding me it’s a short stroll

from Eden to Babylon,

but a tough trek home.

—J. A. Vanek

Published in The LLI Review (University of Southern Maine), Volume 3, Fall 2008.

Chest X-ray                                                               

Bloated and globular, like Humpty Dumpty

sitting on a diaphragm wall, the heart

leans against the ribs,

as if sipping from a flask

waiting for the last train, dying

to bum a smoke.

If you listen, you can almost hear the lub-dub,

not of the train, but his syncopated song.                      

Nearby, parallel tracks glisten

calcium-white in the walls

of coronary arteries,

too brittle to carry the load.

If you gaze at the distant white capped

apex of the lung, you’ll see

the Dalai Lama, the all-knowing

cancer, holding the answers

to chaos, fingers                                                                                   

wrapped around the jugular.

And in the night-sky darkness

of the lungs, where hope diffuses,

pale scars and white-hot stars

of metastases

explode in a meteor shower

of a thousand possibilities

lost.

—John A. Vanek

Published in Turtlequill Journal of the Literary Arts (University of Rochester), Spring of 2008.

Worship   ***

When the world is asleep

or at Sunday service,

she steps off the mountain

looking for God and He

embraces her

in thermal eddies,

lifts her like a mirage

above arroyos, cacti and sage.

Having found the purple apparel

and floppy red hat of old age wanting,

she chooses a pink helmet and prone position

in hang gliding, as in life.

She sings His glory

with every updraft,

hovers where each moment

is Judgment Day,

ascends into tickless time

where the only sound is wind

blowing life into her lungs,

exhales her refrain:

Thy will be done on earth

as it is this high above—then,

touches down, roof-racks her glider, begins

the slow migration to early-bird dinner,

leaving the heavens

and the bunny hills

to the church-blessed

and Sunday hangovers.

 —John A. Vanek

Bedside

Surrounded by photos

of familiar faces

dressed in forgotten fashions,

you lie in utter stillness—

so wasted

your robe appears uninhabited.

The angry hiss of oxygen

snakes through tubing,

past dentures cleaned by nurses

who don't have to wear them.

The fragrance of lightly scented

diapers lingers in the night air.   

Your remaining red cells effervesce,

carbonation from a spirit gone flat,

leaving you camouflaged in paleness

against a jungle of hospital sheets.

Skin so thin I fear

my touch will tear you.

Yet, you conjure up an impish grin,

as if you have a parting joke to tell— 

while your eyes plead

for one last medical miracle

from a black bag that overflows

with hollow promises and jargon.

In the few gentle moments

when you sleep,

all I can do

is sit at your bedside,

write the elegy for your funeral,

and watch you wither.

Tonight, I will learn to live                                            

a life without you—                                                      

if you                                                                           

will find the faith                                                             

to close your eyes                                                        

one final time.                                                              

 —John A. Vanek

© 2006

Published in Kerf - College of the Redwoods – Fall 2006, pages 44-45  –  ISBN: 0-9746274-2-9

Honorable Mention – Akron Poetry Festival/New Words 2002 Poetry Competition (sponsored by The Akron Art Museum) – final judge: Elton Glaser – Reading of the poem performed on April 14, 2002 at The Akron Art Museum

Beached

A Miss America Pageant finalist

in her mind, dressed to the “nines”

in a binary world,

on a nude beach,

she wonders whether to

come out of the water

or go deeper, but

hypnotized by the horizon

she waits for a ship