Issue 7
June 2001
Janet Buck
Janet Buck has a Ph.D. in English and teaches writing and literature at the college level. Her poetry, poetics, and fiction have appeared in The Pedestal Magazine, CrossConnect, interweave, A Writer's Choice, Born Magazine, Stirring, The Melic Review, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, Kimera, The Rose & Thorn, 2River View, Southern Ocean Review, Disquieting Muses, Urban Spaghetti, Perihelion, Mind Fire, San Francisco Salvo, Apples & Oranges, Ceteris Paribus, In Motion, Pogonip, Peshekee Review, Thunder Sandwich, The Suisun Valley Review, The Red Booth Review, The Poetry Kit, Miserere, Niederngasse, Lynx: Poetry from Bath, The Horsethief's Journal, salon D'Aarte, Pif, The Dragonfly Review, Morpo, Recursive Angel, Big Bridge, Eclectica, La Petite Zine, EWG Presents, pith, and hundreds of journals world-wide.
The year 2000 was packed with readings, publications, awards, and opportunities for Pushcart Nominee Janet I. Buck. Her first reading tour stretched from Washington to California to New York, where her poem "Acrylic Thighs" was taped for Japanese Television in the lobby of The United Nations Exhibit Hall. The piece was paired with original artwork by Ms. Adele Ramirez, translated into five languages, and sent on tour around the globe. May 2000 brought the release of her second e-book of poetry entitled Bookmarks in a Hurricane and in June, Word Wrangler Publishing released Desideratum's Doggie's Dish, Janet's first collection of humor, available in both print and e-book form. She did several radio interviews with her local PBR affiliate Jefferson Public Radio and spoke at the opening of the Auburn Library in Seattle.
In January 2001, Buck was the featured contributor for The Paumanok Review, The Poet's Cut, and Moondance. Her first audio CD of poetry and music entitled Before the Rose is now available from Art Villa Records. Janet's work is scheduled to appear this year in The Montserrat Review, PoetryRepairShop, Thunder Sandwich, Megaera, Ascent, Swagazine, San Francisco Salvo, Verse Libre Quarterly, interweave, Erosha, Atomic Petals, Tintype Review, Poetry Magazine.com, The Clark Street Review, Steel Point Quarterly, and Ygdrasil. To read more of her poetry and find links to her current publications, go to: http://members.aol.com/jbuck22874/whatsnew.html and http://www.janetbuck.com
Before the Rose--Art Villa
Hot Links: Janet I. Buck
Author's Den
Active Amp.org--Features Janet I. Buck
janetbuck.com
One World-One Heart Exhibit (click on "On Site Report" and scroll down to the
New York Exhibit; then click on "A message from one of the authors, Ms. Janet
Buck")
Art VillaAll work © Janet Buck
Positioning
Standing at a waterfall,
wondering about this leap.
Will its aqua carry us
or split these guts upon a rock?
This phone line's almost beating pulse.
May is the right month
for this palette to wiggle
its fragile tray, spill its drops
on canvas of awaiting earth.Can I say that hearing your voice
makes me bounce, kid-style
on the mattress of Sunday's sun
and dream of us putting our feet
(such as they ache and burn)
on the couch, crossing our legs
like firewood to light with the sly
slim match together brews.
Breaking rules we didn't write.Light a cigarette and talk
without a lie to yellow
our remaining teeth?
"Sister" has the glint
of music in its word,
even though our nights have not
been dustless iron thrones
or sets of silken negligees.I'm sounding like an Elvis print
in sucky velvet wishing wells,
a Hallmark card we wouldn't buy,
but want to live in secrecy.
I think about positioning.
A darkroom full of negatives
ambushed by the aureole.by Janet I. Buck
Antique QualmsThe single penny of a sun
demurs to darkness once again.
A flock of hungry pelicans
engages in the salty foam
enduring as an ivory moon.
They act as though their wings
are swimming through the air.
Tiny dimples in the clouds--
small as raisins shrink from grapes.
I see our chins at water's edge
like conches with their flaws
and sand and simmerings.The beach, a stretch of folded skin
on bodies bigger than our own.
We're heading out to
close this gap of silences.
Cognizant of catch and flight.
Antique qualms of childhood
where Father's eyes were aureoles--
doom and damn and rulers
of incompetence.
Blowing out the ancient ghosts
like candles on a birthday cake.
Baggage of our heritage
in finely wrought comparison,
semi-precious yellow stone,
its value soiled by our fears.Coming out from under rocks,
years are diamonds roughly cut.
Prisms of some memories
contain a brand of blinding light.
But we are missioners of clay
with shaping on our stooping frames.
Making sure that death
won't eat us as we sleep.
Victims of the beckoning
between a vein and pounding heart.
Making sculptures of an hour
before the wetness disappears.by Janet I. Buck
The WreckIn squeeze of eye, a wheel pops--
button off a sleeve of gray.
Screeching tires. Slamming brakes.
Carnal is a piece of ham
trapped inside a soggy layer
of sandwiched heinous metal bread.
His body's snowflake caught
between the season's teeth
of Fate controlling destiny.
The hood, a pressed accordion
playing treble clefs of dread.
7 car phones jump from jackets.
My husband swerves before he thinks.
Where we're goin'
doesn't matter suddenly.
Obligations seem like jokes,
blood a spot on paisley ties.
I am proud to be his wife.Smoking air bags puff and die--
retracting lungs of summer clouds.
As if some prayer had lost its way,
needed maps of human hands,
a medic crawls in tunnels
of the crushed sedan.
The breakdown lane is cluttered now.
Deliverance will take
a row of muscled arms
in tune with proper sacrifice.
Comfort lies to comfortless.
Faith renewed by single facts
that men were rolling up their sleeves
on stages of the horror's slick--
even though the spill of red
was not their own
in harbors of this reckoning.by Janet I. Buck
At Planting Time
A glimpse of spring
just blinked its eye:
daffodils in striking yellow
apologizing for the freeze--
a shoot or two like fingers
coming up through dirt.
At planting time, I think of you.
You who harped on positives
the way a hummingbird must feed,
picking at the nectar's grain,
trill its beak like violins
and suddenly the earth, a song.At planting time,
I use a trowel to flirt with grief.
The clay an almost cherry brown
you wore like women
paint their nails.
The Daphne blooms
in our whiskey tub,
its metal girdle rusted
by the falling rain.
Scents of lemon chamomile,
vanilla musk, and wetted soil.I miss the way you ordered me:
"Place the cubes in pony packs
unevenly to match the way
things wish to grow."
You were always
wiper blades on stormy days
in manners that you never knew.
You who used a table leg
from fine antiques to prop
a rosebush in the wind.by Janet I Buck
Trunks of Tears
Trunks of tears are open now,
but there was a time when
all you owned dispensed our grief,
besieged our lungs, stole sugar
from all memories.
When the bed came and the truck left,
its posters stood like
swords in bellied innocence.
Our swollen lids just could not face
the continent on which you died.Lace around the canopy--
an Irish wake--the placard
of a fallen moon.
Weakness wished to sleep or drink
through dances of its dusty silk.
Your final days came back to us
like horses limping to a stream:
thirsty, cold, and saddle sore
with bruises smiles refused to bleach.My sister took that cherry wood,
put it in her daughter's room,
hoping she was young enough
to break the meat of sorrow's spell,
dodge these chimeras at play
like mice that eat the peanut butter,
then retreat, before they lose
their snapping necks.
She shut the door so quietly
she might have been
a single moth batting its wings
against chewed wool.by Janet I. Buck
The Crow in the Chimney Flue
A crow rustles its beaten wings
against the brick of a chimney flue.
Basking in my waning heat,
pursed in grime,
borrowed darkness lingering.
An alto searching higher note.
Tremulous beneath the moon.
Returning to the easy scores.
I see a mirror's prism now,
mangy feathers soiled and drawn,
repeating angry flutterings.
Licking wound and wonderment
to beats of pensive summer rain.There I am beside this bird,
in a homemade nest of dollar bills.
Glued to things that drain my strength.
Staccato in a restive flight.
Hoping clouds will carry me,
a grain at beck and call of void,
away from hurt and into earned entelechy.
Their billowings and pillow cases
leaving me a tiny space to lay my head
on the white knickers of an angel's crotch.by Janet I. Buck