Well, I had fun at the start of this week; Graham Nunn over at Another Lost Shark asked me to captain a Guided by Poets thread (like poets’ tag) that got all the way to Chicago via Berlin. My poem there, Bathing with Gaiman, appears to have been read by Neil himself, which more or less made my decade. I tagged mr oCean (Berlin, Sublimination), after whom came Michael Haeflinger (Dayton, Love Poem for the Everyday), Hose Olivarez (Cambridge, April 10, 1999), and finally Nate Marshall (Chicago, the genesis). Thanks to these awesome poets. :D
So, I promised you a tasty sonnet. This should be published in A Prominent Journal, but its author is kindly letting me pop it up here. Lila is a talented poet whom I’ve been honoured to get to know over the last few weeks.
Persephone
Within a chamber dry and bare as bone,
Amid the wistful shades of passion spent
And memories bereft of merriment,
Above the sea of sighs, there broods a throne.
The goddess there enthroned is deaf and numb;
Her eyes are marbles, blank and dim and dull,
Her face a rot-white mask stretched on her skull.
Her mouth, as stone, is cold and still and dumb.
But some faint redolence of warmth is there,
Though grim her mind as glacier blue and bleak—
A half-a-dream of poppies on her cheek,
A memory of sunlight on her hair—
As dawning laughter thaws her chilly blood
The blossom of her heart begins to bud.
Lila Black is muddling though her twenties as a student, teacher, and writer of fairy-stories for an amused but impecunious audience of children. She travels so much between the USA and the UK that everyone has forgotten which one she came from in the first place. This autumn she plans to finish her MA degree in publishing and then take a few months to catch her breath and do some serious agent-hunting before applying for her PhD. On ordinary days she translates Greek tragedies into English and ruminates about them; on reckless days she writes poetry. Here is a picture of her kissing Milton:
Zenobia Frost 
Ahhhhh…. :) A blossoming stone: bliss!
That is a very cool poem. It rhymes and has overt meter! Unfashionable, but a sure sign that the person who wrote it is a poet. Bring back rhyme and meter, I say, let’s make it the radical poetry of our age.
Golly, people really, actually seem to like this poem! Folks, you’re amazing. Zen, I’m practically convinced to submit it for printing-type publication– if I were utterly convinced (hypothetically) to whom ought I to send it?
Yes, I linked the blog on Facebook, and it’s been getting a positive response there too. When I have time, will investigate form-friendly poetry journals with you.
Zenobia! Hello again. I just read your “Hands” poem in Mascara. It is wonderful. I am a big fan of ee cummings too and once wrote a poem for him, “if i was #2”. It was published somewhere on the web but I can’t remember where. Your Mascara poems are brilliant. Have you thought about submitting something to Bolts Of Silk? It’s my favourite e-journal.
Ah, thank you. :D I haven’t heard of ‘Bolts of Silk’; I shall have to look it up.
I hope she wiped off Milton’s mouth first – you know, him being a whore and all.