The Poets' Place

page 20

Buttons

these buttons are fine

-remind me of those

scattered throughout

this house

my buttons have

transformed ashtrays

into little altars

of honor and memory

memory of mother

and those dresses

she wore

the garb of the fifties

memory of grandmother

who was not much of

a seamstress

but a weaver who collected

buttons...

buttons

i have lots of buttons

that trigger sweet memories

~centime plus

i collect shells from beaches.

they bring me luck,

they bring me the ocean.

now, i have a nautilus -

and its tiger-skin thin shell

will always bring me you.

~susan

Super Stick One

‘Duppies' are the ghosts
down banyon trees
through owls eyes
hoot-howling in the darkest
dark of night...

Draw the covers...sheets of white
shiver eye-shy at the peep
beneath the pine-wake
of Ole Man Cole
his walking stick
now laid to rest

But come the night again
on his tap-stick walks
his wake of living steps
as now his white sheet floats
in the moonlight
through this window
I lay quake-like
see his eyes
and I scream
"Ole Man Cole"
in my bed.

~Meanders

not beads,
buttons.
two discii advant
zipper one discus
slices of helix
drama masks
frowns and happy balancing angles.
they could be game pieces
Go figuring

~graymutter

Charmed

Index finger-capped & thumb-blotted,

So I'm making this scouring-the-skillet sound, aren't I?

And my ears are massaged to cloth so that I can hear inner noises.

My inner noises and not your low rumbling snore.

But all I can feel is my own sleep-driven tiredness

and the rushes of sands filtering

I'm trying to see the wriggling-swimmers under

the cooling tides of sweat on my flesh.

My fingers and thumb grow hot with the friction

of grinding buttons - like a gambler warming his dice.

I want you to wear these being-worn-down buttons

on your first coat in your first winter.

I'm calling you with their sound from the dark,

open-wide eye of night.

Please come soon.

~nik

encouraging the seeker

once your clenched fist

held the holder of an old coat.

mystic...you would ask me this...

"guess which hand the button's in"

i'd inspect your grips...careful as a buyer

of the unknown...one eye on the fists

one eye on the eyes behind the fists.

sometimes looks admit to more than

lips will let go... i knew this even then...

at the age of four....true... i derived

joy to see that i had chosen right.

that little button in your palm

had found its way to my eyes. but

even greater than the threadless lost

wonder in your cupped hand...was

how excited you would get when

i found that silly old button.

~helen

Doris Gray pictures regret

the old woman has a
guilt edged
partitioned box
on the wall
and in it sits her
confessions

two buttons
and she cuts through the wrists of
the doll her mother made
for her sister
removing the buttons imbued with a glistening green hate
with the wish it was her sister’s hands
she had hacked off with those sweet little scissors
in the shape of a heron

the rock that looks like a footprint
takes her walking the isthmus
where she left his heart
where they said you would find nothing
grow nothing
leave nothing but footprints
and there it was
a small stone memento

the matchbox boat her daughter made her
so many years ago
before floating away
on a sea of years
washed with neglect and disinterest

towers of torn letters

small dried flowers
corks
mothballs
dust
dust
dust

~la g

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