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Melancholy’s Voice: A Familiar Timbre
Today, a poem each from two of my favorites, Elizabeth Jennings and Edward Dixon Garner. Since my first encounter with each of these poets, their words have arisen from the page like incense, like the breath of two wistful friends speaking in my ear. On days like today, I seek them out, and they are faithful to me. ~ S.K. Orr Answers I kept my answers small and kept them near; Big questions bruised my mind but still I let Small answers be a bulwark to my fear. The huge abstractions I kept from the light; Small things I handled and caressed and loved. I let the stars assume the…
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Into The Void Before Sundown
The first time I met Len, he had just arrived at our elementary school, a transplant from California, which made him interesting and exotic to someone from Pig’s Knuckle Junction like myself. He was taller than me, Nordic blonde, and bore a resemblance to Glen Campbell. Len had a great line of patter and that flat, explosively-bitten-off accent that Californians flaunt. We became fast buddies and palled around together from the get-go. We both loved tetherball, which was the rage in the elementary schoolyards during that age. We would race to the poles when the recess bell rang and play furiously until time to return to class. Len had been…