Poetry — September 3, 2012 11:57 — 1 Comment

A Writer’s Dream – James Brantingham

August in Stuttgart, one day on the road
To France or Spain, depending
On the morning traffic’s tide:
I found that night a narrow attic room
In a stone hotel near the city center.
The artist’s life lay in view: the writing table,
The small bunk posed above the red-roofed city.
As I imagined Rhine wine,
The gravity of Rimbaud remembered,
Of Mallarme’s Mardis, and Proust’s temps perdu
Swirled into that slender room,
A spiral nebula of times
Past and imagined futures.
A borrowed pen tested words
To populate the modern novel,
Proposed plays and austere poetry.
The words tumbled everywhere,
Spiraled through the August air,
Then drifted through the open window.

Bio:

James Brantingham bucked hay in the Rogue River Valley, worked the pear orchards of Medford, poured concrete in the Colorado mountain towns, framed houses in Colorado Springs and Spokane. Remodeled much of the Pike Place Market and now manages a marine navigation software company. Studied Latin and medieval literature at Gonzaga in Spokane. Published poems, translations and short stories in publications such as Crab Creek Review and ZYZZYVA. Two online magazines, Glossolalia and the one you are currently reading, have published his short fiction and poetry. His Seattle Small Books Company published three short books and will soon release the fourth, “Traveling Light”. Two sons and two grandchildren light his life.

One Comment

  1. Dixon Hearne says:

    Wonderfuly imagery, moving poem!

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What am I?

Bioluminescent eye
That sees by the shine
Of its own light. Lies

Blind me. I am the seventh human sense
And my stepchild,
Consequence;

Scientists can't find me.

Januswise I make us men;
Glamour
Was my image then—

Remind me:

The awful fall up off all fours
From the forest
To the hours…

Tick, Tock: Divine me.

-- Richard Kenney