�Four Poems by Corrine De Winter

 

A Stranger�s Arms

 

In any dream of confession

I enter the chapel barefoot

Having come straight

From a stranger's arms

On the crooked side of town

Where a song came to us in fragments

From a safe room.

"...down to Georgia

Gonna weep no more."

 

It's okay

That I have lost my shoes

And wear only a crepe dress

Although it's 10 days

Before Christmas.

I am warm with wine

And crossing myself

With tepid holy water.

 

When I speak

To the smoke screen

Of the priest's face

I tell him

How the stars

Drag me down with wishing,

How I am reluctant to be

Only one song

In the whole universe.

 

 

 

������ Book of the Dead

 

"You're not dead until there isn't a flash of you

in memory left anywhere." -S.J. Marks

 

Tonight I allow the dead

To live inside me,

To assemble their bleach white bones,

Their string of Told-You-So's.

I have kept within me their off time alphabet.

 

The dead move me,

As anything beautiful and extinct,

Made perfect by absence.

There are so many,

Like crows

Fighting for space, for survival

In a world where everything

Is consumed.

 

After awhile their stories

Become as harlequin as fairy tales.

I follow them like religion,

Keeping alive

The old woman who slept under bridges,

The boy who could tame wild animals with his singing,

The girl who ate make believe.

 

������������

�������� �Rescue

 

Did you have to fall

In love

Deeper

Than where rests

The bones of travelers who never

Came back from winter

Voyages,

Where strings of pearls

And silver forks

And sea glass

Murmur together like

Old lovers?

Did you have to sink

As far as

The wishing well's

End where pennies and

Serpents and bloodworms

Commingle

In wicked changing symbols?

Did you have to fall

Over and over

Through the air

Like a scarlet leaf in November,

Divine and destined

To dissolve against ice,

To tumble and spiral

Downward

Like the stricken acrobat

Who realizes too late

That there is no

Greater risk

Than diving

For one's holy

Beloved?

 

 

��� Old World

 

Watching for hummingbirds

By the red salvia.

My thoughts

Are straddling the ghost of you.

 

In deep summer

The heat

And open windows,

The newborn kittens crying,

Dissolve the world.

 

Whatever happens now

This story

Will remain unfinished,

Raw as a dream

Culled from too many nights

Of solitude.

 

 

Corrine De Winter was nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize, Corrine De Winter's poetry, fiction, essays and interviews have appeared worldwide in publications such as The New York Quarterly, Imago, Phoebe, Plainsongs, Yankee, Sacred Journey, Interim, The Chrysalis Reader, The Lucid Stone, Fate ,Press, Sulphur River Literary Review, Modern Poetry, The Lyric, Atom Mind, The Writer, The Lyric and over 800 other publications. She has been the recipient of awards from Triton College of Arts & Sciences, Writer's Digest, The Esme Bradberry Award, The Madeline Sadin Award, The Rhysling Award, and has been featured in Poet's Market 1995-2006. Her work is featured in the much praised collections Bless the Day, Heal Your Soul, Heal the World, Get Well Wishes, Essential Love, The Language of Prayer , Mothers And Daughters, and in Bedside Prayers, now in its 18th printing. She is the author of 9 collections of poetry & prose including Like Eve, The Half Moon Hotel, and Touching The Wound, which sold over 3000 copies in its first year, "The Women At The Funeral", winner of the 2004 Bram Stoker Award for superior achievement in poetry, and the latest published by Dark Regions Press "Tango In The 9th Circle." Ms. De Winter is a member of HWA (Horror Writer's Association) and resides in Western Massachusetts.

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