calling forth the lost
daydreams birth bright creatures
of poem and legend
particularly for realities broken
a place where ecstasy
was invented for the artist whose reality
will never show kindness
take someone, make them an ideal
placed center point
in this your secret life a day an hour
the secret makes you stronger
here you no longer cry
which was only bleeding in front of sharks
ambrosial emotion
prodigious amounts
of injected fantasy
take a page
water-mark your heart
single or double lavish lines
jazz quietly
in background’s silver light
bourn ships slide
bells of channel buoys toll
as glances burn effigies in psyche
but the reader sees only
vibrantly tinted sky
solid shades suggesting
everything worth seeing
lies behind.
Michelle Hartman is the author of four poetry books, four chapbooks, the most recent a winner of the John and Miriam Morris Memorial Chapbook Contest. Her work has appeared in Crannog, Galway Review, The Atlanta Review, Penumbra, Poem, Southwestern American Review, Carve and many more. She is the former editor of Red River Review, as well as the owner ofHungry Buzzard Press.
