Below are some examples of poetry that have appeared in the Edison Literary Review

Frank's Necktie: a Reverie

      I'd like to go to Wyoming
      you said, with you, someday
      before we're too damn old.
      (slightly altered) from "Travel Plans"
       by Leslie Monsour

You call that tie your talisman:
a herd of cream-colored cowboys
poking into maroon silk.
Beyond its borders, your white shirt
reflects the wild East,
your suit a soft modern armor
befitting the Director of Client Services
for the Social Security Administration.

You talk about your cubicle
studded with computers,
defend your territory, yet
part of you craves Wyoming --space,
and stars like silver nuggets
spattered across the sky.

In the Speakeasy Saloon in Canton,
I drink in your wind-charmed face,
inhale leather cologne.
When you loosen your tie,
suddenly, I am a woman melting
beneath the old Wyoming moon.

Shirley Brewer, Issue 7

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Lilith
(For Enid Dame)

I see Adam and Eve sometimes
walking down Main Street,
fig leaves still clinging to them
I turned in my corporate suit, Swifter mop,
my walk 10,000 steps a day Nikes -
left a little trail of pearls
on the way out the window;
left the garden long before
the apple snafu.
No snake made my travel plans,
got all the knowledge I needed
in Adam's silences,
when he couldn't think of anything
to say except "um", which he felt appropriate.
"Um" did not pass for foreplay
or after-glow and so I left
right after lunch one Tuesday in July,
left the man and the garden,
planted a dozen date trees
at the edge of the Euphrates
and set out to find a man
with a dictionary
and the brains to use it.

Gina Larkin, Issue 7

_______________________________________________

After-hours

I went to the lake
last night.
I've been doing that more frequently.
10:00pm, sitting on the tree, watching the water,
trying to see in the dark.

Last night though,
last night I walked down to the water.
I never did that, at night.
The air was colder down there
by the edge.
I actually heard
the tiny curls of lake water smearing across the sand.
A weak breeze pushed these waves--
shushing over and over again.
Fish snapped at bugs on the surface,
a million crickets flirted with one another,
and the frogs--
the frogs moaned and moaned.
I realized,
I too would like to howl.

Zach Lichtmann, Issue 7