Sample Poetry

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

Trailer Park

Just when we thought winter would never leave,
two little sprigs of forsythia appeared, joined at the hip
in the yard of her new trailer, the third home in as many years.
One was built into a hill of dirt, now foreclosed,
a second outgrown with its low ceilings and cold linoleum.
Here the railroad rooms seem to go on and on,
freshly painted ply board covering stains of previous lives,
counters open on all sides from window to window,
space after space spilling over onto porches in front
and back where scrubbed plastic chairs overlook
the downhill slope of matted grasses waiting for green.
Surely she had spent enough years facing uphill.
The yard tumbles past the shoulder-high saplings
and beyond to the two yellow sprigs raised like frail sunny wings.

Amanda Berry, Issue 5

Tabula Rasa

I don't write poems.
They write me.
Verbs and nouns,
adjectives and adverbs
sneak up on me
when I'm vulnerable
to tears, or laughter.

They split open my soul
so it bleeds emotions,
fills the parchment
of existence with words.
Sly and knowing, they laugh
among themselves, whenever
I think I'm a poet.

They know better:
I'm just a scribbler of
what they want to say.
Still, I'm content -
I let them have their way
as the blank page of life
fills with blood-red ink.

Vincent Larkin, Issue 5

52 Pickup

What brought this fragile house down?
Perhaps it was the king,
his secrets like the sword behind his head,
or the queen, holding and unexplained rose.

Maybe it was the jack, leering in the queen's direction,
or the joker, with his wild disregard for structure.
It could have been the ace, trumping them all,
as everything cascaded to disorder.

Perhaps it trembled on trust's shaky table,
or fluttered apart in a wind of infidelity.
Whatever the cause, it will take some time
to build this house again, maybe never
as high as it once was. Or one could
shuffle what is left, and start a game of solitaire.

Bruce Niedt, Issue 4