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Joan Colby -- PoetryPheasant
The fat cock iridescent
As taffeta. Its scarlet eyepatch, Purple throat, green skullcap Brilliant copper breast fluted in black, Small autistic amber eye Posed against an imaginary snowbank, Flimsy shrub dangling three torn leaves, Corn stubble to the right and overall A layered lowering sky. The painting was complete. You were Still alive. Exercising the Thoroughbred in an October meadow, A pheasant flushed beneath his hooves. He reared straight up as if seized by the rapture, Then came down sunfishing. Fall mornings shotguns echoed. Flapping awkwardly out of cover Into the sheen of death, into the soft Mouths of Labradors. In yesterday’s snowstorm, Ornate as the one in the painting, A cock marched down our lane With strict military measure. A lone soldier Of fortune leaving its trinity signature. I haven’t Forgotten you. Fire on the Slope
The mountain was on fire,
red and gold, a pall of smoke clearing suddenly as a stroke victim’s apprehension, to invoke the genius of hell seizing the canopy pine by pine like damned souls. We watched from below waiting the order to evacuate. The little mining town built on a scheme of gold too difficult to extract in a brief season. The pass closed most of the year. Fire descended as if on ropes, brilliant aerialists swinging a trapeze of needles. Smoke homesteaded the foothills. I was twelve, excited by danger. Smoke-jumpers, men with axes setting backfires. Our house open to conflagration. I clutched the spaniel. Days later, embers still bolted like red animals, but most of the mountainside was ash reigned over by witch trees lifting brimstone hands to bless us. . Woodland
Photosynthesis unleashes
an amorous greenery. Harsh burls and knots choke words that have arrived like tinder on a clean fire. Deciduous forest, second growth, conflagration of years we regret. Deadfalls, clearcuts, leaves burnished with dismissal. Almanacs of blizzard or drought. Jagged limbs groan beneath ice. How love circles the society of the downfallen. In the old tales, children escape to the forest. The maiden is lost. The wolves lurk. The witch steams in her hut. Bezoar
Famous stone
Beloved by herbalists. A universal antidote. A thief accepted poison To test its efficacy And died in great distress. Still its powers extolled By alchemists and magicians Pulsing with the lore of faith. Under glass, on a shelf In the vet’s sanctuary, The largest one he has extracted. Formed in a horse’s cecum In concentric mineral rings The way a pearl surrounds an irritant. The horse refused its hay Stomped, groaned, lay down A difficult diagnosis: choke. The enterolith Large as a cannon ball, Rare, extraordinary. A visitor declares it Disgusting. Freakish marble Of the bowel. The vet defends his prize. The body’s curious device Like everything: magical. . |
Joan Colby Publications Books: The Lonely Hearts Killers, Spoon River Poetry Press The Atrocity Book, Lynx House Press How The Sky Begins to Fall, Spoon River Poetry The Boundary Waters, Damascus Road Press Blue Woman Dancing in the Nerve, Alembic Press Dream Tree, Jump River Press Beheading the Children, Ommation Press Periodicals Over 900 poems published in journals including Poetry, Atlanta Review, GSU Review, Portland Review, Rockhurst Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Karamu, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, Mid-American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Kansas Quarterly, The Hollins Critic, Minnesota Review, Western Humanities Review, College English, Another Chicago Magazine and others. Awards Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature; Illinois Arts Council Literary Award, Stone County Award for Poetry, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry. Finalist in the 2007 GSU Poetry Contest. Honorable mention in the 2008 and 2010 James Hearst Poetry Contest (North American Review), Finalist in 2009 Margie Editor’s Choice Contest, Finalist in 2009 Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize. Illinois Arts Council Literary Award 2007. Colby is editor of Illinois Racing News for over 25 years, a monthly publication for the Illinois Thoroughbred Breeders and Owners Foundation, published by Midwest Outdoors LLC. She lives with her husband and assorted animals on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has three grown children and six grandchildren. . |
