"I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms"
----Wallace Stevens
"Thirteen Ways of Looking at Blackbird"
John Milbury-Steen
John Milbury-Steen served in the Peace Corps in Liberia, West Africa. He did a Master's in Creative Writing with Ruth Stone at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. Worked as an artificial intelligence programmer in Computer Based Education at the University of Delaware. He currently teach English as a Second Language at Temple University, Philadelphia. He has published poems in Lucid Rhythms, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Blue Unicorn, Bumbershoot, The Centrifugal Eye, Chimaera, Dark Horse, The Deronda Review (Neovictorian/Cochlea), Kayak, Hellas, The Innisfree Poetry Journal, The Listening Eye, The Piedmont Literary Review, Scholia Satyrica, Shenandoah, Shattercolors, the Shit Creek Review and Umbrella.
John Milbury-Steen
My Ardor for the Muse
I live for her. I
live in hopes I will
suffer to be crushed to beautiful.
My own
green carbon like a tree that fell
into its stratum can be pressed a
while
until I form for her great crown a small
encaretation of
myself, a
jewel.
But if compression of my florid style
does not
proceed that far, I hope that I'll
at least be pressed into a lump of
coal
worthy of her furnace to help fill
her house with cheer
against the age's chill,
as I am worried she does not look
well.
She glances out. A dozen trucks at once
are always dumping on her lawn and plants
so much coal, her
furnace glows, the vents
are capable of cooking joints of beef,
and such a tonnage of briquettes she points,
"I guess I'll have to
grill some
elephants."
www.lucidrhythms.com
© 2008 David Landrum