crackles of speech.............. poems for all ages.............. by steven withrow

POEM: Purgatory Chasm

2012-02-08T21:26:00.005-05:00

There's a state reservation in Sutton, Massachusetts, where my wife and I have hiked in the summer and fall. I've never been there in winter, but I imagine it would be a dolorous place, morosely beautiful.

Purgatory Chasm
By Steven Withrow

Climb an elm limb,
Slow now, on a bowed bough,
Out over a jagged crag.

This granite gorge
Gouged ages past by a blast
Of glacial meltwater,

Not so soul-cleansing
As claims its expiating name,
Remains ravine rock

Riven in a dim bend
Of limbo, ice-dammed cataracts
Called Corn Crib,

Coffin, Devil’s Pulpit,
Charley’s Loop, Lovers’ Leap,
Fat Man’s Misery,

Such malformations
Of stone and petrified sand.
Move hand over hand

To the branch-break
And, reaching there, breathe in
Winter’s indifferent air.

POEM: The Goaltender

2012-01-30T09:21:00.005-05:00

Goalie Tim Thomas of the Boston Bruins

The Goaltender
By Steven Withrow

A netminder’s curse:
To block a black puck.
And even worse

A slight to his pride
Is a five-hole slapshot
On a butterfly slide,

Or a breakaway
At the final flash
Of a power play,

Yet under his mask
Is no sure sign
Of his furious task

To scrape from his crease
Ice-crust of a loss
With bladed release.

His post is his nest.
Like a shorebird,
He barters his rest

For what he protects.
How he frets and he frets
On all he deflects.

He skulls to his stance
For the next puck’s tap,
Dropping his glance

From the scoreboard above,
Hands fixed to his stick
And the trap of his glove.

Crackles of Speech, my first collection, now available

2011-12-31T11:16:00.014-05:00

I have put together my first collection of poems, Crackles of Speech, as a digital book. It's a miscellany of 32 poems written between 2006 and 2012.

Please comment here and include your email address, or email me at stevenwithrow (at) gmail (dot) com, if you'd like to receive a free PDF of the book.

Thank you for your interest in my work.

Steven Withrow
Providence, Rhode Island

P.S. The cover image shown here is a painting ("Menauhant") by my friend Erica M. Szuplat of Cape Cod.

POEM: The Library Steps

2011-12-26T10:46:00.003-05:00

The Library Steps
By Steven Withrow

To reach the books we had to leap the lion.
Sculpted stone in place of fierce flesh,
But ferocious enough
To those of us
Who paused to tooth the toothless king
And pedicured his deadly toes
With the flat files of our stares.
We frogged him, one by one,
Palms pommeling his brow
And split legs missing his maw
By inches. When all had passed,
No one looked back. We had won.

Then through double-doors we ran—
Haughty as a hunting party, homebound band
Fresh from a kill that had gone well—
And checked our speed at the desk.

There we made separate tracks.
One to stalk the card catalogs,
Two through a thicket of Children's Fiction,
Leaving me—instantly an I alone—
On walkabout, lost in pride land,
Rippling spines of tall grass blades,
Questing for atlases to compass me
Out of sudden danger. The lion
Had come inside. He'd picked up my scent
And would, like a lioness, dispatch me.

I searched for sign of a high hide,
A ladder to a lookout tower
Stashed within the stacks.
Instead, I haunted a payphone booth
Until closing time, slipped outdoors
Among the throng, rejoined my gang,
And we leaped the lion's head again,
Stone tongue tasting our fingers.

POEM: The Buck

2011-12-16T00:34:00.002-05:00

The Buck
By Steven Withrow

Invisibly brown
As the headlamps seize
On his antlered crown

This phantom wood-woad
Ambles to the verge
Of the brambled road

Dogging his doe
With a heartsick vim
That grips him, though

The car’s glare stuns
His love-glazed eyes
Like doubled suns.

To the driver, time
Has staggered and stalled
In a pantomime

Of startled stag
Raking the slow wind
Once with a jag

Of his heavy rack
And a rime of ice
Down his stiff brown back.

The braking wail
Mimics the mutts
That nipped at his tail

Till, shaking his fears,
Trembles the hedge
And he disappears.

2011-10-19T22:59:00.004-04:00

The Crooked Captain Hook
By Steven Withrow

My first name, dear reader, is James.
But that is just one of my names.
I acquired the hook Hook
When the crocodile took
Off my hand...
Oh, the depths of my shame!

Yet my story’s true villain is Pan.
He’s the boy-who-will-never-be-man.
His delightful good form
Is a shipwrecking storm
To a captain…
But I’ve got a plan!

I’ve a perilous plank he will walk.
Watch Peter Pan sink like a rock.
And his Lost Boys I’ll bait
And his Wendy will—wait—
Do you hear
The tick-tock of the clock?

Do you hear
the tick-tock
of the clock?

©2011 Steven Withrow all rights reserved

POETRY FRIDAY: Some news, and Jurassic Fish

2011-10-07T07:22:00.008-04:00

Today I'm the featured poet at Robyn Hood Black's blog for Poetry Friday, and my poem "Cornered" is published in the astonishing p*tag ebook anthology for teens!

For this week's poem I tried a Welsh verse form called a rhupunt:

Jurassic Fish
By Steven Withrow

My deepest wish:
To catch a fish
That dwarfs a whale.

To hook and reel
By look and feel
A monster’s tail.

But I’m too late
To cast my bait
For bones so strong

And razor sharp.
I’ve only carp
To string along.

I’d settle for
A man o’ war
Or basking shark

If one will break
For pity’s sake
From fathoms dark.

What It Means to Be a Poetry Advocate, or How a Poet Is Like an Egret

2011-09-21T18:58:00.010-04:00

A short essay/mission statement for my new organization, Poetry Advocates for Children & Young Adults:

Poetry is pronounced dead, and reborn, so often that a phoenix metaphor springs too easily to mind. Poetry's fiery demise and ashy reincarnation might be the oldest news in literature; Sumerian scribes must have jived about it in cuneiform.

A more complex metaphor, and the one I prefer, is to see poetry not as a rising firebird, but as a wading waterbird.

Take the egret, for example. Its French name, aigrette, means both “silver heron” and “brush.” During breeding season, long filamentous feathers waterfall down the egret’s buff back, and these decorative plumes, prized by hunters and hatmakers a century ago, nearly brought about the egret’s extinction.

But the egret kept on, standing long-legged in liminal space—that transition point between land and water, past and present, life and death—stirring wavelets with its wings and harpooning breakfast with its bill.

Poets, too, live on this threshold: colonial or solitary, motionless or migratory as it suits us. This has always been our way.

In creating a grass-roots, not-for-profit organization devoted to advancing poetry for kids and teens, I am not concerned with staving off poetry’s passing or reinventing poetry’s purpose for a new generation. Rather, I am celebrating poetry as a living thing—as many living things at once—and I’m sharing it with everyone I know or hope to meet.

To advocate for poetry, in my view, is to live with an intense love of written and spoken language and a willingness to tell and show others (especially the youngest) how you feel and why.

Each day new poets are born.

There’s no phoenix flash or gunpowder delivery.

Just the raised voices of hatchlings, their musical, crook-necked cries.

POETRY FRIDAY: Scuba Diver

2011-09-08T15:34:00.002-04:00

SCUBA DIVER
By Steven Withrow

Suit up.
Check gear. Take breath.
No fear. Frog feet.
Mask on. Tank full.
Nerves gone. Climb lip.
Slip in. Glide down.
Big grin.

Legs kick.
Don’t stop. Eyes wide.
Ears pop. Sea skate.
Stingray. Could swim.
All day. Hug glass.
Stay low. Intake.
Air flow.

Bubbles.
Exhale. Dish soap.
Long trail. Spindrift.
Rainbows. Sand shark.
Come close. Open.
Fish sack. Hand feed.
Light snack.

Time out.
Shift done. Breathe sigh.
Such fun. Push off.
Slow rise. Up there.
Surprise. Dark shape.
Blocks path. How big?
Quick math.

Green shell.
Bird’s beak. Awestruck.
Can’t speak. Tongue tied.
Head high. Slide past.
Wave bye. Break through.
Dry ground. Just wait.
Next round!

POETRY FRIDAY: Storm's Alarm

2011-08-30T15:29:00.005-04:00

Irene walloped Rhode Island this week. My neighbors lost several old trees, and we came through unscathed though not unchanged:

Storm’s Alarm
By Steven Withrow

Asleep, we do not hear it snap—
That splintered limb
Succumb—
Or heed it rap our roof
And strike
The downspout dumb.

Awake, we think a bird’s deranged
A windowpane—
Chill rain
Has changed to hail—a gull?—
A gale—
A hurricane!

POETRY FRIDAY: Nasty Characters

2011-08-18T14:58:00.007-04:00

Nasty Characters
By Steven Withrow

Look—
If I had to be
Locked in a book,
I’d like to be trapped
With that crook Cap'n
Hook.

Heroes—
They’re boring.
I find myself snoring
Or downright
Ignoring those
Zeroes.

In short,
If a plotter
Gives me Harry Potter,
I’d rather resort
To Lord Vol-de-
Mort.

Best,
In a pinch,
Is the Grinch
Or the wickedest
Witch of the
West.

Still,
Stick me in a tale,
Like Jonah in a whale.
I’m Jack—and my Jill
Is Cruella de
Vil!

POEM: For the Win

2011-08-17T09:13:00.013-04:00

This week's Miss Rumphius Effect poetry stretch is to compose a poem using only three-letter words. Just for fun, my poem has three words in each line of each three-line stanza. Like basketball, tougher to play than it looks:

For the Win
By Steven Withrow

Yes—you nab
the tip off—
rob the orb

jag and zag
top key hop
lob for two—

out too low—
ram the rim
oop and jam

bam!—all air—
not but net
mad sun god

POETRY FRIDAY: Emptying the Apartment

2011-08-09T14:30:00.002-04:00

Loose pentameters with a limited, inverted rhyme scheme across stanzas.

Emptying the Apartment
By Steven Withrow

We take apart my bookshelves and your stack
Of photo albums on the floor. These bare
Accoutrements of years, which give the table
By our kitchen, where we ate, the glamour
Of an antiques dealer’s booth—a square
Of yellowed quilting cloth, a silver plaque
Commemorating some event, a hammer,
Chalk pastels, a frayed coaxial cable—

Are still-life props arranged to look unstable,
Syllables that jar a gentle grammar,
Cartoon figures inked with spotted blacks
To stand askew. We count what’s left, aware
That final tallies can’t be made. Your camera
Catches me affixing one last label
On a box of wedding gifts. Cold air
Waits at the door. We're gone, not coming back.

POEM: Boooooring

2011-07-28T11:21:00.003-04:00

Boooooring
By Steven Withrow

The day’s too long
And I’m too short.
There’s nothing going on.
I built a fort.
I sang a song.
Pulled weeds out of the lawn.

The day’s too slow
And I’m too quick.
A squirrel—not a snail.
I caught a caterpillar
On my catch-er-pillar stick
And I put it in a pail.

The day’s too large
And I’m too small.
When will it ever end?
I’m just a kid,
But if I were in charge
I’d send myself a friend.

POEM: School Play

2011-07-23T21:06:00.002-04:00

School Play
By Steven Withrow

Act 2, Scene 2, of R & J’s
The one event we won’t forget—
Well, most of us—post senior year—
O wherefore art thou Romeo—
And the girl who’s playing Juliet
In this clichéd production stays
In character despite the jeers
Of jocks and jokers yards below her.

Those theater-haters, skater-boys,
And drama-queens too cool to act
On stage combine to form a swarm
Of fierce, unfocused locusts noising
Over her whole soliloquy.
And everybody laughs but me
When Romeo—a kid named Norm
Terwilliger, I think—is smacked

Upside the head by a paper plane,
A folded playbill someone threw
With a starting pitcher’s killer aim,
Which turns “I take thee at thy word”
Into a red-cheeked squeak of shame
That’s a tiny fraction less absurd
Than Juliet’s ad-libbed refrain—
O Romeo!—to press on through

The mess until Act 2, Scene 3,
Of Shakespeare’s lovers’ tragedy.

POETRY FRIDAY: I'm This Week's Featured Poet

2011-07-21T20:49:00.007-04:00

"Poets work at the molecular level of language. Our fundamental physics is the interaction of sound clusters, phonemes, consonants, vowels, glides, particles, and syllables. Words and phrases certainly matter, but our truest tools are the purest sounds."
~ Steven Withrow

Many thanks to Tabatha Yeatts of The Opposite of Indifference blog for sharing my work as the host of Poetry Friday this week. What an honor!

Check it out, and be sure to visit the other great Poetry Friday links while there!

POEM: Rhyming Without a License

2011-07-20T09:29:00.008-04:00

Rhyming Without a License
By Steven Withrow

The copper
Clocked me
Topping
Eighty
In a sloth-
Slow lane.
His strict
Demeanor
Radiated
Obvious
Disdain.
He sidled up
And bridled
At me:
“Late for
A poetry
Slam?”
I stilled
My breath
And told him
Calmly,
“In point
Of fact...
Iamb.”

POETRY FRIDAY: Undog Places

2011-07-15T06:38:00.007-04:00

This poem came from a confluence of three experiences: my five-year-old daughter used the phrase "the very undog places of the house" while searching for a favorite toy; we read Nancy Willard's The Tale I Told Sasha at bedtime; and we visited the ancient Egyptian exhibit at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum. Thanks to Mary Lee of A Year of Reading for hosting this Poetry Friday.

Undog Places
By Steven Withrow

In the very undog places of the house,
Those uncat spots unfit for a layabout mouse,
You find a hidden hitch that once dropped loose
From a model switching yard—a red caboose
That must have come uncoupled from its coach—
And if you hope to hold it, don’t approach
Too eagerly, or if you do, pretend
You’re merely kneeling there snooping for a friend.

In the very unbed places where you sleep,
Those still unpillowed spaces where you keep
Your treasure trove of marbles underneath
A cardboard box that guards your baby teeth,
What clovers you unearth on second look!
Or tucked in a book atop another book—
A clockwork heart—and part of you unthinks
The thing that undid the Riddle of the Sphinx.

POETRY FRIDAY: Farmers' Fireworks Display

2011-07-08T08:00:00.000-04:00

Farmers’ Fireworks Display
By Steven Withrow

We stall the car and climb the roadside hillock
To the field, as the bugs hum down for our blood,
And at the second flash—the first entrapped us
With its bright and bursting spontaneity—
You coo and ooh as though you’ve seen a dragon
Or an arrow fletched with phoenix-feathers falling
In a slowly effervescing arc of colors—
Redwhitebluegreengold—before concussing
Like a thunderclap from Odin’s son.
Or maybe your imagination’s twined
To a world less mythological than mine,
And sky to you, although it gleams with flame,
Is merely airy molecules at play
With dusk’s near-summer-solstice looming light.

©2011 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved

POEM: Sourpuss

2011-07-06T11:34:00.002-04:00

For David Harrison's word-of-the-month poetry contest for July ("sour"):

Sourpuss
By Steven Withrow

Too tart today
to grin—
this sour mood
I’m in
tastes vinegar
and bittersweet.

I woke up late
and tried
to greet
all with a smile—
and faked it for
a little while—

but the tangy mango
on my tongue
that is my placid
disposition
suffered acid
indecision

and now life’s flavor’s
cursed—
how thin my lips
are pursed—
by coffee made
with lemonade.

POEM: Releasing Butterflies

2011-07-01T17:22:00.004-04:00

An experiment with six-beat couplets:

Releasing Butterflies
By Steven Withrow

Something seamy and unseemly in the name
they carry, painted ladies, pins a sordid shame

in fore- and hindwing, but its sting recedes in flight,
for they are dazzlers as they grab the air, these brightly

spotted Cynthias of a genus called Vanessa:
you laugh to draw the last, and dub her Iridessa.

POEM: An Admonition Against Egrets

2011-06-01T11:06:00.003-04:00

An Admonition Against Egrets
By Steven Withrow

An egret is the perfect pet
And yet
I bet that you’ll regret
An egret once you get one.

You’ve never met a better pet.
She’ll let
You jet her to a vet
(Of course, you’re set to net one).

She struts her slender silhouette—
No sweat
As she wheels a pirouette—
Though watch out when you pet one.

An egret, she’s a fret, a threat,
A debt
That you won’t soon forget—
But a wondrous white and wet one!

POEM: Beachcomber

2011-05-23T20:04:00.005-04:00

Inspired by my daughter and by the excellent book The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation. (For more information about Anglo-Saxon verse, please visit PoemShape.):

Beachcomber
By Steven Withrow

Sitting in the sand,
sifting through her pail
of wonders from the waves,
she whispers to a shell
a secret that the sea-sound
sings back to her.
Her rescued rocks
are round enough for skipping,
and her bits of beach glass,
blues and greens,
shade the shoreline
a shimmering rainbow.
The crown of her cache
is a crab’s claw, freshly
dug from a dune
with a double-headed shovel,
like a buried bone,
a bird’s fossil,
Neptune’s ghost-glove,
or a knight’s gauntlet.
Her tiny bucket
is a treasure box
of human jetsam, too:
a hard-plastic juice cup
cracked at the lip,
a red crayon, the lid
off a popcorn can,
a pearl-toothed comb
a mermaid dropped
among the driftwood
for a girl to find,
a gift of friendship
and a message sent
to make certain
someone will recall
the sacred code.
The gulls, in loops,
fly low over the ground,
hunting for scraps
and screeching hungrily,
angrily, echoing
at every angle
around her head.
She hears their ruckus
only as a murmured
music from the ocean,
a lullaby,
a barnacle’s laugh
as the rising tide
tickles its ribs.
The dappled sun
will soon go down.
Her sieve is full
of falling sand.

POEM: The Poetry Reading

2011-04-16T15:17:00.003-04:00

An experiment with trimeters, rooted in a real event I once attended:

The Poetry Reading
By Steven Withrow

The laureate guffaws
And leads with an awkward pause
Into another poem

That links a rebel coup
Across the sea to a new
Atrocity at home

And even though the crowd
Are in his camp and loud
As republicans of Rome

With their applause when it comes
Too many bite their thumbs
Under the collegiate dome

For this invited guest
To put the line to rest
From his most recent tome

Just begging to be signed
Before those leaving find
A sky of tarnished chrome

LIGHT VERSE: Poor Pluto

2011-04-08T15:26:00.003-04:00

POOR PLUTO
By Steven Withrow

I’ll tell you, when I really get annoyed,
Is when you people call me “Planetoid.”

OK, I’m not as large as Earth or Mars,
Names, like meteors, leave their scars.

You bumped me off the planetary team
And damaged my celestial self-esteem.

The things that count in any solar system
Are things I’ve got in spades, and I can list ’em:

Solidity—I’m solid rock and ice.
And gravity—my orbit’s pretty nice.

And maybe I’m too cold to ever melt,
But that’s from living in the Kuiper belt.

I demand a full retraction—make it soon—
Don’t jerk around a guy who dwarfs the moon!

POEM: Bradbury's Rockets

2011-04-08T10:37:00.004-04:00

Here’s my poem, in a very loose tetrameter line, for April’s word-of-the-month poetry contest (“space”), inspired by one of my favorite authors, Ray Bradbury:

BRADBURY’S ROCKETS
By Steven Withrow

Bradbury’s rockets are targeting Mars
And packing enough plutonium power
To overshoot the nearest stars—
Rambling bumblebees rumbling flowers!

Bradbury’s rockets are held in a field
Of clipped Ohio summer grass,
Such spirited horses, whose wagons are wheeled
For homesteading Alpha Centauri. Alas—

Bradbury’s rockets are grounded for good
By the penalty tax against dreaming of flight,
As Armstrong, the Kitty Hawk Wrights understood it,
Who will pay no passage through limitless night.

POEM: I Am the Seed

2011-03-31T09:33:00.004-04:00

This is my first experiment with terza rima, a difficult verse form in English because of its interlocking rhymes. I've loosened the meter considerably as compared with, say, Robert Frost's "Acquainted with the Night."

I Am the Seed
By Steven Withrow

I am the seed only earthworms have seen
Through the sensitive cells in their skin.
I want to be grass, and I want to be green.

But ending outright is no way to begin
For a seed, or a worm, or a man:
One owns up to a loss, and earns any win.

I am the shell that entraps as it can,
And it must—that's the path that it's on.
I am the gulf that no girders will span.

I am also escapist—I’m here, then I’m gone—
From the shell, from the cell, I will run.
I am the sleeper who rises at dawn

To greet and exalt inexhaustible sun
For its labors—a matchless machine,
That once it starts up, is never outdone.

I am the seed, and I weave what I mean.
I want to be grass, and I want to be green.

POEM: The Unexpected Weather

2011-03-25T20:19:00.014-04:00

For this new poem, I borrowed the structure of Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken," though with my own variations:

THE UNEXPECTED WEATHER
By Steven Withrow

New snow encircled the parking lot,
Though April had held the weather warm
A week; by evening’s light, I caught
One downy flake on my tongue, a dot
Of melting white in a springtime storm,

Then locked the car door, and hid the keys,
While standing among a million moths,
Or parallel-earthly oddities
That coat the ground and enrobe the trees
In frozen ceremonial cloths,

And if that day I hadn’t been late
Already for an interview,
How I might have intertwined my fate
With theirs as they fell, resigned my weight
Of human matter, and dropped down too.

I won’t pretend that this notion made
My body change, transmogrified
By thought to flurrying fluff; I stayed
Long enough to float under the shade
Of a cumulus cloud, before moving inside.

POEM: Spell Against Time Passing

2011-03-23T11:50:00.022-04:00

Spell Against Time Passing
By Steven Withrow

Put locks
on all the clocks—
launch
the keys
into the sea—
stuff my days
inside
a jury box—
sequester them
from me.

Bury night
beneath a boulder—
quell
the tongues
of bells—
the sound
of small children
tolling older—
on the carousel’s
slow round.

Arrest
that mischief-maker—
Time
is never
not at play—
overwhelm
our undertaker
turning
auburn locks—
to gray.

POEM: Rescuing a Sugar Maple

2011-03-22T12:50:00.008-04:00

Part autobiography and part fiction:

Rescuing a Sugar Maple
By Steven Withrow

“You’ve got creeping rot and wood blight
choking off the lower leaders,”
he offers, chipping white fungus
from dried bark with a golf pencil,
“but good news is, the trunk’s still whole.”

I’d read about dieback, sunscald,
and other scourges of young trees,
of parasites that tatter leaves
or cleave deep roots, but the problem,
he assures me, is with the soil.

“Your lawn’s a touch too alkaline
for healthy growth. These maples here
like a better acid balance.”
All right, I think, it’s chemical,
and something can be done at least.

He bends, and spears a mushroom cap
with a graphite point, then he frowns
at me as though I’d drowned a prize
orchid: “When’s the last time you limed,
or tilled and reseeded all this?”

I confess to him we’ve been lax
in our stewardship of our lot,
preferring the milder science
(admittedly more of an art)
of let-nature-follow-its-course.

He shrugs and starts to mark his pad—
a figure with a dollar sign.
“Art,” he says, and waits a moment
before handing over the bill,
“is crabgrass, weeds, and dead shade trees.”

POEM: Nomenclature

2011-03-20T03:56:00.002-04:00

NOMENCLATURE
By Steven Withrow

Night clouds hold no proper names.
Each and all, in their operatic crossings,
Altostratocirrocumulonimbus.
Also bear cubs, pearl beads, nesting dolls,
Arias of open vowels, steam engines,
Strange fish scaled with flashes of camphor,
Nacreous, anonymous, noctilucent
Under the yellow music of the moon.

©2011 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved

LIGHT VERSE: Flu Shot Blues

2011-03-16T20:12:00.004-04:00

FLU SHOT BLUES
By Steven Withrow

I try not to get shots in my arm for the flu,
And it's not that I'm fraught with the harm it might do.
It's the pain—like a burr in the paw of a bear—
Oh the ache is a boa constrictor I wear.
When the snaky quick prick of its fangs nicks my skin
With its venomous, poisonous pinch, I begin
To unravel myself in a serpentine squeam
And I hiss like an asp, though I'd much rather scream,
But the part that annoys me the most is the sad
Mocking voice of my doc: "Was that really so bad?"

POEM: The Hungry Cupboard Round

2011-03-10T16:32:00.013-05:00

Since it's my birthday today, I'm indulging my love of poems that exist for the pure joy of speaking them aloud. A little bit of Mother Goose, a tiny touch of Modernism?

THE HUNGRY CUPBOARD ROUND
By Steven Withrow

Being buying bread and butter
Beg a slice of apple cider
Ruby red and chill chokecherry
Pie and boysenberry cobbler

Taking tucking in to taproot
Stew and strip a harrowed parsnip
Purple poppy mallow petals
Poison season for a garnish

Leaving living leek and liver
Savor tender steak of salmon
Swallowtail in sallow slivers
River trout and roiling water

Savor tender steak of salmon
Leaving living leek and liver
River trout and roiling water
Swallowtail in sallow slivers

Stew and strip a harrowed parsnip
Poison season for a garnish
Taking tucking in to taproot
Purple poppy mallow petals

Ruby red and chill chokecherry
Beg a slice of apple cider
Pie and boysenberry cobbler
Being buying bread and butter...

LIGHT VERSE: Elephant's Oasis

2011-03-09T15:41:00.007-05:00

My daughter, Marin, and I created this picture-poem collaboration.

ELEPHANT’S OASIS
By Steven and Marin Withrow

One morning on his way to school
The elephant stopped for a shower.
He dipped his trunk into a pool
And siphoned up with sucking power
Liquid through the tubelike tool
His nose became that scorching hour
Sun shone slant—a cruel jewel—
Then held aloft his water tower
And drenched his bulk in drops of cool
Refreshment, like a nourished flower.

POEM: Codger with Seven-League Boots

2011-03-02T11:23:00.006-05:00

My poem for this week's poetry stretch ("fairy tale items") at The Miss Rumphius Effect. I've been having fun writing dramatic monologues:

Codger with Seven-League Boots
By Steven Withrow

That Sunday, when I put those buggers on,
Those lace-ups I’d purloined from Grimmy’s Pawn,
The neighbors’ mangy dog’d defiled my lawn.

I stomped the porch one step, I swear I’d gone
Half-crazed with rage—it’s not polite to yawn—
And won the bloody Boston Marathon!

©2011 by Steven Withrow, all rights reserved

POEM: Rooting

2011-03-02T10:52:00.007-05:00

My entry for the March word-of-the-month poetry contest at David L. Harrison's blog. This month's word is "root":

ROOTING
By Steven Withrow

Hooray hurrah huzzah—for tap, sap, font, and source,
For fingertips of gymnosperms planting gymnastic handstands,
For bending straws of sycamores slurping the groundwater,
For xylem and phloem fixed in daylong flux,
For germinating aspen groves, aerating mangroves,
For upgrowing ivies that crack the faces of gravestones,
For anchor point, radicle, rhizome, meristem, cambium—
Yay for every deep, diffuse, inscrutable root!

©2011 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved

POEM: Copperhead

2011-02-20T22:59:00.004-05:00

COPPERHEAD

By Steven Withrow

That summer my father beheaded a sunning snake

with the hard guillotine of a garden spade.

Its venomous skull popped up and somersaulted

to a dead stop beside the woodshed.

(Among the vacation lake towns of northern Jersey

the turnpike’s signposts made no mention

of bramble-shrouded pockets lush as any tropics

hiding eastern kingsnake and black racer.)

I turned away, envisioning Medusa’s fierce face,

aspy tresses tracing permanent petrifaction

across an epic afternoon Dad demythologized

by chucking a tongueless S into the brush.

POEM: Poe and Lovecraft Meet in Providence, 1909

2011-02-13T21:22:00.006-05:00

Poe and Lovecraft Meet in Providence, 1909

By Steven Withrow

The Athenaeum’s doors were locked

For after hours. The idled ghosts

Of Model T’s at hitching posts

Resembled resting mares. They’d walked

Down separate steps, from different gates,

Alarumed out of iron sleep

By bells, an interview to keep,

A night’s commingling of their fates.

The Athenaeum’s reading room

Was dark, the hooded lamps lit low,

And Lovecraft, young still, begged of Poe,

“What eldritch summoning of doom,

What cosmic rite, has fetched you here?

I’d passed out, my new poem complete,

And soon awoke on Angell Street!”

He leaned in, offered Poe his ear.

The pale anachronism shook

His wild-haired—was it eyeless?—head,

A forceful gesture for the dead,

And fingered toward a black-bound book

That lingered on a higher shelf,

Its spine read Necronomicon,

And Lovecraft stood, but Poe was gone.

He’d face the grimoire by himself.

Poem and image copyright 2011 by Steven and Lesley Withrow.

POEM: Lessons Fathers Only Learn at Home

2011-02-10T20:52:00.003-05:00

Lessons Fathers Only Learn at Home
By Steven Withrow

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.
Mark Twain

Mommy’s off all afternoon. Saturday
is daddy’s day. Such a noise escapes
the hurricaned house—pent-up power
of penned-up toddler—our neighbors
suspect bears or bands of bandoleros
of shuddering drizzled windows
and putting squirrels off their ease.
Trees blown down, block towers
tumble to brobdingnagian boredom,
and twenty-piece puzzles pull apart
like planetoids around a weak sun.
Drawing won’t do, her crayons too
thin (too old) too fat (too new)
for crinkled construction paper.
I conscript sock puppets into service,
buy ten minutes, before breaking out
Rockin’ Baby Boombox Blaster
for a quick karaoke-dance-party
that fizzles after our fifth encore
of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”
(How I wish for Mommy’s car).
After bribing her with ice cream
to sip her juice cup at the table,
I sweep up off the sticky floor
the wreckage from the storm:
chaos of animal cracker crumbs,
rubble from a buttered bagel,
an anarchy of alphabet magnets.
I look over at my burbling girl,
once the white and flattened face
of the moon in a sonogram photo,
the now-calm eye at the center
of this maelstrom’s crushing path,
this aftermath, and I start to laugh
at all my wild and cataclysmic joys.

POEM: The Mad Monologue of Doctor Chronology

2011-02-09T11:48:00.002-05:00

The Mad Monologue of Doctor Chronology
(A Supervillain’s Lament)
By Steven Withrow

Any heart this world possesses must be dead.
And no, no other worlds exist. You’re free
To scoff, but I insist—Infinity
Hangs bleak and wholly heartless. I have said
As much to colleagues who would comprehend
The horrifying costs of cheating Time,
That knowing every outcome, every end
Before its cause, is tantamount to…I’m
Afraid you’ll have to nurse the glass I poured…
Is tantamount to rigging every game
Of take-your-chance and reaping no reward.
Yes, yes—I could reveal to you his name
Or home address. However, you should think—
And here I’ll buy us both another drink—
No matter what the bastard’s done to you,
What good would any retribution do?
Let’s say, by day, he teaches seventh grade,
A family man who, nightly, masquerades
As Fights-for-Truth-and-Justice Man, for fun.
You storm into his classroom with a gun,
Rejoicing in each bloody trigger-pull.
(I see your eyes; you’d down a barrelful.)
Then let’s suppose he’s quick enough to palm
Or misdirect your bullets. Do you bomb
A bus—no muss, no fuss—on second try,
While hiding in some rat-infested lair,
And feel him fall, a comet from the sky,
To cage you with his subatomic stare?
My boy, I have stood by and watched you fail,
Your machinations come to no avail,
For it’s the nature of my power to cast
My aura to the future or the past.
Go home—don’t be like me—I’ve lost the art.
Tomorrow, find yourself a steady job—
I hear they’re hiring muscle for The Mob—
Or disbelieve, and dog your own dead heart.

POEM: Emptying the Apartment

2011-02-04T07:08:00.005-05:00

Loose pentameters with a limited, inverted rhyme scheme across stanzas.

Emptying the Apartment
By Steven Withrow

We take apart my bookshelves and your stack
Of photo albums on the floor. These bare
Accoutrements of years, which give the table
By our kitchen, where we ate, the glamour
Of an antiques dealer’s booth—a square
Of yellowed quilting cloth, a silver plaque
Commemorating some event, a hammer,
Chalk pastels, a frayed coaxial cable—

Are still-life props arranged to look unstable,
Syllables that jar a gentle grammar,
Cartoon figures inked with spotted blacks
To stand askew. We count what’s left, aware
That final tallies can’t be made. Your camera
Catches me affixing one last label
On a box of wedding gifts. Cold air
Waits at the door. We're gone, not coming back.

POEM: Blake

2011-02-03T09:24:00.007-05:00

I borrowed the structure and the casual tone of Timothy Steele’s poem “Fae” (which you can read here) to create a poem that comes directly out of my experiences as a child of the 1980s. Thanks to my friend Blake, with whom I've reconnected after too many years.

Blake
By Steven Withrow

I ring Blake’s doorbell. Soon his mother’s there.
She has me wait. I bend to tie my shoes
Considering the fourth grade’s breaking news
That Amy Quist kissed Tim Doyle on a dare.
When Blake comes out, he’s dressed as Captain Kirk,
A chubby kid who looks like he could use
Some cooler clothes, but who am I to smirk?

Myself, I’m in a faded Star Wars T,
A menacing Darth Vader on the chest.
I flash a friendly smile. Blake does his best
James Kirk impersonation: “Could it be
We’ve stumbled into dueling sci-fi flicks?”
His Star Fleet shirt is yellow, freshly pressed,
And laughable, though nothing I can fix.

To mend the rift, we silently decide
To spend the summer morning busting ghosts
And trapping ectoplasmic floating hosts
With proton packs and Tobin’s Spirit Guide.
Some girls ride by on bikes, and still Blake speaks
Our favorite line: “All right, this chick is TOAST!”
To him we’re heroes. Me, a pair of geeks.

POEM: Seagulls Glimpsed in a Side Lot

2011-02-02T15:24:00.003-05:00

A memento of my morning commute:

Seagulls Glimpsed in a Side Lot
By Steven Withrow

They seem tipsy,
these ransackers

of rubbish,
wind-whipped white

featherheads
blowsy with rain.

They’ve slashed
a fast-food bag

and are swaying,
slurping up

a drunk’s feast
of sopped leavings,

hurling seasoned
curly fries

with mellow flicks
of their beaks

to the wobbling
water’s edge

of a sloshed
storm drain,

before scudding
out of sight.

Winning Poem for the Month of January

2011-02-02T11:27:00.009-05:00

An all-star panel of judges has selected my poem as the winner of the January word-of-the-month poetry contest at David L. Harrison's very popular blog. "Pilot Fish" is part of my children's-poetry-collection-seeking-a-publisher, Life at the Aquarium.

PILOT FISH
Naucrates ductor
By Steven Withrow

I buddy with a whitetip shark
And follow in his deadly dark,
The perfect tagalong.

I give my symbiotic terms:
“I’ll eat up all your lice and worms,
If you’ll help me survive.”

And when the feeding frenzies start,
My bodyguard fulfills his part
And shields me from the throng.

I’ll swim in any bully’s lee,
And pay any protection fee,
If it keeps me alive.

POEM: After Superman's Death

2011-01-26T12:17:00.003-05:00

After Superman’s Death
By Steven Withrow

Lex Luthor marries Lois Lane.
They honeymoon on Mars.
On Earth, an elevated train
Goes plunging into cars.

The Daily Planet’s put to bed
When Perry White resigns,
And Jimmy Olsen’s blog is read
By dowagers online.

Bizzaro, Zod, and Brainiac
Take over City Hall,
And chuckle when a gas attack
Kills thousands at the mall.

Far north, a crystal fortress stands
As empty as a dent.
Back east, the condo board demands
Arrears from deadbeat Kent.

Many thanks to Ryder Windham for his careful editing.

Copyright 2011 by Steven Withrow. All rights reserved.

POEM: Child Waking at Night

2011-01-23T20:13:00.003-05:00

The night after I heard fairy-tale scholar Maria Tatar speak about Little Red Riding Hood at The Eric Carle Museum, my daughter woke up from a bad dream. Jane Yolen helped me revise this one, which started out much longer and in free verse:

Child Waking at Night
By Steven Withrow

She stirs, and bares her baby teeth,
A sharp and predatory grin.
Small fists scare like wrens beneath
The panicked sheet. What waits within
Her wooded sleep, her dreamer’s den,
To stalk and still her breath again?

She wreathes her fears in kindling smoke,
Her brittle bonework blanket-pinned,
And knits from mottled cloth a cloak
To block the sudden rain and wind
That howls and bellows from her bed.
She slumps back, pillows down her head.

Two Worm Poems by Marin and Daddy

2011-01-08T10:21:00.010-05:00

My five-year-old daughter and I wrote two poems together this morning after watching a TV show about worms. Marin supplied the title and all the rhymes for the first one, and she composed the second one by herself (with just a little help from Daddy). Enjoy!

WORMS LOOK HEAVY WHEN YOU'RE SMALL
By Marin and Steven Withrow

Worms look heavy when you're small.
Grass blades look skyscraper tall.
Robins round as redwood trees—
Ants come only to their knees!

Caterpillars scale large leaves.
You'll have to roll up both your sleeves
To climb and pat each fuzzy back—
Hope you're not a buggy snack!

Pebbles rise to mountain height.
Shadows turning noon to night.
Dandelions sway like cranes—
Pray you grow before it rains!

WORMS ARE WIGGLY AND THEY'RE SQUIGGLY
By Marin and Steven Withrow

Worms are wiggly and they're squiggly.
When worms go in the rain
They're fine but they don't drain.

When worms squirm they pick up germs
And when they dig, they dig like worms.
'Cause worms don't have no legs or erms.

POEM: Hatpin the Mouse and the Christmas Crisscross

2010-12-24T10:35:00.016-05:00

Ever since my daughter was a baby, I've told her stories about Hatpin the Mouse, who lives in King Hoppentoad's castle and has many adventures with bats, owls, wild turkeys, and magical mountain goats. Here's a new one. Happy Holidays!

HATPIN THE MOUSE AND THE CHRISTMAS CRISSCROSS

For Marin

’Twas the year that it snowed every day for three weeks
In the kingdom of King Hoppentoad,
And the drifts from the storms were as high as the peaks
Of the houses that lined Castle Road,
When young Hatpin the Mouse, who slept safe in his hole
In a corner concealed from the cat,
Had a dream that the reason the snows took their toll
Was the work of a Sinister Rat.

As Hatpin awoke and crept into the light
Of the hallway outside of his lair,
He listened for signs of loud bumps in the night,
But, thankfully, no one was there.
Yet when he returned to his room and his bed
With a comforter made of goose down,
He found most his furnishings missing instead,
And his whiskery face wore a frown.

All that was left of the things he called “mine”
Was a scarf he had knitted himself,
And his favorite twisted-up ball of gold twine
That had rolled from a high, empty shelf.
He wrapped his old scarf twice around his small neck,
And he pushed his twine ball out the door,
But he paused when he put out a paw just to check
That no tomcats or rats prowled the floor.

And hatching a plan like a chick from an egg,
Hatpin rolled out a string from his ball,
Then he tied it in knots to his furry left leg
And he started to walk down the hall.
He zigged and he zagged a diagonal map
With a trail of gold twine at his tail,
Speedily laying a tripworthy trap
So ingenious it never would fail.

Once his work was all done, he awaited the thief
In the emptied-out dark of his room,
And only one minute passed, to his relief,
When he heard something snarl—and then BOOM!—
Out of the shadows he jigged and he jagged,
And the sight that he saw made him giggle,
For there in a tangle of twine he had snagged
A giant black rat all a-wriggle!

Since the sturdy gold twine proved incredibly tough
For the rat to bite through, he called truce:
“I will promise to give you back all of your stuff,
If you’ll promise to help me get loose.”
And Hatpin, a brave and intelligent mouse,
Agreed, but he made the rat swear,
“You’ll never revisit this town or this house,
And you’ll leave this place now, are we square?”

And Hatpin, he followed as far as he could
To the gate, and he watched the rat go
Scrambling, scurrying off through the wood
And the winter trees bowing with snow.

POEM: Climate Change in Faeryland

2010-11-30T11:49:00.003-05:00

CLIMATE CHANGE IN FAERYLAND
By Steven Withrow

All the trolls from the Kingdom of Klaarjj
Floated off on a large wooden barge
In search of high ground where the Flood
Had not drowned every field into mud,
And the rains of decay would not pelt
Night and day, and the sun would not melt,
As they’d heard it had done, sparking fires
In the realm of Prince Caspian’s Spires.

And running aground on the Islet of Ice,
Which once had been home to a nation of mice,
The Klaarjjian trolls stomped their furious feet,
For in this cold clime…they found nothing to eat.

On a sea without fish, flora, kraken, or whale
Rode a bright tale of hope on a gossiping gale,
And the trolls who were frostbit and hungry and sad
Repeated these words till they nearly went mad:
You will sail many leagues before morning,
You will cross many miles after dawn,
But you all will arrive without warning,
In a place where fine summer lives on.

And the troll-children sang in their Klaarjjian brogue
About Camelot, Oz, Shangri-La, Tír na nÓg,
And the echoes of Neverland, Narnia rose
Through the cloud-crowded skies, over empty ice floes.

All the trolls from the Kingdom of Klaarjj
Floating still on a large wooden barge,
They follow the song of the breezing
That keeps their poor troll-paws from freezing,
That fixes their eyes on a haven that seems
As far as the stars and as close as their dreams…
And even in your world—have the rains started falling?—
It’s the voice of imaginings lost you hear calling.

©2010 by Steven Withrow. All rights reserved.

POEM: Maximilian Manglepaw

2010-11-23T14:23:00.014-05:00

This is a follow-up to "Mouse Missive" -- a fantasy poem I wrote in 2007 about a society of mice engaged in an epic battle for survival. A little bit of Redwall, a little bit of Rats of NIMH -- and a lot of me. My subconscious has been working on the larger story, expanding a tiny world, and I wrote this draft in one sitting.

Maximilian Manglepaw, or The Mouse-Hero’s Song
By Steven Withrow

Maximilian Manglepaw of Mercymartyr’s Bay
Traversed the Cattish countryside
In Queen Whitewhisker’s day.
A noble mouse ignoble born,
He searched the Scratchlands,
Gaunt, forlorn,
And met with many perils there,
So far from ’Martyr’s Bay,
For the treasure of his heart had gone
And spirited away.

Through squelchy season’s dewdrop fall,
Through flooded field and mud,
He wandered wary of the sound
Of hunters hot for blood…
Each cry of hawk, each hoot of owl,
Each howling dog and tomcat yowl,
And gabbling goblins worst of all
Night creatures fierce and foul.

Across the grass-bald Wasted Waste,
No cover and no sleep,
Beyond the Uninviting Place
Did Maximilian creep.
He tangled with a widow spider,
Left his buckthorn blade inside her,
Wore her web as traveling cloak,
No smoke, no stoking fire.

Maximilian Manglepaw of Mercymartyr’s Bay
Traversed the Cattish countryside
In Queen Whitewhisker’s day.
A noble mouse ignoble born,
He searched the Scratchlands,
Gaunt, forlorn,
And met with many perils there,
So far from ’Martyr’s Bay,
For the treasure of his heart had gone
And spirited away.

POEM: Before (a climbing rhyme)

2010-10-17T01:46:00.004-04:00

A climbing rhyme I wrote for the Miss Rumphius Effect poetry stretch. A tiny bit, I hope, of the inimitable Valerie Worth in this modest effort.

BEFORE
By Steven Withrow

Before we go,
let us slowly
compose ourselves,
like toy shelves kept
by elves, or pins
pointed in a
cushion, like poems.

POEM: Green Sea Turtle

2010-10-01T13:46:00.003-04:00

Here's a poem from my children's poetry collection, Life at the Aquarium, for which I am seeking an agent or publisher.

GREEN SEA TURTLE
Chelonia mydas

One hundred years she learned to swim,
To slow her breath, and to exhale,
Not breaching like a pilot whale
On surfacing at ocean's rim,
But peeking out her bony beak
To taste a gulp of gusty air.

One hundred years to reach full size,
To earn each scar that scores her back,
Engravings from a shark attack,
To win the wisdom of her eyes.
What tales she'd tell if she could speak!
But I can only stand and stare.

POEM: Film at Eleven

2010-09-30T13:41:00.007-04:00

I'm not ashamed to admit that I have a fascination with superheroes and supervillains. Written for David Harrison's word-of-the-month poetry contest (October's word is "change"). I'm thinking here of the future of human evolution, and I'm playing with end rhymes, narrative, and iambic tetrameter.

FILM AT ELEVEN
By Steven Withrow

In local news tonight, a shocking
Development in the murder trial
Of Dr. Andrew Vogelsteen,
The self-styled “supercriminal”
Arrested a year ago for knocking
Over an armored car by means
Of what he calls “Subliminal
Propulsion”—Vogelsteen beguiled

Jurors this afternoon as he dodged
The prosecution’s inquiries
Regarding his relationship
With actress Angelina Hodge,
And if he had an alibi,
Or could explain her injuries.
With cold command, he answered, “I
Was out of town. A business trip.”

It was clear his stolid gaze was fixed
On Major Force, his nemesis,
Who loomed posthuman over all
Assembled to see justice mixed
With retribution gone amiss.
No flashbulbs dulled the hero’s light;
Judge Croke had ordered cameras out
To soothe the mourners by the wall.

In forty minutes court resumed.
Consensus in the jury room
Convicted Vogelsteen for life.
And one can only speculate
What sped them to deliberate.
But this reporter thinks, how odd,
When stood before a living god,
We plunge the sacrificial knife.

POEM: Lefty Scissors

2010-09-29T12:12:00.003-04:00

LEFTY SCISSORS
By Steven Withrow

Those southpaw snippers never make the cut.
They clip and slice as nice as any righty,
But the fact remains they always ride the bench.
There’s something of the mighty underdog
About those unsung rookies overlooked
By every scout, and all they need is one
Chop at the plate to prove beyond a doubt
They won’t strike out. Instead, they bide their time
With grace, while righty fans sneer, sinister,
And boo. How do the ambidextrous test
Their heft? Left out, left over, left alone,
They still could split the team and field their own,
Decide it scissors, paper, fist, or stone,
The only just and right way left to go.

POEM: Lines at a Wake

2010-09-24T18:23:00.006-04:00

LINES AT A WAKE
By Steven Withrow

The first one knew the body as a baby.
She’d cradled him a quarter of his size.
A circumspect and disconcerted lady,
She couldn’t trust the wisdom of her eyes.

The second mourner held a beaded rosary
Dead-gripped in her fist, a whispered prayer
Fumbled on her lips, her stance a pose she
Used to test the grief-encumbered air.

Paraded, close like cattle, past the casket,
The third an uncle, fourth a high school friend.
The fifth dropped her donation in a basket
Before she met his parents at the end.

The sixth pretended permanent confusion.
His, the most unnerving pose of all.
No one saw him enter, pale illusion
Who gaped down at his powdered face

Like a white wax doll.

POEM: Sad Architect

2010-09-23T19:21:00.006-04:00

SAD ARCHITECT
By Steven Withrow

Because the tide’s rising measure
Drowns the sloping sand bar,
Smoothing over flat beach stones,
Flooding in its awful hour,
I will not build my parapet,
I will not build my tower.

POEM: Giant Pacific Octopus

2010-09-15T19:57:00.001-04:00

From a children's collection-in-progress titled Life at the Aquarium:

GIANT PACIFIC OCTOPUS
Enteroctopus dofleini

Could you open a jar with your arms?
Could you teach me to juggle eight squid?
Do you name every one of your thousands of eggs?
Are you jealous of how the nautilus swims?
Do you know how to speak to the oysters and clams?
Does the cuttlefish get on your nerves?
Is your pressurized world claustrophobic sometimes?
Would you walk on two legs if you could?
Do you hide when the wolf eels are hunting?
Do you still hear the ocean's faint echoing sound?
Are you looking at me as I'm looking at you?
And what, may I ask, do you see?

POEM: A Few Discrepancies

2010-09-06T21:48:00.002-04:00

Written for the Monday poetry stretch at Miss Rumphius Effect:

A FEW DISCREPANCIES
By Steven Withrow

They say the broken watch fixed time,
but the water clock and the hourglass run on.

They say the old grow wise and circumspect,
but toddlers learn to lie and split the difference.

They say the sharper knife cuts quick,
but the duller dulls the whetstone equally.

They say what's done is done, enough's enough,
but are they the same who spoke of knives and time?

They say the aster and the rose, but I,
I say the withered marigold, the baby's breath, the balm.

POEM: Into One, Another

2010-09-03T21:08:00.004-04:00

INTO ONE, ANOTHER
By Steven Withrow

For Lesley

Once, from the roadside,
you called me, freaked,
on your first cell phone,
to say you'd had a flat,
and wrestled the wheel
across two open lanes
to a wobbling stop.

I gulped, could feel trucks
barreling by
so close, my breathing
sounded loud over yours,
scared yet intimate,
as though, caught in a kiss,
we shared the same air.

No love, no lasting
love, escapes risk,
shuns running off road
over the rumble strip,
but to each other
we are shelter, voices
merging on the verge.

POEM: Broken Bridge

2010-09-02T16:39:00.009-04:00

For David Harrison's word-of-the-month poem contest (September: "book") after listening to a book about stage magic and discovering a missing bridge on my way to work. This is a syllabic poem with lines hovering around tetrameter.

BROKEN BRIDGE
By Steven Withrow

Between commutes, night workers have
Houdini’d a two-lane overpass,
Leaving steel-studded supports

Bookending the old post road,
Totems, tomes, magician’s lore,
A sleight of civil engineering

Conjured wholly out of place,
Span of vanished expectation,
As though traveling a novel

And slamming, mid-sentence, into
Ellipsis ... blank caesura
Of a chapter break ... cliffhang-

Ing, bridge-defying business,
No job for the faint (the feint?)
Of heart—this morning, are those

Hard-hatted daysleepers dreaming
Of dawn’s interpolation
In night’s rhythm of wreck and rest,

Or are they too done in by toil
To presto forth illusions
On the disappearing scrim of sleep?

POEM: Best of a Bad Spell

2010-08-13T23:46:00.002-04:00

BEST OF A BAD SPELL
By Steven Withrow

Losing the Williams Junior High School
spelling bee, on “eleemosynary,”
was, I now see, an act of charity.
Knowing the Latin root for “alms”
(could you use it in a sentence?)
guarantees no one a varsity letter.

Although it burned me that I flubbed
the double e’s, entreating the floor
for the proper etymology
before retreating to my seat
to small applause, conciliatory
(c-o-n-c-i-l-i-a-t-o-r-y, conciliatory),

Worse by far would have been
the booming backlash in homeroom
next morning, hearing my name
among the roster of brainiacs,
“loo-zer” in any language, certain
I’d perish (part of speech?) a virgin.

POEM: Remind Me Again

2010-07-24T15:25:00.004-04:00

Here is a poem I wrote for my Aunt Linda, who has early-onset Alzheimer's disease. It was difficult but helpful for me to express a cherished memory in her honor.

REMIND ME AGAIN
For Linda Casella

By Steven Withrow

The day I failed my driver’s test
for backing a tire over the curb,
you sat in the back seat,
silent, a light purse on your lap,
behind the dour DMV man
busily signing his report
while my tousled teenage brain
began to imagine a car-less future—
not some magic kingdom of monorails
or a zeppelin city from comic books,
but me, alone, without a license,
feeling the forever shame of sixteen.

My mother, your sister, was home
with my brother and a daycare baby.
You’d offered to bring me,
let me drive your car, a compact,
patted my shoulder after it was done,
and said don’t worry, there’s always
next time, and you’d come along
again, if I wanted, for the ride.
I tried my best to explain it away
as nerves, a lack of practice time,
and you kept the radio on low
as you drove us back to my house.

Another day, twenty years on,
I stand outside Uncle Charlie’s
crocodile green convertible
watching you napping on
a neck-pillow, passenger side.
It’s my daughter’s birthday—
she’s three—and you won’t know me
when you open your eyes.
Remind me again how this goes:
your careless hope, your
kind and reassuring calm
no grinding failure can abrade.

Publishers Weekly Previews Documentary!

2010-07-08T22:05:00.006-04:00

Great online article by Judith Rosen at Publishers Weekly. Please check it out and help spread the word about the film!

Also, we're launching a new website over the next couple of weeks. The central image is a preview of a mixed-media piece now being created by my friend Jason May.

POEM: Past Lives

2010-07-02T22:49:00.003-04:00

I wrote this poem for my wife after stopping at an intersection next to a Revolutionary War-era graveyard and thinking about the permanence and impermanence of love. The poem has an underlying syllabic pattern that varies with each stanza.

PAST LIVES
For Lesley Ann
By Steven Withrow

I

Squirrels play there, by the low
stone marker, where lie
Thomas and Constance Porter:
Died Together. 1793.

I dream they met each other
young, stayed poor, had nine
daughters, then a son who won
a medal in the War of 1812.

How they died, I do not know,
Tall Tom, dirt farmer,
with his once and only love,
but this is my dream, and their hands are clasped.

II

Did I hold you then?
Were you the stalwart mother
who mourned our first four darlings at their births?
And was it fever took us?

Did I ache for you,
those brute New England winters,
raw skin scraped off my knuckles with the cold,
when hard rime clothed my body?

Could it be our souls
metamorphose over time,
as mine-deep, pressure-heated protoliths,
anthracites from common coals?

III

When we, at this life’s finish,
tug loamy covers snugly overhead
and bury all that makes us
who we are, perhaps...

We’ll randomize our atoms
and rearrange each letter in our names
till masonries of longing
have etched us new lives.

Thomas and Constance Porter.
Died Together. 1793.
My dream, yours. Our hands are clasped.
Squirrels, still playing.

VERSE: The Witch's Itches

2010-06-30T20:28:00.009-04:00

A tongue-twister I wrote for my daughter and for David Harrison's July word-of-the-month poetry contest ("itch"):

THE WITCH’S ITCHES
By Steven Withrow

An itchy witch, she never scratches,
Never scratches, never scratches,
The gnashiest of witchy rashes,
Witchy rashes, witchy rashes...
She pitches, twitches on her broom,
Upon her broom, up on her broom,
And howls unhitched her yowls of gloom,
Growls of doom to eldritch moon...
She’d gladly ditch her earthly riches,
Earthly riches, earthly riches,
Or switch her fate with sniveling snitches,
Sniveling snitches in stitchy britches,
To still that itch she never scratches,
Never scratches, never scratches,
That itch which glitches witch’s niches,
And de-mo-LISH-es witch’s wishes!

POEM: Backyard Birds

2010-06-25T12:13:00.009-04:00

A small poem for early summer:

BACKYARD BIRDS
By Steven Withrow

No melody so much at home
as that high hubbub, sly
backtalk of robin and wren,

aloft with the soft scratching
of a song sparrow singing
on a swaying seed dish.

Are we not the same audience
who spied, last August,
a yellow flash

of goldfinch, nuthatch,
or the bright blood spot
of a scarlet tanager,

a bachelor sashaying
from elm leader to flagpole
to deck railing, calling:

I will not go when summer goes —
my brilliant dance, my dalliance
will live, will live.

Documentary trailer now online -- help spread the word!

2010-06-19T13:25:00.006-04:00

Now online is the first of several trailers we'll be posting in the coming months. Enjoy, and please help us spread the word about the film!

Documentary film to screen at Harvard University!

2010-05-11T16:45:00.006-04:00

Library of the Early Mind, a feature-length documentary film about children's books I am producing with director Edward J. Delaney, will have its first screening at Harvard University in Boston on Tuesday, October 19, 2010, from 5:30 to 8 p.m.

The screening and panel discussion with the filmmakers and featured authors are being offered by the Askwith Education Forum, which is part of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The event is free and open to the public.

Many thanks to Lolly Robinson and Roger Sutton of The Horn Book for helping to arrange this exciting event. The Children’s Book Shop in Brookline will be running a signing and book sale.

The film is also being submitted to film festivals around the world. It features music by Jason K. Nitsch and interviews with a truly extraordinary list of authors, illustrators, critics, editors, librarians, booksellers, and others.

Lemony Snicket, Lois Lowry, Chris Van Allsburg, R.L. Stine, Jane Yolen, Gregory Maguire, M.T. Anderson, Norton Juster, Natalie Babbitt, Lane Smith, Jack Gantos, Brian Selznick, Grace Lin, David Small, Mary Jane Begin, Nancy Garden, Arthur Levine, Mo Willems, Jeff Kinney, Roger Sutton, Anita Silvey, Adam Gopnik.
And many more.

We will have much exciting news -- and an online trailer -- to share over the next few months. Check out our production blog featuring brief clips from the interviews!

POEM: No Homework

2010-05-10T13:13:00.003-04:00

For this week's poetry stretch at The Miss Rumphius Effect (assignment: write about "homework"):

NO HOMEWORK
By Steven Withrow

No ravenous dog.
No Martian invasion.
No thirty-mile slog
To a family occasion.
No sudden swine flu.
No CIA visit.
I’d homework to do.
You wonder, “Where is it?”
No grandmother died.
No nibbled by mouses.
No night trapped inside
The most haunted of houses.
No transformer crashed
Blacking out my whole block.
No asteroid smashed
Shelling me such a shock
That the part of my head
Where I store my assignments
Was tattered to shreds
And knocked out of alignment.
No bully’s reprisal.
No baby bro’s vomit.
No search of the skies
For a hundred-year comet.
No freak springtime snow.
No lottery winnings.
No open bus window.
No game past nine innings.
You say, “Give it here.
No lies. No excuses.”
Is this the cold fear
That NO HOMEWORK induces?

Essay and a new poem at David Harrison's site

2010-04-30T10:48:00.008-04:00

Poet, children's book author, and educator David L. Harrison has graciously invited me to share with the readers of his excellent blog an essay about my experiences with poetry. A great way to finish off National Poetry Month!

I've also posted my latest poem, a bit of nonsense, for the May word-of-the-month contest ("stone"):

SAY WHAT?
By Steven Withrow

Children chugging chicken broth
And bears imbibing beers
Roosters ringing telephones
And tigers tugging tears
Rat snakes riding roadrunners
And beetles breaking bones
For all the sense it makes to me
When toads turn into stones

A Riff on Ezra Pound's Cantico del Sole

2010-04-21T20:44:00.008-04:00

A Riff on Ezra Pound's Cantico del Sole
By Steven Withrow

The thought of a young poet without an MFA
Or a tenure-track position
Troubles my sleep,
The thought of a young poet,
The thought of a young poet,
The thought of a young poet without an MFA
Or a tenure-track position
Troubles my sleep.
Unemployment, or working as a civil servant,
Or working as a civil servant,
Till Rest in Peace.
The thought of a young poet,
The thought of a young poet,
The thought of a young poet without an MFA
Or a tenure-track position
Troubles my sleep . . .
Oh hell!
It troubles my sleep.

POEM: Heels of Hermes

2010-04-20T12:42:00.004-04:00

A poem written for the weekly poetry stretch at Miss Rumphius Effect, with the invitation to write about shoes:

HEELS OF HERMES
By Steven Withrow

I want flight feet,
twin sandals feather-soled,
like Perseus who fought the hag
Medusa, winged talaria,
my steps cloud steps, mercurial.

I’d like my ankles girded tight
in earth-defying wires, toes
clawed for grasping eagle outcrops,
shoes unglued from ground, my
socks Mars rockets!

POEM: After Flooding

2010-04-09T16:25:00.006-04:00

For David Harrison's word-of-the-month poetry contest (this month's word is "spring").

AFTER FLOODING
By Steven Withrow

Worms compete with mold
To say it’s spring.
River crests quit quagmiring.
Ducks in mated pairs
Canoodle in parking puddles.
Junipers, alders, poplars
Lob pollen bombs.

And on an Easter blanket
Ants of shaded April grasses
Skirt a napping newborn boy.

POEM: Point Judith Light

2010-03-19T10:09:00.010-04:00

Here's a tritina I wrote about a trip with my daughter, Marin, who is four. A tritina is a verse form half the length of a sestina with a specific pattern of repeating end words across the lines and stanzas.

POINT JUDITH LIGHT
By Steven Withrow

That Sunday you wanted a drive,
So we drove south, you and I,
Singing alphabet songs, to the sea.

Some roads lead only to the sea.
We passed a sign for “Scenic Drive,”
You pointed out a lighthouse, which I

Saw was a mammoth lowercase “i”
Topped with a beacon, and the sea
Strove with its moon-driven drive

To drive us, home, beyond what my eye could see.

THE FEATHER OF MEMORY -- a story in verse

2010-03-01T14:41:00.011-05:00

The Feather of Memory, a story in verse for young adults, will make its official debut on Monday, March 15th, the Ides of March, a date that plays an important part in the story. The series will update weekly until the story is completed.

The main narrative will be written in blank verse -- unrhymed iambic pentameter -- and each episode will also include an audio file of me reading the poem aloud.

Hope you'll come along for the ride, add it to your blog reader or bookmarks, and help spread the word!

Can Children's Poetry Matter? Yes!

2010-02-19T11:35:00.007-05:00

Check out this excellent essay -- "Can Children's Poetry Matter?" -- by J. Patrick Lewis in Hunger Mountain, the journal of the Vermont College of Fine Arts. I share a little story of my own in the comments section. Enjoy!

My response:

I remember being 8 years old, in 1982, and picking up a copy of Dogs & Dragons, Trees & Dreams, a collection of poems by Karla Kuskin, that had fallen from a school library shelf while I was hunting for something else. (My favorite books have always pounced on me like eager kittens.) The book fell open, and I read (from “Spring Again”):

Buds on the branches
a breeze in the blue
and me without mittens
my sweater unbuttoned
a spring full of things
all before me to do.

I loved the sound of it, and I still do. I started raiding the poetry section that day, and I haven’t stopped.

I’m sure it was the intimate intensity of that unexpected experience — and the randomness of it, like clicking on the radio and hearing a secret song played just for me — that bonded me to poems. At that age, I was never quite as enthusiastic when a teacher tried to introduce a poem in a classroom or we were asked to read one aloud as a group. In fact, if you’d asked me then if I liked poetry, I would have said (aloud at least), “Yuck, that’s girl stuff.”

But the fact that the book was there in a place where it was possible for me to collide with it — that was a gift from the universe (along with Ms. Kuskin, the school librarian, and the good people at Harper & Row) to me and me alone.

We need to put as many of these books in the paths of as many kids as possible, then get out of their way as much as makes sense, and let the words do their work.

Winner of January poetry contest!

2010-02-01T16:31:00.004-05:00

My narrative poem "The Time Ship" (see parts 1 and 2 below) received the most votes in David L. Harrison's word-of-the-month poetry contest (adult category) for January 2010. January's word was "time."

THE TIME SHIP, part 1
By Steven Withrow

I boarded August Twenty-Ten
That silver ship at Chronos Key.
I’m sure of this, but then again,
It might have been another me.

I signed ship’s log as second mate,
Just nineteen summers to my name.
I perfectly recall the date—
It’s Time itself that’s not the same.

The captain read my duties clear:
To chart our course, night’s watch to keep,
To rouse her crew should bearing veer,
To hail and interrupt their sleep.

We sailed twelve cycles undisturbed,
A glancing headwind at our prow.
Our compass slumbered unperturbed,
Until we reached the Straits of Now.

I stalked the crow’s nest, falcon-eyed,
Regarded marvels in the Stream,
Saw dwarf stars dawning on the tide
And dying there, a sailor’s dream.

Our minds stretched thin, our lives pressed short,
We drifted, time-tossed, toward our berth,
A startling, unfamiliar port,
Though all signs told us this was Earth.

On shore leave, as I write this poem,
The calendar reveals “LV.”
We’ve landed on the sands of Rome.
We’re stranded: Fifty-Five B.C.

And Julius Caesar, six years hence,
Will cross the mighty Rubicon,
And we’ll bear witness, present tense,
Before our Time Ship journeys on!

THE TIME SHIP, part 2
By Steven Withrow

Six years I lived in ancient Rome,
Disguised within a Roman shell.
I learned their tongue, their rites so well
It might have been my only home.

And Captain Baxter robed her ship
In costume of a common barge
And sensibly gave me the charge
Of chronicling our temporal slip.

Like Plutarch, I’m recording lives
Of storied leaders in their prime.
My syllables will sound through time
If any part of this survives.

Death of Crassus, Pompey’s wrath,
Watched Caesar seize the Senate floor,
Which buried Rome in civil war—
An Empire in the aftermath.

Now five years on, a legionnaire.
We march toward cold Britannia,
With slaves from brute Germania,
To settle Celtic troubles there.

I’ll carry armor, shield, and spear
Until my due to Caesar’s done,
And all I owe my ship is won,
And we’re back in the chronosphere.

Our destination next is set
On Egypt’s Eighteenth Dynasty
In Thirteen-Thirty-Nine B.C.—
The past’s my future, don’t forget.

I wonder if I’ll play the role
Of Tutankhamun’s nursery-mate,
Or if I’ll draw a harsher fate
And they’ll embalm my sailor’s soul.

Wait...breaking news along the line:
Great Caesar slain by traitor’s hand!
Such shock...no one can understand,
For no man’s view’s as long as mine.

Second Fieldnote on Seven Impossible Things!

2010-01-27T22:20:00.003-05:00

I have a new interview online with children's book agent Steven Malk that I think you'll really enjoy reading. Check it out!

Check out a few of my comics stories online

2010-01-11T17:14:00.005-05:00

I haven't plugged my online comics stories in a little while. It's a new year, a new decade, and a great time to give them all a read. A wide assortment of story stuff in collaboration with some truly wonderful artists!

Steve philosophizes on superhero comics at Comic Book Resources

2010-01-11T17:10:00.003-05:00

This week and next, critic and writer Tim Callahan and I converse at length on the superhero archetype and pantheon, the iconic-dramatic spectrum, and assorted other fascinating subjects in Tim's When Words Collide column at ComicBookResources.com.

Check it out!

POEM: Moose

2010-01-05T10:03:00.004-05:00

The shadorma is a Spanish verse form composed of six lines with a syllable count of 3/5/3/3/7/5. I wrote this one for this week's Poetry Stretch at The Miss Rumphius Effect. Names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent.

Toughest kid
in the seventh grade
was Paul Corr—
known as Moose—
who'd hit a girl with glasses
for her lunch ticket.

We feared him,
but I saw him once
running late
to a car
and a fat fist cuffed his cheek—
gift of Papa Moose.

Christmas Poem: The Very Bad Present

2009-12-22T09:22:00.008-05:00

Wrote this last year, but wanted to share it again. If only I could have had Edward Gorey illustrate this. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, everyone!

My Christmas list was two lines long
And this is what it said:
“Dear Santa Claus, please bring a bike,
A helmet for my head.”
But Old Saint Nick, he got it wrong,
Brought something else instead.

On Christmas morning I awoke
And bounded out of bed,
But when I reached the family room
I froze in mortal dread.
For what I saw was not my bike,
But a box striped black and red.

The box stood taller than our tree
And wider than our shed.
It wore a script of spider web
I hesitantly read:
“A Gift That Every Child Will Love.
Just Open. Go Ahead.”

The echo of those taunting words—
I almost turned and fled,
But something made me take a step,
To rip and tear and shred,
And soon before me was a fog
That ominously spread.

The fog rose up the bedroom stairs,
A specter of the dead.
It floated past my parents' door.
I followed where it led.
It swallowed up the hallway light,
Then ate my brother Ted.

And now I wish I never touched
That box of black and red.
I only wonder what comes next,
Or how I’ll keep it fed.

First "Fieldnote" on Seven Impossible Things!

2009-12-15T07:49:00.004-05:00

Read all about art director and children's book designer Susan M. Sherman at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, one of the most fun and visually striking blogs about books in this or any other universe!

I had a great time conversing with Susan, and I think you'll enjoy all the insight and art she provided.

Next month: Children's book agent Steven Malk.

A Clerihew for Christmas

2009-12-14T11:56:00.003-05:00

I wrote this clerihew for the Monday Poetry Stretch at The Miss Rumphius Effect. A clerihew is a four-line verse written in an a/a/b/b rhyme scheme that is biographical and humorous.

Pity poor ol' Santa Claus,
Who has a thing for Häagen-Dazs.
He tries to be a jolly soul,
But cookies make his belly roll!

Three Poems for "Bone"

2009-12-02T11:11:00.008-05:00

Three pieces for David L. Harrison's monthly poetry contest. December's word is "bone" -- and there's already some excellent work by talented poets. Feel free to join in the fun!

The first is a little rhyming romp from the future; the second is a more solemn poem, also from the future, in an invented form I call a "subtrahend" -- where you start with a certain number of syllables per line and then subtract one syllable from each line as the symmetrical stanzas continue, until you're finally left with a single syllable at the end; and the third is a play on Ezra Pound's glorious "In a Station of the Metro."

That reminds me: I should try a poem in honor of Jeff Smith's wondrous comics series.

MY STORY, STRANGE BUT TRUE
By Steven Withrow

My collarbone disrupted
When my fusion suit combusted
And I caromed off a table.
Sadly, now I am not able
To compete in Thursday’s race
Against that kid from outer space.
But if I focus my attention
On a mega-new invention,
I could probably devise
A kind of clavicle surprise,
Which means I psych my competition
With a nuclear addition…
So that bird-boned boy from Glorpus Prime
Had better jet come racing time!

ARCHAEOLOGISTS UNCOVER BONES, BIFOCALS, A TRICYCLE
By Steven Withrow

once the brave spelunkers hit bottom
not even the light
of history attended them

and the proton torches brought down
would not ignite
in the primordial dark

they were limited to touch
and scrabbled
along the cavern walls

in outmoded postures
like bears
or shamed penitents

of course their voices
were
nothing so old

and one whispered
something's here

in her grip
what once

was a
child's

toy

TO A HEAD BONE IN A GLASS CASE
By Steven Withrow

The intimation of these tooth marks in your skull;
Fossils of a T. rex row.

Profile of me at Seven Impossible Things!

2009-11-30T09:32:00.001-05:00

Jules Danielson has invited me to contribute monthly "Fieldnotes" to her amazing children's book blog, Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast. I'll be posting a regular interview/feature with a children's publishing professional -- starting December 15th with art director and book designer Susan M. Sherman.

There's a fun profile of me -- with plenty of pictures and a poem -- up today. Check it out!

Thanks for reading!

POEM: On the Jetty

2009-11-29T22:28:00.006-05:00

Boy who sits upon a bridge of stones
Over Plymouth Harbor shuts his eyes,
Silences all seagull-circus cries,
Guides the tide-lines in by thoughts alone.
He thinks that if he hooks one where it forms,
Soft, a foam of wave-wash at his feet,
Angles right where rock and waters meet,
He'll know the reeling power of a storm.
He dreams that he's a pilgrim on this landing,
Scrawny Myles Standish, émigré,
Anchorage mud deep in Plymouth Bay.
These reveries exceed his understanding,
No soldier he, nor seeker of the new,
Narrow buoy, adrift in world-wide blue.

© 2009 by Steven Withrow

POEM: Lamprey

2009-11-29T17:04:00.006-05:00

An outtake from a new project of mine. Too dark for the overall tone.

LAMPREY
Mordacia mordax

By Steven Withrow

Once, in brackish deep,
Mother Eel told her children
A scary story.

From the first our species slept,
Undisturbed, from dawn to dusk.

The young listeners
Wriggled in their shallow caves,
Jawless mouths open.

Waking in darkness, we fled
Our chambers in search of blood.

As she took a breath,
Mother's audience shivered
With sudden hunger.

Silent and sly as sea-grass,
We latched on passing mackerel.

None dared interrupt—
Their nightmarish attention
Could not be broken.

Ah, we feasted, and we fed,
And fish learned to curse our name.

Mother Eel rose up,
Her body a twisted tube,
And showed her ringed teeth.

But we were never monsters,
Only skillful parasites.

All at once her brood
Burst out of their catacombs,
A horde of leeches.

Follow me now, my elvers,
For though they fear you,

You were born
To drink your fill.

POEM: Letter from Fox

2009-11-24T09:48:00.005-05:00

Dear Child:

I am not that fox you dreamt of
when sleep slipped you to the woods,

nor that troublesome trickster who
dropped riddles like windfall apples.

I assure you I was never
(at least no one remembers)

counting bluebells in the shadow
of a stand of needled pines

when hounds walloping thunder,
bent men with trumpet voices

spurring on eyeless horses,
sussed me to the meadow.

I insist now it was simply
moon's unmasking sheen,

street lamp's falling beam
that blazed me like a flame,

allowing you to glimpse me
as I stopped upon your stoop,

and incandescence turned me
shades of something smoldering,

smoke-hues of your fears,
from red fur of my haunches

to burnt ends of my ears.

Illustrators Show at R. Michelson Galleries

2009-11-13T12:31:00.005-05:00

Check out Lesley's great new post about our wonderful trip to Northampton last weekend!

POEM: Rockhoppers

2009-11-01T19:29:00.011-05:00

This is my second poem for David L. Harrison's monthly poem contest. November's word is "thanks."

ROCKHOPPERS
By Steven Withrow

Under the right whale bones
breaching the blue ceiling
of the New England Aquarium,
a waddle of rockhopper penguins,
tufted punks from the South Pole,
skrawks in a raucous chorus
as a feeder wades in wetsuited,
floating a bucket of tiny fish
for their lunch. And Marin,
who is four, watches them
through the low glass partition
with an aquarist’s rigor,
her mirrored mouth mimicking each grab
and gulp of open orange beak. She
presses against me, daughter
of my grateful heart, and asks,
“Why don’t they say thank you?”
I tell her, “I don’t know.
Penguins can’t speak like we do.”
But inside I think of how
they drop from rock to rock,
clumsy on their bird-feet,
until one, and then another, slips
without a splash into the cool pool
that passes here for home,
their cold and southern sea.
I name them Water-glider,
Tidal-feather, Torpedo,
and Swims-as-peregrine-falcons-fly.
We trace their loops and interlaces
and laugh as a pudgy male
pops his bottle-body up
onto the lip of a slick stone slab,
upending an unsuspecting hen,
before barging in line
for a chance at seconds.
After, Marin tugs my hand,
her patience for penguins at its end,
and we wander toward tanks
that hold cuttlefish, anemones,
lampreys, leafy sea dragons
practicing camouflage
among the fluorescent fronds.
Behind us, the hoppers chatter on,
clap their wings against their sides.
I want to turn and applaud,
but Marin has spied some mollusk shells,
and we give thanks to them.

© 2009 by Steven Withrow

FLASH FICTION: The Spiral Staircase

2009-10-29T23:08:00.008-04:00

As a writing exercise, I challenged myself to tell a complete story in under 300 words. The piece below is 298 words including the title. Happy Halloween!

THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE
© 2009 by Steven Withrow

How he'd found himself there, at the foot of the narrow nautilus of stairs, he couldn't say. He only knew it was important that he climb and keep climbing.

One corkscrew section became another, and another. White light emanated from everywhere. He fixed his eyes on his shoes, too dressy and thin-soled for a strenuous ascent. He looked like a man made up for an interview at a bank or brokerage. A briefcase would have completed the picture, but his hands and pockets were empty. No wallet or identification.

He had no other purpose besides this raw business of clambering upward, of raising his body in tight circles toward some landing he could not yet see, wasn’t entirely sure he’d ever reach.

Still he climbed.

He counted a thousand revolutions before forcing himself to pause. He was no longer breathing well. Muscles hurt, arches cramped, neck ached. He considered resting there. No harm, he thought, his brain too tired to resist.

A pounding echo from below juddered him into motion.

Climbing, he tried to place the source and how far down it began. Stairs absorbed and distorted every sound. Coiled space deceived.

At first it was a pulse, steady like a heart’s throb. Then a more erratic pattern, a barrage of heavy footfalls. A gargantuan something stomping closer, closer.

He ran.

Up.

And around.

Up.

Around.

Until a wingtipped toe clipped a stair’s edge and he stumbled and pitched to his hands.

THUD.

A hundred yards.

THUD.

A dozen quick turns.

THUD.

Just at his heels.

THUD.

Clubbing his ears.

He kicked at the air behind and beneath, connecting with nothing.

He twisted onto his back, stairs stabbing his spine, and glared up.

Into his own fierce face.

CLIMB, he said.

Climb he did.

© 2009 by Steven Withrow

Illustrating Children's Picture Books Arrives!

2009-10-26T21:28:00.005-04:00

Lesley and I received our first advance copy of Illustrating Children's Picture Books from RotoVision in the UK today. We're both really happy with how the book came out -- an inviting, solid production in every way. It has a smaller trim size than my other books, which makes it very easy to hold and suits its subject matter well. We can't wait to share copies with the contributors and hear back from all of you!

Listening to Tuck Everlasting

2009-10-25T22:41:00.003-04:00

I'm listening to the audiobook of Natalie Babbitt's Tuck Everlasting, read by Peter Thomas. I've read the book several times, but I'm really enjoying hearing it, especially after meeting Natalie and her husband in Providence last week. Beautiful, beautiful book!

Sketch from Life: Lefty Scissors

2009-10-25T10:49:00.006-04:00

Far, far back in a high, dark cubbyhole, under a drab and unused stack of construction paper, lived a lonely pair of lefty scissors.

Each school day, when the children made crafts out of paper and glue, they always selected—from a much lower and brighter cubbyhole—the red-handled righty scissors.

But no one ever chose the green-handled pair.

Left out,
Left alone,
Left over,
Lefty scissors.

The righty scissors helped the children build sunflowers, monster masks, rocket ships, dragonflies, heart shapes, snowflakes, Christmas trees. Those scissors could do anything. They could cut out a whole world in the palm of a hand, and some of them did.

But the lefty scissors had nothing to do but wait.

Left back,
Left behind,
Left for scraps,
Lefty scissors.

Then one day, after a very long time, someone new came to the classroom. His name was Stevie. He looked lonely too.

When the teacher passed out paper and glue, the other children grabbed their righty scissors as usual. They returned to their spaces and began to create.

But not Stevie.

Stevie stretched up on his toes, reached deep into the high, dark cubbyhole, shifted the stack of old construction paper, and clutched in his left hand...the lefty scissors!

Lifted up,
Lost then found,
Loved at last,
Lefty scissors!

Stevie sat down with a smile on his face. He and the lefty scissors set out together to make a small, bright world all their own.

And so they did.

© 2009 by Steven Withrow

POEM: Song for Leaf Season

2009-10-23T10:43:00.001-04:00

Mother rakes leaves,
Daughter on the grass,
Sky wears evening best.
Mother takes orange steps,
Beastly, dry-grass steps,
Golden, crunching steps.

Mother tugs sleeves
Of thick wool pullover
Higher, higher,
Red sun lowers,
End-of-year sky.
Mother rakes whirlwinds!

Lawn-litter, leaf-scatter,
Tree-clutter, wind-flutter,
Mossy stones, mushroom caps,
Coat hanging from a branch,
Mother rakes leaves,
Daughter on the grass.

Two Poems for Halloween

2009-10-22T13:00:00.008-04:00

All Hallows' Eve has always been my favorite holiday. Here are a couple of night poems of mine to celebrate this time of year.

NIGHT SONG

I sing of night, of hunting cats and stars,
Night-dark fences, rimed birch branches,
Blacktopped roads, headlights, cars.

I sing of night, of campfires and owls,
Silk-spun spider traps, dripping water taps,
Moonlit mushroom caps, hound howls.

I sing of night, of hoarfrost and dreams,
Goblin haunts and graveyard stones,
What is, and is not what it seems.

MEETING THE WOLF

We walk the woods, near midnight.

Stop, sense, turn.
Through trees

White eyes, hollow as half-moons,
Rise, sink like suns; air changes.

Night wind rearranges clouds
Like rows of silver coffee spoons.

Eyes close, are gone.

We breathe again,
And run home.

POEM: The Dirt-Reader

2009-10-22T10:01:00.005-04:00

This was inspired by a post at author David L. Harrison's blog, where his monthly challenge is to write a poem inspired by a single word. October's word is "dirt."

The Dirt-Reader

The earthworm knows no books.
He chews, instead, hard news
That gravels through his crooks.
He grinds each borer's bit
Of literary grit
And feeds wildflower's muse.

Spanish edition of Character Design for GNs

2009-10-21T10:14:00.008-04:00

I love the cover for the Spanish edition of Character Design for Graphic Novels, written by Alexander Danner and me, and published by Editorial Gustavo Gili. It features stark and impressive art by British cartoonist Tom Gauld. Except for the writers, it's European all around. Still one of my favorite projects -- check it out!

FLASHBACK: Critical Thinking Webcomics Series

2009-10-13T22:01:00.012-04:00

One of my many wild experiments in the early days of online comics was a series on Komikwerks.com with multiple artists called Critical Thinking. It starred two very talkative stone library lions -- P and E (for Populist and Elitist) -- who morphed through many permutations of weirdness before I gave up on the concept when PBS's Between the Lions, as well as Michelle Knudsen's and Kevin Hawkes's picture book, took library lions in more fruitful directions.

Some uneven writing by me; some really inventive art by Diego Jourdan, Scott LeMien, Brian McKinley, Steve Taylor, Joe Zabel, Yul Tolbert, Steve Ince, Rigel Stuhmiller, Mark Matlock, Gary McCluskey, Erik Roman, Paul Gutierrez, and Shaenon K. Garrity. Fun while it lasted -- and I learned an awful lot!