Sentinel Poetry (Online) #38 The International Journal of Poetry &
Graphics Monthly ISSN 1479-425X
E. Mitchell Stone*
Down the Hall and to the
Left
Black jacket shadow
Love’s sweet honey surrounds
The moon and stars
Hiding scars
Inside hollow trees.
Fleshy petals,
Peeled and impaled.
A squirming red box of brick and
bone;
Move up close
To that place I hold dear.
A hot stove’s kettle whistles
Butterfly refrains –
Yellow, greenish gold, midnight blue
and tiny purple –
All vibrate.
A swarm of berries on the branch
Out of reach.
Time Lapse
Cushion clouds parted…
A full moon eye took it all in;
A spider spinning lines in the center
Where the sun once shone in.
On the windowpane,
A shadow sat down beside her.
Crickets collected cobwebs below
While water combed the sand free of
debris.
Morning hid behind bush black and
green,
Finger strands reaching toward the
glass.
She tried to avoid in conversation
Yet the mirror listened intently
Throughout the wet morning
‘Til dawn broke in,
Uninvited;
A milk bottle bird chirping rattlebone racket
That lasted throughout the day.
Dismal Percentage
An ancient viscera priestess,
Crooked as the seam
Leading down to patent leather
hooves
Unraveling tomorrow.
As a rope bell dangled in the breeze
Stopping for a moment
To test a crow’s beak,
The hardwood floor made music
Under the weight of her heels
And the door slammed shut
With only the wind to guide it.
*In the
December issue we featured E. Mitchell Stone’s poems, which graphology,
breaks and some lines were erroneously mis-represented.
We apologise and now present readers with the ‘final’ version.
