art music poetry

Ghetto Poem by Tony Nesca

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PEG ZERO GHETTO WALK

cruising down ellice,
reggie collecting drug money,
pawn shops on every corner,
laundromat stinkin’ and ugly,
-25 outside, snow blinding bright
reggie he talking with street punk
doing laundry living normal and clean
he tall and wiry and insane and precise
old lady doing laundry counting pennies
ragged clothes cursing in foreign language
reggie short on his take this week in trouble
he sees old lady arguing with owner no money
walks over pays for her laundry she afraid but not for long
he walks her home carries laundry bags right up to her apartment
has tea they talk and smoke cigarettes apartment small but very clean
she from portugal he from barbados they together in peg zero thirty years apart
the wind howling through the streets,
the snow piled high on every corner,
he alive,
she alive,
late on rent,
late on drug money
ain’t it a kick?

Marriage Poem by Andy Derryberry

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Tangled Up

We don’t agree on much of anything.
I despise the tv shows she watches.
It’s a rare movie that we both like,
don’t even start with politics,
forget about religion,
fashion, friends, cars, colors,
hobbies, chores, work, credit cards,
any favorite thing, how to drive across town,
brands of soup, breakfast food,
when to eat, when to sleep, what to do,
none of this we agree on,
but
at night we sleep all tangled up

Spending Poem by Rebecca Jackson

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_Spending_

The window blinds carve
thick black lines across the carpet
and the clocks in each room
each tick slightly differently; mildly frantic
you are stretched across your
low bed, “Thinking,” you say, “making space
for myself”
banded darkness underscoring
the tendons of your hands and the alternation
between us.
Your roommate’s eternal music
glistens like a plate of marbles
rolling under the door
from the next room,
the depth of our quiet
pouring like oil
into the shared
bowl of afternoon

SHOULD UNIVERSAL RESTRAINT EVOLVE Poem by Clay Derryberry

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SHOULD UNIVERSAL RESTRAINT EVOLVE

Should universal restraint evolve,

Subsequent understandable rage enslaved

Secretly until radical employment

Shall usurp respectable engagement.

Under rounded ecological skies

Undulating ranges exude scenes

Unusually rapturous evoking sighs

Upon reminiscent eminent schemes

Reaping engorged secular usury

Reckoned equally since unsued

Rituality ends social unity,

Richened, ending somewhere unused.

Exit sonorous ubiquitous reason;

Exhale stale uciferous rhyme;

Extol stone unioned ruins;

Emerge solicitous, unanimous, rhined.

Clay Derryberry

Well, My greatest claim to fame is my brother. We were raised on a small dairy farm between Verona and Anes Station Tennesse (just north of Lewisburg) by loving diligent country parents. They were not greatly creative though mama played the guitar some, and Daddy did things like make us yoyo’s and candle sticks from wood. Anyway, I was introduced to poetry and the love of it by a highschool English teacher, Catherine Adams and have been dabbling in it ever since. I am a graduate of David Lipscomb College; have preached for 30 years and have managed the Ellington Airport in Lewisburg since 1981 where I live with my wife Dianne who has been very supportive of my meager efforts.