Anna Boothe, Don Brennan and San Francisco's “pedalling poet”
Anna Boothe has poems in The Prairie Schooner, the Ann Arbor Review, the University of Tampa Poetry Review, and others.
She was poetry editor of Fine Arts Discovery Magazine. She has taught English and creative writing at the University of Missouri and University of Colorado
and now offer a class with the Pacifica adult education program. She has received grants from PEN, NEA and poetry fellowships to Georgetown University
and the Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Her newest book of poetry is Beyond Words.
TO OUR SOLDIERS by Anna Boothe
We marched
so you would not have to
through peaceful streets
wildly waving banners against war
“There's a terrorist behind every Bush,”-
Something for every taste
multi-colored signs
in a sun stream
of horses, dogs,
wheelchairs and baby carriages
that accompanied the rest
of humanity
in a regime demanding
a change of regime in a country
half a world away.
People from every nation
including the intended target
of this war
rehearsed in slow motion
so the victims
intimated by the long shadow
of military might
could have time to plead
with the aggressors,
and we the aggressors,
might have time
to change our minds.
we marched in support
of your wish
to march home instead of war.
And to see you again
Each and every one of you
Don Brennan was born in San Francisco in 1935 and retired from
teaching high school in 1990. He began reading open mic poetry in 2000
after winning first prize in the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal contest
(San Francisco) and third prize in the Milton Dorfmann competition
(New York). He reads regularly at Sacred Grounds Café and publishes in
their quarterly anthology. He co-hosted for a year at the Yakety Yak
Poetry Series, and has featured at numerous Bay Area readings, most
recently at 3300 Club, Perry’s Joint, Edinburgh Castle, Hotel Cosmo,
Dalva and Word Beat. He has published one chapbook (Amusing The
Beast, 2002) and is working on another.
Something Amiss, 09/26/03 by Don Brennan
These days and nights of watching
signs of life in the night sky
have the quiet feel of something amiss
As though the moon had slipped into senility, become
confused about the proper course of things, finding
herself afloat in one of Heaven's unfamiliar comers, a
plastic name tag pinned to her lapel
something amiss, as a random current
rising steadily and dragon-like along a
solar path long since abandoned, forgotten
as a dead volcano, unnoticed as a hypothermic
wino dying in the street
Something surpassing the effervescence of
sunspots in unanticipated wrath, or the
combined, instantaneous heat of stockpiled
hydrogen bombs, a nest of doomsday reptiles
begun squirming into life in the stardust
before their time
Have the perfect orbits of
Earth, Mercury and Moon
gone into a skid?
Out of control as a
teen aged driver, touched by the
coldhearted flick of peer pressure's dry
tongue, losing command of a fast car filled
with innocent acquaintances from school?
One feels a tremor of sorts, perhaps cosmic or
akin to a recognition of fate, akin to a runaway
housecat's first hint of irrevocable disaster,
These days have the disquieting feel of
inalterable drift, the beginnings of a
generational slide into madness made hopeless,
as though even the waxing moon has lost interest,
become immune to compassion,
Shunned once too often by damaged human
consciousness, imperial and weak, devoid of
imagination, that now gropes for balance only
among weaponry and unaccountable wealth,
Grown impotent to conceive and helpless to act
upon such a simple purpose as global commitment
to the nurture of each and every bom child.
San Francisco's “pedalling poet”. His poetry is part of over 210 journals worldwide. SPRITZ -Regent Press, book design by Roz Abraham.
bike lane by San Francisco's “pedalling poet”
my tires find their forward
rhythm on Valencia:
a momentum dancing past
vehicles braking for commerce,
dollies hoisted over husky shoulders;
buses stop-starting for heavy hearts
hauled to destinations not extolled in
Fun Maps for tourists;
fruit stands leaning their tropical
lushness into fog's velvet glove;
book sellers offering explorations
to that unique coney island of one's mind;
tired hotels, blind windows whose
panes are real for the sighing;
eateries stuffed with mouths
and mirth tipping over the edge of a
very good time...
these are peaceful revolutions, though not silent,
a speed delighting in its sassy rubber rumba
kissing macadam for that fleeting second of
touch and bump, always moving, always forward
to the next intersection where joy meets the
unexpected and sings!
