Patty Dickson Pieczka | Featured Poet | June 2016, Issue XVII
Patty Dickson Pieczka’s second book, Painting the Egret’s Echo, won the Library of Poetry Book Award from The Bitter Oleander (2012). Other books are Lacing Through Time (Bellowing Ark Press, 2011) and a chapbook, Word Paintings (Snark, 2002). She won the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest in the Best Sonnet category (2014), first prize in the 2012 Illinois Poetry Society contest as well as the Frances Locke Memorial Award (2010). She graduated in Creative Writing at SIU. Writing has appeared in many journals such as Bluestem, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Versedaily.org, and Willow Review. Her novel, Finding the Raven will be released in June by Ravenswood Publishing.
STREET-CORNER MAN WITH HARMONICA
He plays the sound of daylight
pouring through cracks in the night,
of rocks swallowed by water.
His hunger is etched
on a cardboard sign,
his days dirt-colored
and frayed at the edges.
But his tune skims
the split lips of the city,
opens life’s eyelids,
and for a brief moment
he feeds the multitudes
with his dance of fire and sun.
Years carve his face;
blessings live in his eyes.
HOLY WARS
Morning opens its bleeding hands
like a fan jeweled with rudraksha beads
hardened from Shiva’s tears.
Lotus talisman, eagle feather crown,
sacred amulet made of Buddha’s tooth.
Jagged stained glass cuts the air.
Incense fogs from a dropped thurible,
as blood of Christ seeps onto the floor.
Hum of bullets
fisting through the walls.
Men in floor-length thobes pray
toward the east near crumbling remnants
of their bombed-out mosque.
Throat of a rifle,
mouth in flames.
Hebrew verses bloom from ashes and smoke,
scorched yarmulke in the fallen temple.
Fire snakes its way to the woods.
HaShem, Brahma, Jehovah,
Allah, Ormazd, Ik Onkar
and Wakan Tanka
all blend into one.
Prayers flutter like silky white moths
to one singular source.
KILN-FIRED BOWL
It’s not the color that draws me in—
that deep heron-blue of sadness
perched on a wing;
it’s not even the promise
of sweet sustenance
at this table hewn from hardwood.
It’s the way reflections live inside
as moonlight melts into rivers
of sun and memories glaze
past dark smudges of time
to settle in that bowl
of palm-thatched summer.
L’ETOILE
—Edgar Degas
Swirls of sunset in linseed oil—
alizarin crimson, white titanium,
cadmium garnet bloom into a dancer,
her dress the roseate shade
of passion. Scent of gardenias,
of mineral solvent.
He paints the curve
of her small satin slipper,
dabs it with desire.
As daylight touches his brush,
her skin candles;
something within her stirs.
The pigments learn
to move on their own;
brushstrokes and scumbles
rest over wings
that wake from their sleep
at music’s first strain,
lift her into the air.
A POEM IN FLIGHT
As I read your words,
do you hear them spreading
over me in their soft language
of wind brushing over stone,
muted colors dusting
through the air?
Can you smell this peach
I’m eating, see my hand folded
around it, fingers winging
at the knuckle? A bird migrating—
hand in the leaves
reaching toward light.
