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Moving Words Series XVII

NEAPOLITAN LOVE SONG

Dirty Napoli: couples in little fiats—Newspapers
visoring the windshields; laundry curtaining
the alleys; cameoed mamas arguing with
heavy hands; pickpockets and ordinary
cassanovas loving up bus-bound
tourists. Vesuvius visible only
after a thunderous rain, quietly
coughing fluttering ash; dead fish
floating in her bay.

Karren LaLonde Alenier

SOUTH JERSEY SHORE

she sketches at dusk from the dunes fading lines

snow-crested sand in
morning light undisturbed
till now

going home not quite ocean not quite bay
(Cape May – Lewes Ferry)

John Elsberg

BIRDSHADOWS BANK

Birdshadows bank
in bright
shade, wing
of upless
daffodil, no
fell brilliance
can dull
sought-seek, no
cold inkpools.

Daniel Gutstein

About the Series XIII Poets:

Karren LaLonde Alenier is author of five collections of poetry, including Looking for Divine Transportation, winner of the 2002 Towson University Prize for Literature. Her poetry and fiction have been published in such magazines as: the Mississippi Review, Jewish Currents, and Poet Lore. She is working with composer William Banfield and New York City’s Encompass New Opera Theatre artistic director Nancy Rhodes on the opera Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On based on her verse play by the same name. She is president of The Word Works, a Washington, DC based literary organization that sponsors the Washington Prize.

John Elsberg has lived in Arlington since 1975. He is the long-time editor and publisher of Bogg Magazine. For a living, he directs a government publishing program. He is the author of fifteen chapbooks and book of poetry; the last three are OFFSETS (King’s Estate Press), A Week in the Lake District (Red Moon Press), and Sailor (New Hope International press, England). His next collection, a collaboration with New Jersey poet David Hovan Check, will be called South Jersey Shore. He and his wife (and two dogs) often escape to the Cape May area, where his parents once lived.

Daniel Gutstein's poetry and short-short fiction has appeared in dozens of publications, including TriQuarterly, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The American Scholar, Fiction, New Orleans Review, and The Penguin Book of the Sonnet. He teaches creative writing and works with students who have disabilities at The George Washington University, and also serves the journal StoryQuarterly as an associate editor. He has also worked as a farmhand, international economist, tae kwon do instructor, and reporter.

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