Performed by Val Cole

Get to know the poet:

1) What is the theme of your poem?
We cannot escape our pasts.

2) What motivated you to write this poem?
I spent a Saturday afternoon at my brother's bedside in an ICU ward, then
went home and wrote the first draft of Intensive Care. Two days la...

Performed by Val Cole

Performed by Val Cole

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POEM:

Bring your tulips to
my clematis and honey-
suckle me ’til dawn.

Performed by Val Cole

POEM:

Blinding rays searing my flesh
laying in the clear cool liquid
afloat, drifting

the only time the smell of salt isn't a bother
kaw kaw over yonder
empty thoughts

inhale
darkness on my lids
and no care where the sea takes me

a continuous exhale
summoning a humming...

Performed by Val Cole

POEM:

When you get older,
you need an efficiency expert
to help you sort out
how best to use
what time you have left.
One can become mired in minutiae,
moored in monotony.
While we don’t like change,
we are confronted with it
in every sagging muscle
and pucker of old fle...

Performed by Val Cole

POEM:

In and out I breathe,
a flick of pixillated light
between these tender eye-lids.
Yellow
screaming in the heat, chartreuse.

It rains it rains and rains
our dry savannah skin fills
plump and clammy pulling
loose
in great gray glassy sheets

And new our sleek green
se...

Performed by Val Cole

Performed by Val Cole

Performed by Val Cole

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POEM:

I’m tired of piling up the dead
in this bone yard called grief.
You stack the dead your way,
and I in mine.
There’s no good way to do it
that doesn’t leave you feeling undone.

The longer I live, the more
I see life falling down around me,
and it weighs heavily...

Performed by Val Cole

Performed by Val Cole

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POEM:

A Widow’s Hand

If the coast holds ruin
like a pint pouring in,
then this deep dorcha tide
must churn its ruby-black heave
until fragile foam flickers
below giant hogweeds.

And if cliffs are the corpses
the sea keeps beating
upon that sable crag,
then the salt...

Performed by Val Cole:

POETRY Reading:

Who Poops Up a Tree?

There’s a neighbor dog I do not know
But for the trail he leaves.
It’s something I have never seen
A mutt who poops up trees.

A mystery, really, how it starts
A habit such as that.
I imagine that he stopped to fart
And inadvertently ...

Performed by Val Cole

Get to know the poet:

1) What is the theme of your poem?

I grew up on the Chesapeake Bay, swimming it its waters and sailing with my
dad. This poem attempts to capture ot only what it meant, but how I learned to respect it.

2) What motivated you to write this poem?

Aft...

Performed by Val Cole

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POEM:

TO WARREN AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA

I

Oh Warren at the bottom of the sea,
You never return to me.
Every day your distance grows
As you’re carried out by the tide’s flows
Farther and farther, o deep-sea floater.

Oh Warren at the bottom of the sea,
Won’t you com...

Performed by Val Cole

Get to know the poet:

1) What is the theme of your poem?

The theme is remember love in the moment

2) What motivated you to write this poem?

I was watching a show about a person saying goodbye to the love of their life. See the pain as they spoke of their journey....

Performed by Val Cole

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POEM:

CHRISTMAS DAY IN MINNESOTA

The road hits the hilltop.
Shingled boxes people ought to occupy
Pepper the lower plains.

Snow blankets distinctions.
The cold is such
That skin freezes to metal it’s touched.

The field lies hard beside the lost lane,
Old Chevy an...

Performed by Val Cole

POEM:

Restlessness
A bed frame with a missing leg propped up with old, unwanted books,
Kitschy pop theology books, free paperbacks from a religious childhood,
All Jesus and blood and contemporary exclusivism,
All stacked below a short metal rod, slowly carving its way thr...

performed by Val Cole

Performed by Val Cole

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POEM:

Fat.
Heavy.
Thick.
Chubby. Flabby.
Pudgy. Tubby. Chunky.
Healthy. Obese. Husky.
Plump. Portly. Beefy Meaty.
Fleshy. Blubbery. Rotund.
Paunchy. Stout.
Large.
Solid.
Gross.

Years spent dealing with words meant to define me by the look and shape of my body.

Chi...

Performed by Val Cole

Peach

Opaque peach, purple
Beauty weeping rays of light
Sunsets and bruises

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Performed by Val Cole

5-10-23

Donald Trump Goes Down

Donald Trump
got sentenced to
something like 15 counts
of abuse and defamation
of E. Jean Carroll.
His attorneys tried to say
that E. Jean
was not “his type.”
What “type” is that?
A type who has
a shred of self respect?
A type who
had the sense to make
a legal acc...

Performed by Val Cole

Performed by Val Cole

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POEM:

My Reflection Has Notes

The light in my life is my foe.
I look in the mirror
In the bewitching and treacherous gold of the afternoon

And see the imperfections
I see every spot and pore
Created by ineffable voices
Of undoing in my head

Conjured from every sn...