What used to stop me in my tracks and threaten to sink me with its impact now slips away discreetly at night like Arctic icebergs breaking off in someone else’s proverbial backyard While true-north poets forget their lines and oar-less boats turn with the tides parts of me drift away in a foreboding and foretold […]
If I complained to William Stafford that I haven’t written a poem in weeks he’d say “Lower your standards” Natalie Goldberg would say “Keep your hand moving” Kerouac said dig deep within your soul and blow freestyle like a jazz artist But my notes are flat and motivation is flagging so I google “advice on […]
The moon tripped across the sky and landed lopped on its side It lingered before it crept away like an all-nighter in a fender bender avoiding the sun full blown and swollen while hit and run stars take cover in daylight as if nothing ever happens at night ______Colleen Redman / Poets United
I come across a letter It doesn’t matter what she wrote Her handwriting is like her thumbprint impressed on me A nudge A comfort A lover letter lost A clue not meant for solving _______Colleen Redman / Poets United / Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads
I clean the stove with my mother We weed the garden together I feel every ache as I bend and stoop like she used to Her things speak for her in a silent voice A bread knife A tulip print that hung over her bed There’s a porcelain cup that I took from her house […]
On the plane ride home from Boston to Roanoke I ponder our brother’s dead body flying as cargo from Houston to Logan in 2001 Folding my magazine to a page on green burial I read that death is a spiritual birth and that embalmment means draining the body of blood and filling it with formaldehyde […]
The dream of the animal stuck on my head The dream of the woman giving me the finger The dream in which I yell to her “that’s a load of crap” and the one where I call your name out loud and it wakes us both up The dream about dog trainings on how not […]
Each mark is a dream / that tells more than one truth / and believes in the existence / of the next page… Packing a Suitcase for […]
There’s a lot of traveling in Packing a Suitcase for the Afterlife, my poetry collection being published by Finishing Line Press, whether it’s back-and-forth between the past and the present, between growing up on the coast of Massachusetts and writing poetry in my kitchen in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, or between the rich […]
When the golden rule cashes in love doesn’t turn the other cheek It hangs its head in shame Turns over in its grave And no one rests in peace waiting for the meek And no one will be saved when national pride and the almighty dollar are valued above ‘love thy neighbor’ _______Colleen Redman / […]
Some stories are like secrets that we gave up for adoption We want to claim our children but have forfeited the right So we wait to be asked by those who want to know We hope for reunion and to feel complete Some stories are like the iris that I discovered as a girl growing […]
A poem unwritten is like a dream forgotten that haunts you to remember throughout the day It’s like sugar in a packet opened but not used that sticks to the paper and won’t pour _________Colleen Redman / Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads
– Crying During Acupuncture is a poem I wrote in December and posted here. It was published in February with the below back story at Poets United, an online community site for poets who blog. The poem is included in my book, Packing a Suitcase for the Afterlife, published by Finishing Line Press. I lost two […]
The days are small packed tightly together not much room for last minute changes I don’t like cruises I’ve never been on one I don’t like to gamble or get my hopes up about an afterlife or God I fear the waiting room where people cough and no one talks and there is no proof […]
In the first 100 days I’ve read more than 100 stories about corruption, collusion incompetence and lies I’ve tried to explain a president who insults people to my grandsons and played out thoughts of nuclear war I’ve been heartbroken and rudely awakened thinking about uninsured sick people dying and the little North Korean refugee who […]
Packing a Suitcase for the Afterlife is a poetry memoir by Colleen Redman that is being published by Finishing Line Press (FLP), an award winning small press out of Georgetown, Kentucky. Redman writes and provides photography for The Floyd Press newspaper in Floyd, Virginia, and other regional publications. Her poetry has been published nationally, regionally, […]
You dream about a layover and drinking tea at a café that’s like your teenage hangout but different There’s a stranger you want to impress and your bags have all been lost You’re trying not to panic because you forgot to claim them But then they come opened and spilled with everything strewn in every […]
____Shadow Shot Sunday
