Entering Winter with a Line from Gwendolyn Brooks, a poem by D.R. James at Spillwords.com

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Entering Winter with a Line from Gwendolyn Brooks

D. R. James·December 12, 2021

Poetry English

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Entering Winter with a Line from Gwendolyn Brooks

written by: D.R. James

Horizon’s burst-smear of pink nonchalance
forgets We are things of dry hours and the
involuntary plan. In winter’s vise
I’ll wrestle — flail! — stampedes of elegies,
pendulums of memory, sidestepping
swathes of snow-fall brindled with late oak leaves’
yieldings: autumn’s ceding. But from this blunt
and silhouetted terrain, ranging out
tactically, cautious in my happenstance,
I will still delight — plod, but still ignite.

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D. R. James

D. R. James, retired from nearly 40 years of teaching college writing, literature, and peace studies, lives with his psychotherapist wife in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan. His latest of ten collections is Mobius Trip (Dos Madres Press, 2021).

Jim Bartlett

After a long career tinkering in telecommunications, Jim Bartlett switched to tinkering with writing fiction, both requiring a stretch of the imagination. In the course of putting his fingers to the keyboard, he's been fortunate to have quite a number of his stories featured both in print and online in several wonderful publications, including a story selected for "The Best of Fiction on the Web, 1996 – 2017" anthology. While mentally he strolls along a warm California beach with his wife and golden retriever (shhh, she doesn't know she's a dog), physically they reside on a special little island in the Pacific Northwest.

Reaper by Sharon Frame Gay

As an orphaned son of an orphan, I always see the glass as half empty. I picture the water murky and lukewarm, a waterline etched below the rim. Maybe with an ash or two floating at the bottom, because that’s what I do for a living. I deal with ashes. The remains of the deceased. No matter how those who pass away see their glass, meager or full, they eventually end up in a satchel carried on my shoulder.
My business card reads “Morton Stark Transport.” I’m called upon to disperse the ashes of the dearly departed and honor their final wishes. People hire me to escort the remains throughout the world ...

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