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Greenbelt Poetry from the Iguana Review

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We have a new occasional feature here at Greenbelt Online – The Iguana Review Presents Favorite Poems.  In this first post we’re presenting three poems among the dozens that were published between 2003 and 2006 in The Iguana Review. 

The Iguana Review, founded in 2003, is an independent literary magazine based in what its website calls the “historic, artistic town of Old Greenbelt, MD.” It has published eight issues and is now accepting submissions for the next one! Just send 2 poems and/or pdf of artwork to iguanareview@hotmail.com.

"The Green Man Comes to Greenbelt" by Jim Link

The Green Man
The Green Knight
The Jolly Green Giant
of hope, fertility and renewal

Green energy is everywhere, hear it.
See it. Feel it. Dance it
In Roosevelt Center, in Greenbelt

Think a green thought in a green shade
And follow the green light
At the end of Daisy’s dock
Back to the garden
Back to the orgiastic past
Whose memory creates the Edenic future

Circle of drummers welcoming us,
embracing us
Whirling dervish women – – all blurs of
purple, orange and green
Trailing sheer white streamers, undulant
caresses
More beautiful than a Jontue ad
And sooooo fiercely more real

Circling centripetally around the Center
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring = RECYCLE
Honeybees and pesticides yin/yanging each other

 

 

Laughing, prelapsarian toddlers blowing
bubbles
almost as shiny as their eyes
A teepee, tee shirts, teapot, pot,
pottery fairies, mini-gardens
[Create your own Eden at home for $2!”]

All so lush, Dionysian
“She wore flowers in her hair” – –
tamer and more lovely than in
Haight-Ashbury

Behold, the Green Man Cometh,
powering the green fuse that
through the flower flows
Taking me back to when I was green
and in my salad days, crispy
(but drug free)
Free, loose, inexpensive, easy.
Free and easy like the festival

And where will you take us tomorrow?
Mr. Green Man, Mr. Tambourine Man,
Somewhere on the breeze
For our Sabbath reprise?

“Blackberries” by Julie Winters

Dusk is lowering her veil
as we step onto the green tongue of land
reaching into the lake.
Water lilies gleam like jewels
in the silent water,
but what you seek
is at the waters edge
bending over;
you run a hand
along a branch clustered with buds,
some taut, some splitting
to reveal delicate white petals beneath.
The berries will be out in two months, you say,
and you point to the farthest branch:
the ones that are hardest to reach
are the sweetest.

“Maybe she heard something in there” by Joe Harris

Sylvia committed suicide
by resting her head
on the rack of a residential oven
in pearls
and a cashmere
button-front sweater
I imagine
powder blue

Maybe she heard something in there
nazis
rats
moon-skulled babies
another poem perhaps
and just got caught
listening
longer than she ought to

Blackberry photo credit: Oregon State U.

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