Robbi Nester a Gift of Words

10 Anniversary 2010 - 2019 P O E T R Y & W R I T I N G Free Online Magazine From Village Earth July 2020 Robbi Nester A Gift of Words Cover Artwork by Irish Artist Emma Barone 2020 July POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net L I V E E N C O U N T E R S M A G A Z I N E P O E T R Y & W R I T I N G July 2020 Support Live Encounters. Donate Now and Keep the Magazine Live in 2020! Live Encounters is a not-for-profit free online magazine that was founded in 2009 in Bali, Indonesia. It showcases some of the best writing from around the world. Poets, writers, academics, civil & human/animal rights activists, academics, environmentalists, social workers, photographers and more have contributed their time and knowledge for the benefit of the readers of the magazine. We are appealing for donations to pay for the administrative andjust cause.technical aspects of the publication. Please help spread the free distribution of knowledge with any amount for this Om Shanti Shanti Shanti Om Mark Ulyseas Publisher/Editor [email protected] All articles and photographs are the copyright of www.liveencounters.net and its contributors. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the explicit written permission of www.liveencounters.net. Offenders will be criminally prosecuted to the full extent of the law ©Mark Ulyseas prevailing in their home country and/or elsewhere. Luang Prabang, Laos PDR. © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING July 2020 Celebrating 10th Anniversary 2020 July POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net P O E T R Y & W R I T I N G July 2020 Robbi Nester Contributors Anna Yin Geraldine Mills Manuela Palacios Bobbie Sparrow Fred Johnston Joe Cottonwood Kieran Beville John Grey Martin Willitts Jr Anne McDonald John W Sexton/Richard Magahiz Martin Hayes Brid Connolly Dianne Alvine Professor Dorie LaRue Book review of ‘Aloysius the Great’ by John Maxwell O’Brien © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING July 2020 Celebrating 10th Anniversary 2020 July POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net A G I F T O F W O R D S R O B B I N E S T E R Balance A Likely Story Other-Wise RobbiNarrow Nester Bridge shelters in place in Southern California. She is the author Theof 4 Liberal books Mediaof poetry, Made including Me Do It! a (Nine chapbook, Toes, Over (White the Violet,Moon: Birds,2012), Beasts, and three and collections:Trees (Moon Tide, 2014), (Kelsay, 2017), and one, currently (Mainin process, Street The Rag, Plague 2019). PapersShe has also edited 3 anthologies, 2014),recently in McQueen’s Quinterly, Silver Birch Press, (published The Ekphrastic as a special Review, issue Pirene’s of Poemeleon Fountain, Poetry Aeolian Journal), Harp, and Volume a new 6, Tiferet, Rhino, . Her poems, reviews, essays and articles have appeared widely, most and many others. She is an elected member of the Academy of American Poets. A Gift of Words Before I was even born, my parents bought me a Webster’s Unabridged, an atlas, and an inflatable globe. As a small child, I would stand before the globe and spin it, singing out the names of countries and continents, parcels of multi-colored land, drifting on a multitude of seas. It must have been a wise investment: I employed that globe and atlas until the end of high school, when the globe deflated, and the atlas had become defunct. But a dictionary is never obsolete. I keep it to this day, though new editions come and go. The words persist, still solid in my mouth as stones, bursting against the palate like the ripest grapes. Zest evokes the bright aroma of a lemon, feeling of joy, sharp spark of flavor, while knead offers an image of the cat, clenching and unclenching his claws, like a virtuoso at the keyboard, eyes closed in bliss. Alongside this, the give of risen dough under my knuckles, sweet miasma of fresh yeast. How can I capture all of this, without the grammar coming unglued? So many simple nouns, plebian verbs can work the same enchantment, unscrolling eons of ideas and images cloaked in ordinary meaning. Is it in the syllables, held lightly on the tongue, or in the history of the word, traced with one finger, like a river on a map, the veins under the skin, or is it in the mind? Each word a trove we pass along like DNA , packaged in a book that harbors the seed of every other book that ever was. Robbi Nester © Robbi Nester © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING July 2020 Celebrating 10th Anniversary 2020 July POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net A G I F T O F W O R D S R O B B I N E S T E R America Listening In This express car’s going nowhere, stalled I am eating again at Garlic and Chives, for decades on some stretch of empty my favorite Vietnamese restaurant, track, but once it served the rich, the table laden with plates of salmon belly accustomed to the choicest cuts, spring rolls, fish noodle soup, fried the deference of strangers soft tofu, turning to see what other who judged them by their people have ordered. The restaurant bespoke suits, their bearing. is filled with Vietnamese families, These oak-framed seats are laughing, talking, gesturing at this wide enough for two, but meant or that, calling over the waiters, for one, each offering a window but I can’t listen in. I don’t speak where the passenger could view the language, and besides, it’s way the lives of others, less fortunate, too loud. So I study their faces, like paintings in a private gallery. the plates they pass, noticing how Now the carpet’s worn away they track my eyes, and I imagine like paint on an old barn, their annoyance at my tacit prying, and no one boards or exits as though I wanted to invade anymore, no white-gloved this private sanctuary. I remember conductor tips his cap. the war between our countries, At the time, I might have been and how, as so often, it was all a passenger in coach, just passing our fault. I know it was long ago, through to find the dining car. and the young people around me But now I get to judge the sorry werebe separated probably by born a pane here, of decadesglass, state of what once seemed after that war. Yet we might as well beautiful, knowing nothing lasts. as my cat is from the mockingbird in the pepper tree, the woodpecker in the eucalyptus. I want to forget mybut sorrow,constrained hold byout conventions the plate of andspring rolls, my favorite dish, as an offering, my own dark imaginings, I don’t. © Robbi Nester © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING July 2020 Celebrating 10th Anniversary 2020 July POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net A P A R D O N T O M Y B O N E S A N N A Y I N Mississauga’s Inaugural Poet Laureate - Anna Yin was (2015-2017) and Ontario representative to the League of Cana dian Poets (2013-2016). She has authored five collections of poetry. Her poems/translations have appeared at ARC Poetry, New York Times, China Daily, CBC Radio, World Journal etc. Anna won the 2005 Ted Plantos Memorial Award, two MARTYs, two scholarships from West Chester University Poetry Conference, three grants from OAC and 2013 Professional Achievement Award from CPAC. She performed her poetry on Parliament Hill and has been featured at 2015 Austin International Poetry Festival and 2017 National poetry month project etc. She also teaches Poetry Alive workshops at schools, colleges and libraries. Her website: annapoetry.com A Pardon to My Bones after Phyllis Webb so little I know straight spines are not welcomecurving down here our love must be like a river confined by your arms the vast landscape of freedom is only for window-shopping atfaces night, unveil mirages disappear orgasm lies yourin silence mouth is wide open mine shut Anna Yin © Anna Yin © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING July 2020 Celebrating 10th Anniversary 2020 July POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net A P A R D O N T O M Y B O N E S A N N A Y I N “Look at the birds of the air…” Of Course, I Still Love You NoI tried more to newsinquire about you… Late night now, I have kept silent. after you entered shelters. Yet the bonfire won’t go out for a half-open eye, they declined. two fallen Forget-me-nots To be alone…as you wish… and one third of a fish’s memory. Perhaps – to forget or be forgotten. Late night now, I shall go to sleep A small world. for some dreams waiting to slide in, In the mirror or a pool of rain, and a white cloud to lower her face I still find your shadow. to the unknown names Your pills scatted on another in the dark river. copy of the Starry Night. Regret – no use. I’ve kept your Bible since. Where shall my prayers be sent? In the east, once we believed the Goddess with three eyes and thousands of fingers. Here across the blue sky, birds flew to their nests. I thought God - extending his arms. The soft song I sing every night- simple as goodnight. © Anna Yin © liveencounters.net POETRY & WRITING July 2020 Celebrating 10th Anniversary 2020 July POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net A P A R D O N T O M Y B O N E S A N N A Y I N Traversing after Emily Dickinson and Billy Collins I II inebriate of air – This is a private Room.

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