P O E T S     ON THE LINE
a continuing anthology

Founded by Andrew Gettler & Linda Lerner

NO. 9 & 10         T H E  M I L L E N N I U M  I S S U E

Edited by Linda Lerner


LYNNE SAVITT

Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before
in the red weathered barn
standing in the hayloft
the farmer's burned his
wife's profile in a bale
of pale yellow
his cockeyed look of love
rocks the blue woman
lying in the gray broken
rowboat next to the goat
& the pitchfork in this there's
no traveling salesman
or farmer's daughter
just two women, a barn, a broken
rowboat & the farmer with
his dancing crooked eye
warming his wife by winter's
fire, milking memory of yearning
into a broken metal pail on its
side spilling back in the blue
woman's lap turning her
liquid to living she moans in
the night but the farmer's
gone his eyes dead as rusted batteries
she'll mourn a long time back
on the canals of comfort
blue woman grew to love
but not as much as she loved
that damn cockeyed farmer
burning into her his fiery ghost
alive as she's been in years
just from shared memories
she hugs herself, howls at the moon
this is not a night for tea with the wife
blessed be all the women who danced
with the farmer & caught his devil eye


LYNNE SAVITT

The Search For Romance
found me once or twice,
unfocused, turning clouds
into epic doubts into bibles
of yearning i ask my husband,
"was it you? was it this life or
another i stared into your eyes
& made you promise to look
so deep into me, you'd never
forget these eyes of mine &
me, yours, was it you?
i believe this happened.
this tactile memory as real as ray ban sunglasses
the eyes weren't your eyes, dark as sumatran coffee.
they were greenish blue & i swam in them,
my private ocean of endless desire
so wet with yearning my sheets
still damp decades later.
why wasn't it you?
the here & now we waste
like extra wishes on a birthday cake
noelle will be three in two months &
the unnamed grandson born in two
weeks, a nanosecond, a specific glare
off the praying wave in the yearning sea.
i almost never make eye contact
no one does.
are you reborn in the flesh of my children's offspring?
it happened.
i know this like i know the boy's
heartbeat in my daughter's belly
did i miss you? does it matter?
the search for romance,
this yearning,
survives tides of shallow eyes.
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