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Today I'm pleased to shine the spotlight on Atlanta-based poet, Michael Whitehead. Please enjoy Whitehead's playful yet thought-provoking poems "From Where Brodsky Stood," "Grantchester Way," and "Sunday." Thank you, Michael, for sharing your words with SHINE! From Where Brodsky StoodI settled in the loft above the lake A spot just inches from where Brodsky launched his perfect paper plane Lights out A cumbersome hand spills Scotch on assumedly antique bedside table leading to a fitful night pondering repercussions from Russian professor (host of Brodsky) Toothpaste was my surprising friend and salvation And so with stain removed In morning glory Antique roadshow back on track I built my own papier homage to the Laureate Just because you can rub out a stain with Colgate Does not mean You can fly with the Gods Grantchester Way Rattling down from the moors A sea of amber spreads out below And for a moment I forget the dank industrial floor beneath Left turn Then a straight shot to an evening of pabulum In a red brick theatre a woman, fun and carefree, greets While behind her a young girl, inexplicably Chinese, pouts The room quickly fills with air blue and thick So I step outside into a Bermudan hallway, Light and airy I linger in my Atlantic refuge catching snatches of conversation With no present or future content Only odd delight taken in discussing past disappointments And failures Finally, they are spent and with a quick goodbye we are soon lurching Around tarmac doglegs The fringe of a travel blanket sweeps across my face And I'm buried Deep, in a tartan embrace Sunday Sunday dawns All testimony now dead The trees are witness To a futile drive To know something Anything About this time This shift That grunts and grinds Thrumming along A noise just this side Of unbearable The mind says "Hang around And see what happens" The body complies And through a long day Of little complaints And no small intolerance for Our end of the bargain We ache for a journey That takes us into ourselves And out  Michael Whitehead was born in Lancashire, England and has lived in the Atlanta area for over thirty years. He enjoys observing the comedy and absurdity of the quotidian aspects of life and then tries to find a settled place for language between dark and light.
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SHINE - International Poetry Series
Click here for submissions and more
From the international poetry community, we have a "luxury of stars," as Sylvia Plath might say, and it is SHINE's honor to provide a home for their words with the online Spotlight series as well as SHINE Quarterly. Click on the logo above to learn more. And...keep writing, keep shining!
In poetry, Samantha Terrell, EIC SYLVIA PLATH
Stars Over the Dordogne Stars are dropping thick as stones into the twiggy
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