Rough Copy

The online magazine for creative writing, short stories and artistic expression.

Category: Poetry

• Traveler’s Ode

  Dao Strom | 03.31.10 | Poetry, Vol3, Issue1 - Spring/Summer 2010 | 3 Comments

  Editor’s Note: Dao has graciously given Rough Copy an mp3 of “Traveler’s Ode.”  Click here to listen.
  Sometimes I see the future
  & it looks alright
  to a man who’s been waiting
  his whole long life
  to be returned to that land
  it was north of somewhere
  it was cold and
  oh so bright
  ((& everyone was happy there))
  I’ve memorized
  every promise
  that was gave on […]

• Mothersongs (East)

  Dao Strom | 03.31.10 | Poetry, Vol3, Issue1 - Spring/Summer 2010 | Comments

  I. Ode to Mother(land)

  Didn’t you once believe in art?
  Didn’t you once have a beating heart?
  when you told me the story of a poet
  & her friends who went to see a king
  but he wouldn’t let them in
  except for her fine eyes
  she told him of the troubles
  throughout their country
  she told him of her worries
  for all their people
  she […]

• Mothersongs (West)

  Dao Strom | 03.31.10 | Poetry, Vol3, Issue1 - Spring/Summer 2010 | 2 Comments

  I.  Two Rivers

  ((two rivers meet where the water is warm))
  ((blackberries stain my childish hands))

  - a tapestry of memory of temperature
  that I can nary forget nor Remember
  (we saw) two rivers cross
  one from the valley
  one from up on the rocks
  one streamed cold, one streamed hot
  in a blackberry forest
  I saw the two rivers join into one
  ((father killed a […]

• sunny-side down

  Kristine Ong Muslim | 11.24.09 | Poetry, Vol2, Issue2 - Fall/Winter 2009 | Comments

  He thinks: it was thoughtful of her
  to say yes when nobody’s looking.
  Slumped across his plate
  is the squelched dreamy yellow
  of fake pearls and sunsets.
  The tines of his fork trespass,
  unbutton, catch the light.

• Dispersal

  Kristine Ong Muslim | 11.24.09 | Poetry, Vol2, Issue2 - Fall/Winter 2009 | Comments

  We believe that the floor will hold, will
  remain flat, so we can trample it all day.
  But every surface tries to shake us off.
  The white horses are ferrying the seasons.
  The wild roses are wilting away; in a year, we
  will learn to love the husks which they have left
  behind. Then we imagine forgiveness disappearing
  among the sun-scarred children […]

• September 12, 2001

  Zoe Francesca | 05.15.09 | Poetry, Vol2, Issue1 - Spring/Summer 2009 | Comments

  What could be more natural?
  My mother is pregnant.
  Here she is, in a public swimming pool,
  in labor.
  The water around her is cloudy.
  “A tub,” I call to her.
  “Try a birthing tub.”
  Her body is round and floats.
  Now we’re in a makeshift tent
  and the belly dancers
  are getting ready to perform.
  “My mother’s in labor,” I tell them.
  To mom I say, […]

• November 8, 2001

  Zoe Francesca | 05.15.09 | Poetry, Vol2, Issue1 - Spring/Summer 2009 | Comments

  Some of us (only some of us)
  are invited to the White House
  for dinner.
  The room is gold baroque
  with high ceilings. There’s a
  candelabrum on each round table
  but Daddy comments
  he’s seen this room before, looking much nicer,
  and then I know…
  we’re being treated
  to the cheapest possible version
  of dinner at the White House.
  No one from the White House
  actually shows up.
  Just […]

• Christmas with Kings

  Jason Gray | 11.08.08 | Poetry, Vol1, Issue2 - Fall/Winter 2008 | Comments

  Christmas with Kings
                                  Valley of the Kings, Egypt, December 25, 1999
  Here, where kings have come to rest, we are
  The day’s first tourists, sun just a white glare.
  Robed men perch in the rocks above the valley,
  Watchdogs or worse, as we enter an open tomb.
  Cold walls have lost most of their paint, the flecks
  Of sky flaked off […]

• The Queen Died of Grief

  Jason Gray | 11.08.08 | Poetry, Vol1, Issue2 - Fall/Winter 2008 | Comments

       What makes a story: why.
  The queen’s pain burst the royal cloak
              And left her to die.
       The subtle glancing stroke
  Of the pen changes the story’s shape:
              From the royal oak
       She hanged herself, the rope
  Made of hairs from her adorer,
              Who gave her a slip
       Of a ring, the queen’s before her,
  Under the very […]

• The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth

  Erin Fristad | 04.21.08 | Poetry, Vol1, Issue1 - Spring/Summer 2008 | Comments

  He’s high on meth, made in the back room of a blue
  rambler at the edge of a clear-cut, one mile from town.
  He twitches and waits, twitches and waits.
  She’s stuck to a mirror in the Chevron bathroom, counting
  freckles, pimples, dimples her Dad loved
  to pinch when he came home weekends
  from the woods, smelling of fir, gas, two-stroke
  oil, […]

• In the Bedroom

  Erin Fristad | 04.21.08 | Poetry, Vol1, Issue1 - Spring/Summer 2008 | Comments

  …the signals we give-yes or no, or maybe-
  should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
  William Stafford
  Evening light saturates them.
  Shadows eclipse his eyes, mouth. She wants
  to hear the story of him crying
  over a crow he shot when he was thirteen
  walking with friends along a dirt road.
  She wants to hear how the bird
  fell into a ditch, […]

Egg Beater
by Heather McQueen