Dear Mr. Logan,

Below I have pasted poems for consideration for Record Magazine. I have recently had poems accepted for Down in the Dirt Magazine, Northern Stars Magazine, and Hidden Oak Poetry Journal.

I have taught in the Department of English at Appalachian State University, in Boone, North Carolina, since 1989, and work in the area of World Literature, with particular interest in Asian culture, literature and philosophy, as well as Latin American literature. I have taught in Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America, and live with my wife Vicki in Millers Creek, North Carolina.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes,

Howard Giskin


RUMINATIONS

Like dream fragments filtered

Savannah grass wispy and cooking fires

At dawn’s first light sweet scent of

Mosquito coils burning

Town’s low buildings and dusty lanes

Street venders and water carriers

Still enchant.



CABIN

Now mythic

like a stone

thrown into a lake

quietly resting

at the bottom

yet has the flavor

of wet leaves

chimney smoke

pancakes and love.


GRANDFATHER BROWN

Walked onto your porch

In mid winter and just stood there

Calm and determined in your sleeveless shirt

After ten minutes in the cold you came in

Lay down on the parlor couch and began to die

Lucid to the end you sang songs

You’d learned when

You were ten

How you’d played

In the fields

Clear as a bell you told it

In the morning

You were gone.


WIND AT NIGHT

Cooked dinner

watched the sun

quiet beautiful as if

the world were at peace

truckers stopped for the night

away from the road gravely

hard to drive stakes unrolled

my bag lay down dead tired

thinking of the day where

I’d been what I’d seen

Then sleep wild flowers

mowed grass and asphalt.


FATHER AND SON

I’m seven or eight

we’re at the curb about to cross a busy street

I can’t recall where

we were going or why

in my mind

we are

unsullied by regret.