Dorothy Mienko

Rowing



You call it a walk in sun
I call it frightful rowing

But I do it anyway
in spite of my ghosts

I row twenty foot-
steps away from home

keeping pace with skeletons
past the gently-graying mums

beyond the hot pink whirligig
twenty steps closer to the terrible

horizon and just barely breathing
with my hands worrying the chaplet's bead

and in my chest like a nightmare --
one trillion banging dark birds






Party Shoes



She can wear red stilettos
With rhinestone straps
So perfectly

That you might never notice at all
How stark
The white of her dress is

How she inwardly trembles
Ghosts and buried stones
The crash in her fear

Of being held down
Openly
By hands too tight

But isn't it beautiful
And don't you think it's amazing --
How perfectly she wears them







Dorothy Mienko's poetry is published online and in print. She has received four pushcart prize nominations and has written two books of poetry; What I Notice Now and Quiet Illuminations. Dorothy is the editor of Beside the White Chickens and of the anthology Women of the Web.






Dorothy Mienko Barry Seiler Lisa Gordon Stephen Mead Michael P. Workman T. Lewis Olga Lalić-Krowicka Joel Fry Dave Ruslander Anna Kaye Forsyth Keith Nunes