John L. Stanizzi is author of the collections – Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After the Bell, Hallelujah Time!, High Tide – Ebb Tide, Four Bits, and Chants.  His newest collection, Sundowning, will be out this year with Main Street Rag.  John’s poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, American Life in Poetry, The New York Quarterly, Paterson Literary Review, Blue Mountain Review, The Cortland Review, Rattle, Tar River Poetry, Rust & Moth, Connecticut River Review, Hawk & Handsaw, and many others.  His work has been translated into Italian and appeared in many journals in Italy.  His translator is Angela D’Ambra.  John has read and venues all over New England, including the Mystic Arts Café, the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, Hartford Stage, and many others.  For many years, John coordinated the Fresh Voices Poetry Competition for Young Poets at Hill-Stead Museum, Farmington, CT.  He is also a teaching artist for the national recitation contest, Poetry Out Loud.  A former New England Poet of the Year, John teaches literature at Manchester Community College in Manchester, CT and he lives with his wife, Carol, in Coventry.

8.28.19

11.14 a.m.

69 degrees

Patron of the berry-eaters, the silky dogwoods are nearly
overripe in their dark blue, juice filled-clusters, and the shoreline has been
nullified by a complete lack of rain…not even a drizzle, but the
dogwoods are bursting, and the baby frogs nod on the sandy shore.

8.29.19

7.59 a.m.

68 degrees

1. And the sabbath rang slowly

     In the pebbles of the holy streams.

                                             -Fern Hill

                                             -Dylan Thomas

Provocative jewels these pebbles of the holy streams,
officials of order and motion and a natural harmony of art beneath the
nonchalance of the light that plays the surface and the stream bed at once,
discipline of chaos that presents us ideas, designs, murals under water.

9.22.19

7.14 a.m.

53 degrees

Passe the days of the pond being full to its brim;
osseous shoreline in dire need of water to cover its bones.
Narcosis in the ash tree, and although the sunlight shines behind it,
derogation shows on its leaves, slowly curly on themselves, their complexion waning.

9.23.19

1.14 p.m.

83 degrees

Pellicle of slick mud on the bank that is usually underwater,
oleo slimy and scattered with rocks.  And the hummingbirds, usually gone, are
nonsensical, coming to the feeders as ravenous as ever,
dilatory and casual, they twirl and chatter, as right there in the hills fall encroaches.