Nov 4, 2018 | Gus Stevens, Pentameter
The wandering sermon has run too long and yawning congregants rise to their feet while a quavering singer strains his song, aching over the chorus he repeats repeats like a lonesome widow worrying the stone of long desires that she cannot quite complete despite...
Jul 28, 2018 | Bible Story, Gus Stevens, Multi-Syllabic Rhyme, Pentameter, Prophets
It’s told that Socrates chose the hemlock over this greater terror: banishment. But tortured Jonah, standing on the dock the hour he spied the boat to Tarshish went in secret to the furthest corner of the earth to hide his hate beneath a Spanish tent. He refused...
Jul 23, 2018 | Gus Stevens, Hexameter, Pentameter, Rhymed Couplets, Summer
Why are my poems so obsessed with doom? Is there no light their dark will not consume, no work they will not turn into a chore, nor child they cannot drown in metaphor? Sometimes beauty is neither fraud nor thief; sometimes a leaf is just a common leaf— a welcome...
Nov 19, 2017 | Autumn, Multi-Syllabic Rhyme, Pentameter, Seasons
Where is warmth and where can the light be found? These days, the workers put in longer hours than the sun who goes too soon to sleep. All the leaves, once bright, now have dulled and browned with the sunken gourds and withered flowers to feed the molds and mushrooms...
Apr 23, 2017 | Alexandrine, Bible Story, Gus Stevens, Lot, Pentameter, Quatrains
In the court of God, Abram asked for sinful men if he’d spare the many for the sake of the few. But fifty could not be found, nor forty, nor ten; he dared not ask for one because he knew. He knew that even righteous Lot shared in their shame; he knew the Law...
