FreeWrights Peer Review™

Please post your own submission or nomination of another poet's work for the December contest as a reply to this thread. Closes at 8 pm November 28. Thanks.

Rendition

You plead for the life of your husband, Ameen,
father of 4-year-old Nasimah and unborn Badi,
a trained healer, physician perhaps to a terrorist,
as we stroll by the cold autumnal Tidal Basin.

Your purple boots with the woollen tassles bob
as we kick through the carpet of tawny leaves,
D.C.'s cherries naked, spring's pink ladies reduced
to twisted, arthritic old men while Mr Jefferson's

domed marble monument, so easy on the eye, reflects
in the Potomac, symbol of our democracy, testament
to the decency of our institutions. And I know
Ameen's life rests in the files at Langley,

his pixilated face displayed on some computer screen
in the shuttered room of a foreign capital of a steel-
bound ally; Ameen shackled in darkness. What can I do?
Ah, I pledge to do what I can, whisper in an ear or two.

Christopher T. George

Allen's:


On the day I should have proposed we marry


the symphony was playing in the Garden—
Berlioz, I think—when gravity called it a day.

The sky, so close, was the first to shuffle
into space. Elder couples, clutching blankets
and absurd picnic baskets, tumbled beneath us—

taut smiles on their faces. Tomorrow—Earth,
a centrifuge—more deeply rooted things would
break and follow—migrating monuments.

But prone and linked in newly weightless grass
we’d risen first—resembling the turning bud
of a skydiving rose. Tympani and cello rested;

the bassoonist, squinting, looked up, still sipping
her double reed, and though you would bring
stemware and wine, I’d leave the modest ring behind.

Jerry's:

my noir apotheosis

my banal original
left ordinary impressions
on the surface of your eyes; stanzas you couldn't
get out of your mind playing carpe diem

you'd chase romance around your mind
while you held fast to recognized patterns,
you'd say anything with a cigarette
hanging from your lip: tempus fugit

those wisps accent your spent look;
something frozen, dead winter,
caught by the Sun, melted, a haze of steam
rising nostalgically with redolent regret

Saore's:


Hold Me Tight


He was one of those boys
from the corner who got hard fast
and soft even faster

if the money wasn’t right.
His stroke-frozen body wasted
on the bed as he sipped water

and pissed in his pajamas.
When the nurse asked me to help
take them off I couldn’t move.

He thought he’d found
that quick hole to fuck,

but he didn’t know
someone lied, dear God.
Death is that simple.

Our 3 for the month from Allen, Jerry and Sergio. Good luck to all three. Also, good luck to Chris who will be representing a different forum with another piece.