John Palen
Strange & Wonderful Creatures
by John Palen
ISBN: 987-1-962405-13-1 — $14.00 ($4.00 US Shipping)
John Palen’s ninth book of poems, the chapbook Strange and Wonderful Creatures, came out in 2024 from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. Once an after-school stock-boy in his father’s clothing store, Palen went on to work as a draftsman, newspaper reporter and editor, and journalism professor. He has been publishing poems in literary journals for more than five decades. In retirement, he lives on the Illinois Grand Prairie, where he writes, gardens, and walks every chance he gets.
Here Is the Sand
Boats on the Beach at Étretat
Claude Monet, 1885, Art Institute of Chicago
Here is the sand
that gets into socks and shoes,
crotch and bedding, restless sleep
the sea’s green turbulence
breaking white and racing up
where boats tilt on their keels at the tide line
the fish market building
with its scavenged, variegated pale bricks
and boarded-up windows
the caloges
those old unseaworthy hulks
roofed with tarred planks for storage
the gleam of a cold rain on everything
and your mother dying, long ago,
when you were seventeen.
Boys Shooting Baskets
In a schoolyard corner
two practice hoops,
three young boys
with two basketballs
on a fall afternoon.
They make it up on the fly,
this intricate, looping
dance of balls plucked
from the air, open
hoops found, shots
taken. The rims are way
too high for them
and mostly they miss,
but when one
sinks a bank shot
or swishes, the others
say “Hey” or “Nice one,”
the way they hear
older, bigger boys
talk it up on the court.
Someday they will
be those boys,
be pushed
to win. Today they
just shoot baskets,
leave each other room
to take the shots.
