John Palen
Riding With the Diaspora
by John Palen
Winner of the 2021 Sheila-Na-Gig Editions
Chapbook Contest
$14.00 ($4.00 US Shipping per order)
John Palen is the author of “Distant Music” and “Open Communion: New and Selected Poems,” both from Mayapple Press. His most recent book, “Riding With the Diaspora,” won the 2021 Sheila-Na-Gig poetry chapbook competition. He worked as a store clerk, draftsman, newspaper journalist and college professor, and now lives in retirement on the Illinois Grand Prairie.
Doing the Laundry After a Bad Night
I’m at the laundomat chucking quarters
into the slot of the high-capacity washer.
Today it’s sheets, worries, failures, underwear,
a week’s accumulation of shirts and offenses,
towels and griefs. I find a wobbly chair
at a wobbly table, scroll war and famine
until it’s time to load the dryer.
Then for sixteen minutes I do nothing
but watch wet, misshapen, twisted laundry
tumble slowly behind glass,
straighten and disentangle itself
to come out soft, clean, dry,
ready to be worn again.
Garden Peas After a Wet Spring
It rained in May, day after day for a week,
and you lifted yourselves to the top
of the chicken-wire trellises, blossomed,
got wet feet, a cold, then something worse.
Like mortality creeping up Falstaff’s legs,
your green leaves turned pale, then yellow,
and every day I saw how the colors climbed
the supports, death advancing quick as life.
You look autumnal, but it’s only June,
and you’re whole, untattered, shot through
with sunlight. You won’t make a crop,
but I can’t uproot you. I plant
climbing beans along your rows
to twine among you, if they will.
