Chris Crittenden has been published in hundreds of journals worldwide, including Chelsea, Atlanta Review, Istanbul Literary Review, California Quarterly, Poetry Midwest and Kritya, Journal of India, and was interviewed on Poets Café, a radio show of KPFK Los Angeles. His poem "Owl" was nominated for the Best of the Net Award by The Rose & Thorn.
Winter 2008
Table of Contents - Vol. IV, No. 4
Poetry Interview Translations Fiction Book Reviews
Chris Crittenden
you sneer or smile
at the neon world
of bikinis and machismo,
calm
amid frisbees and nerf sticks,
teenage whoops
and jogging toddler legs,
you
abstract Mona Lisa,
crafted on a lathe
that took evolutions
to impart.
which one giggling
in the raucous boisterous throng
will lift you
to a gleeful lobe for a hyperactive second,
then toss you back
into slipping shore muck,
amid the frantic yellow trample
of plovers?
do any of those who have ears
hear
what was whispered?
what came to them
songful with rain?
mobile of the delicious,
dangling handholds
for keen palms to take,
as if we humans
were marionettes,
and even does and cubs
tugged from the forest
for a taste.
so redolent,
bee-drenched in August,
a living golden buzzing robe
parted by ripeness in September,
orbs that blush effulgent,
more than dawn's Venus,
or a buxom rose.
who wouldn't fixate
on the arrayed gifts
offered in dances through decades;
and we are swept up still
by the minuet, the slow
hypnotic grace
that waits for a fair second
to tremble boughs with arms of breeze-
and captivate us,
make our hearts whirl.
© Chris Crittenden
