Two Poems, by R.L. Swihart.
Shibboleth
She left a century's old
book of poems on the chaise loungeShe pigeonholed an unfinished letter
into the scroll top deskShe checked speech at the door
Once bedside she used her gaze
much like a lighthouse would use its lightHe saw it
An eagle's wing lifted and she
scrambled in&&&
Yesterday
Hook line and sinker
I swallowed her version
of things past-As though the transmigrant Proust
had embodied her
and forgotten his pad
and pencil-Gods and monsters-
abhorent to the modern
mind-
brimmed full our glass
of hours
R.L. Swihart studied Engineering at the University of Michigan, Theology at
Grace Theological Seminary, Near Eastern Languages/Culture and Education at
UCLA. He teaches Math to inner-city Los Angelinos at the Thomas Jefferson High
School in L.A. His major influences, "mostly dead guys:" Samuel Beckett, Max
Frisch, Thomas Mann, Tolstoy, Nabokov, Rilke, Celan, Zbigniew Herbert.
His work has appeared in The Melic Review, 3rd Muse, Samsara Quarterly, The
Drunken Boat, Conspire, Poet's Canvas and Stirring.
"A recurrent dream: being elsewhere."