Two Poems by Stefanie Bennett

Insomnia

Consider the ash
In its 3rd degree.
The partisan
                You've
Made of me . . .

I succumbed -- but
Only when someone
Had to lead the band
Out over the walls

Of the infirmary.

Biographies, aspired
Will fire
A line so slick:
Was there no

More to this
Than the music?



Elegy . . . . . . . . . . . 

We who came through the generations
          -- Emptied the pepper
          All over the dessert;
          Knifed Arabic
          In the gravy;
          Dealt out spoons,
          The royal
          Flush of poker;
          Turned the wineglass
          Into paper-cups;
          Fed cheese and anchovy
          'Over there' to
          A mange mimic connoisseur;
          Set the finger-bowl alight
          And quarreled
          Words and sent them
          Packing
          To another
          Serious luncheon . . .

The balloons we left intact.  Air!
No-one's put a price on it.




Stefanie Bennett has published several volumes of poetry and had poems appear with Dead Snakes, Poetry Pacific, Snow Monkey, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Boston Poetry Magazine, Mad Swirl, The Mind[less] Muse, and others.  Of mixed ancestry [Italian/Irish/Paugussett-Shawnee], she was born in Queensland, Australia, in 1945.