Poetry Commons^™

A Half-Spread Wing, Allyn Wood

Manuscripts

Sunday. Breakfast and lunch eaten; a magazine read; the apartment tidied, as a man alone does it, with deliberate delicacy. There is something exotic in his movement, and about the room, which is produced by the placing of ordinary things; and everywhere is evidence of a long and careful striving for homeyness as a spiritual ideal. Where eyes have met the lonely space of walls, pictures hang - but do not look at them: he seldom does. Squares and rectangles become companionable, and being so familiar, are scarcely seen, their purpose forgotten. So that when he desires space, with an …

Truth And Dare, Barbara Gene Lucas

Manuscripts

The June sun beat steadily down upon the gravel school yard as the children ran out to play for the last time before vacation. The little girls with their hair flying dashed helter-skelter over the playground, and the boys brought out their baseballs. On one side of the yard in the shade of the library building stood a row of ten-year-old girls. They were members of "The Gang," an elite club composed of Republicans only and those who could stand to have their thumb bent backwards without flinching. In front of this rank stood the leader with her hands on …

The Spoon, Mary Alice Kessler

Manuscripts

Mary closed the big wooden door carefully and waited for the click that locked it. She walked slowly across the gravel schoolyard, kicking the largest rocks with her foot. She counted each step ... one ... two ... three ... four. On fifty, she climbed over the low iron fence surrounding the yard and stood quietly as if she were listening for something.

The Woman And The Working Girl, Jean Farson

Manuscripts

Brynn hurried along the sidewalk. She could hardly see through the slippery, foggy shadowy her way air that enveloped East Barnes Street. A fine rain still came down in a slow monotone, and nothing in the city of Wellington seemed to be dry at all. Brynn cast a glance at her watch, and quickened her steps, her green transparent raincoat crackling, as she hurried to catch the eleven o'clock bus. Mr. Dwyer shouldn't have kept her working so late on a night like this--

Sea Song, Jan Skinner

Manuscripts

The boy should have been hurrying home from school. The sky was dark with that peculiar greyness that foretells a storm, but the boy, tall and lank, was ambling along the sidewalk, looking up at the moody skies eagerly, expectantly, as if he was about to see a friend.

Rhyme For A Volume Of W. H. Hudson, Allyn Wood

Manuscripts

No abstract provided.

Pastorale, Mary Alice Kessler

Manuscripts

CHORUS:

We chant of an age

A trim, nervous

Time Squared into precise line,

Sheer mathematics, a flawless steel claw.

This is the time of soaring monuments

This is the time of formulae pyramids

This is the time of shining mechanism

This age is dwarfing its sire.

Front Matter

Manuscripts

No abstract provided.

Volume 13, Issue 2: Full Issue

Manuscripts

No abstract provided.

Vignettes

Manuscripts

No abstract provided.

The Village Store, Bill Osborn

Manuscripts

I sometimes wonder if my great-grandfather would recognize our village store. To be sure, the size and general shape of today's shop would differ little from the one he knew, but might he not be surprised to see the fire-engine red of the Coca-Cola signs plastered abundantly over the dark brown clapboards?

Grandmother Looks On, Rosemary Ronsheim

Manuscripts

Pretend for a little while that you are seventy or eighty years old. Put yourself in the position of your grandmother who has come to live with you since grandfather died. It is seven-thirty in the morning and you are sitting in the living room. You have probably received a brief "good morning" when you stepped into the kitchen and may have been brushed aside as someone leaped to save the burning toast. You very sensibly have announced, "I'll go away until the children are off to school."

Teeth Tales, Virginia Rodman

Manuscripts

False teeth and the fashion of filling teeth were known even by the ancient Egyptians, but the science of dentistry is a fairly recent one. Just as far back as colonial days when life was centered in New England, the care of teeth was very crude as compared to modern methods.

My Father, Kathryn Alfs

Manuscripts

My father is five feet eleven inches tall. He has large grey-green eyes, a somewhat too-large nose, a medium sized mouth, and a very square jaw. His physique is typically middle-aged. After being teased to destraction about being built like a butter-churn, he now wears. a corset with the fond delusion that it pushes his stomach into his chest and looks youthful. Aloud he swears it is for his posture. He now resembles a top-heavy butter-churn.

Gentlemen, Be Seated, William Miller

Manuscripts

I'm a little devil. Every morning I walk a block to the bus stop preceding the one in front of my house so that I can get a seat. I feel sure my neighbors give me icy stares as I sit comfortably with my nose in a book. I never see them. Yesterday morning I was too late to walk -to the other stop, so I stood while the lady next door sat in my seat and smiled at me with sarcastic little daggers throughout the fifteen-minute ride. She probably thinks I have no conscience, but I do and I …

The Incident Of The Apple, Jeanne Mccoy

Manuscripts

For the last five years, Pa had babied and coaxed this pet tree of his. It was healthy and well-developed, but never before had there even been the slightest excuse of an apple.

Kelly's "Rock Of Gibralter", Barbara Barth

Manuscripts

"Kelly, Kentucky! Stop here three minutes. Next stop Hopkinsville." A town like a million others. Hay, feed and grain shed and a dinky little station. A small boy, whose pants were patched with flesh, and a dog mooching on the platform. Everyone on the day coach gives Kelly one look and one sigh and pulls in his neck. Just another three-minute stop.

The Blades That Severed Two Lives, William Hardman

Manuscripts

The snow was still falling as it had done during the past three days. The wind was gaining momentum as the flakes glistened in the light of the shell-bursts. This was a new obstacle for the men who had fought through the rain and mire of France and Belgium. Although the defensive position was just inside the land boundary of Germany, the climate had not changed with the borderline. Winter had set in.

Sleigh Bells Ring, Joanna Jennings

Manuscripts

"Jimmy! Jimmy! Come quick! It's snowing again." Immediately two freckled noses were pressed into mere buttons at the window, as two pairs of eyes gazed rapturously at the whitening world.

Autobiography [Part Iii], Irene Brown

Manuscripts

Before graduating from nurses training, I started serving in the capacity of Supervisor of Nurses of the Eli Lilly Research Clinic at City Hospital. Here we had both an in-patient and an out-patient clinic where we were doing research on blood dyscrasias and hypertension. In this position I continued on at the hospital with the Lilly Company until my marriage, April 4, 1941.

Mrs. Harper, Marjorie Little

Manuscripts

Mrs. Harper came to keep house for Grandma many years ago when everyone in the family was ill. Grandma had about given up hope of any answers to her advertisements asking for help. One day a taxi drove up in front of the house. A small, bird-like woman hopped out. Her hair was pulled tightly back into a knot at the back of her neck. She wore a gray dress and a funny little hat perched on top of her head. She paid the driver and came lightly up the steps. Ever since then Mrs. Harper has belonged to us …

The New Recruit, William T. Sharp

Manuscripts

The new recruit has just entered a completely different phase of life in which he immediately becomes extremely insecure. He has no idea what is coming next, and this insecure feeling is so radically different from the security of the average American home that he suffers a considerable amount of anxiety until he is able to make an adequate adjustment to service life. He is no longer allowed to say what he pleases when he feels the urge to do so, and the resulting suppressed emotion often makes him irritable toward his fellow cohorts.

Winged Suicide, Jack Demlow

Manuscripts

With every flight you become more convinced that a combat mission in this ship is nothing short of suicide. This :suicide ship is the Army Air Forces' CG- 4A Cargo Glider, commonly referred to as the "Whisper Ship," "Flying Coffin," "G-Bird," or "One-way Johnnie." Just looking at the glider, crouched in its own grotesque manner on the runway, makes you say to yourself, "How will it ever stay in one piece during the flight-not to speak of the landing shock?" Approaching the ship, you can not help noticing the flimsy fabric, the wooden skids beneath the repulsive, stubby nose, and …

The Hand Of Fate, Muriel Holland

Manuscripts

Anita Colby ripped open the yellow envelope in her hand and devoured its message in one hasty glance. "Jan!" she screamed. "Jan! You'll never guess what!" Her roommate emerged from the depths of a wardrobe trunk long enough for a curious "What's up?"

Une Belle Jour En Normandie, David Craig

Manuscripts

The two soldiers lying on their bellies in the slit trench tried desperately to burrow their bodies deeper in the slime. Bits of wet grass and broken twigs were imbedded in the oozing mire which covered their helmets, raincoats, leggings, and clodhoppers, giving them the protective coloring of their muddy surroundings...

Stormy Vveather, Tom Beckwith

Manuscripts

"Life is bare, there's gloom an' misery

ev'rywhere,

Stormy weather;

Since my man an' I ain't together,

Keeps rainin' all the time."

The Locks, Allyn Wood

Manuscripts

He came out into the sun. Spice of wood-dust hung over the line of shanties following the canal; it was the dust of their houses baking on the bare packed bank that scarcely lifted above the water Waiting passively behind the bridge. Sometimes little clapping water-hands beat against the iron doors of the locks beneath the bridge, beat against the concrete sides of the bridge, beat, clapped, despaired, and fell. Brown and oily and dusty, the water lay with a strange subservient beauty behind the locks, moving round and round ever so slowly, as if it must remember motion while …

Rabbitries, Allyn Wood

Manuscripts

The girl in the car drove slowly out of the city. She crossed train tracks with a leap of the heart, following the straight line which was the street and then the highway. By its outer edges will the city be known by those who arrive and depart, will it be loved by those who can love, with fatalistic wonder, their creation!

The Mullein, Allyn Wood

Manuscripts

She had been seriously ill. For a few days it made no difference that it was autumn, one of the most beautiful that she might know. She stayed in the front room on a cot with an abundance of cool pillows. The door remained open, for there was a kind of claustrophobia while she scarcely breathed; by lack of oxygen all other capacity for emotion was suspended, and with forced objectively she contemplated the ensuing question, Does cessation of breathing end all emotion?

Front Matter

Manuscripts

No abstract provided.