Decaf Days: Poems
Author
JD DeHart
Author Bio
JD DeHart is an English teacher who edits the journal Mount Parable. His work has appeared in Eye On Life Magazine, Garden Gnomes’ Biblical Legends Anthology Series, Steel Toe Review, Commonline Journal, Coffee Shop Poems, Manic Fervor, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Wilderness House Literary Review, and other publications. He has work forthcoming in A Long Story Short, Straight Forward, Midnight Circus, Stray Branch, Eunoia Review, and The Other Herald. DeHart was born in Princeton, West Virginia and currently lives in Tennessee. He is completing his Education Specialist degree and occasionally publishes in educational journals. DeHart is the 2013-2014 Teacher of the Year for his county, and is currently progressing to the grand division.
DeHart writes to celebrate life and faith and to express his ideas. He admires authors of various types, including C.S. Lewis, James Tate, Billy Collins, and Kurt Vonnegut. He has also published in the speculative genre in journals like Aoife’s Kiss, Starline, and Silverblade. In the classroom, he desires to share his love of literature with his students. He has served on the Graduate Education Committee at Lee University, his alma mater, and currently holds some graduate responsibilities at the university.
DeHart blogs on spinrockreader.blogspot.com.
Description
Decaf Days: Poems is the first literary collection from author JD DeHart. The volume contains several poems, many of which celebrate minute aspects of life. Some of the poems relate to the field of education (DeHart is a full-time English teacher and studies education). Poems in the volume draw on the author’s experiences with people he encounters in daily life and the mode of the poems is free verse. Every spare moment and every opportunity to sketch and scribble makes its way into the author’s word processor and then is ripe for sharing.
Poems like “Fur Twins” take ordinary aspects of life, normal characters, and reconfigure them in a new and fresh way. In this case, two people with different physical appearances find that they both share a common disease. “The Poets Come Out” imagines a world where all the authors in the world, all poets of various shape, degree, and size gather to deal with the world’s problems. The result is what you might expect – or maybe not. “Tilting Landscape” imagines the denizens of a portrait that unfortunately finds itself out of rhythm. The author attempts to create sympathy for the poor creatures contained in the frame.
Poems like “Husk” recall the author’s childhood experiences, playing in the country and finding artifacts. In the case of this poem, the author found a small, dull husk that held an emerging surprise.
The poems make use of word play and some are short, micro-poems, while others act as narrative verse. The narrative forms hearken back to the author’s love of contemporary poets that use this method. It is the basic desire of every human being to create and to share their creations.
Ever since he was a young child, DeHart has felt this desire to write and share, first filling up loose-leaf notebook pages with illustrations from his comic book youth, and later writing notes in whatever spare journal he could find. The author has been publishing poems for the past few decades, along with the occasional flash fiction or article. It is the author’s desire that the reader experience this creation and apply their own lives to it.
Book excerpt
Nurture
Just across the street, the noble familial example
Slap goes his flesh, thud goes the door
“I just don’t know what to do with him”
“His mother does the discipline”
Droves of people go in and out of the house
It is at best a hotel, at worst a bordello
Grandmother is always cordial when she sees you
When you are not looking, she probably leers
They have nicotine and lawn chairs
Resting all day in the sun with a wandering dog.
Diorama
Pose this way, just slightly
Let us set up the scene
The shop is not a real shop
The customer not a real customer
The floor is just a blanket
Covering up the stage
My accent is affected
Of course, the tears were a fraud
Every five minutes we freeze
Sure to show our performance.
Fur Twins
One is slightly smaller,
maybe ten pounds less
You can tell from the eye
twinkle in the photo
The smaller one has a more
caustic attitude
The larger one is more
sedate, you could be friends
An easy acquaintance to all
passersby
Both possess too much hair
to be ordinary people
The photo has been touched
Or otherwise transformed
Artists can do that
They have permission
Twin lycanthropes started
Most likely like us.
A Night of Games
With each jingle of keys a new face arrives
A television blunders through sound
Without containing much of a message
Gifts are arranged, none of them ours
The food has been set out and has begun
To stiffen, the cheese edges firming up
Curling inward like yellowed fingers
Rumors and gossip circulate like fish
Roving the edges of a small water bowl
Consuming algae from the smooth corners
Someone suggests yet another game
In an endless succession of recreations
All of them beginning with promise
Then fading with an imagined deflated
Shrill balloon sound.
See Nothing
We wait for the electricity to return
Nestled around the only source of heat
Previously we were great leaders
Now, small animals in the wild
Now, our grand ideas have fallen
Spread on the floor in a spill
A crackling mechanical instant plunges
What was normal into a musty room
No windows, we are trapped here
Flies on the edge of brown paper
No sound of angry music
No murmured dialogue of actors
How will we pass the time?
Tilting Landscape
It is not unusual to feel sorrow
For the members of the household
In that ancient barn-like structure
When the frame tilts
Casting cow, earth, and plow
Along with lake and old grandmother
To the other side of the print.
The Poets Come Out
Never fear, hear the trumpet sound
Echoing like the book of Revelation
The poets have arrived
Some are soft and delicate
Tissue paper thin
Others are enormous and grand
Walking in the bulk of verbs
If you have a problem, just confide
In your local poet
Chances are, he or she will not help
They will string metaphors to your
Plight, and personify your troubles.
Author Website
https://spinrockreader.blogspot.com
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