I’m walking thru pine needles I’m a ship in a rose petals sails silver coins
walking towards wood chips then sawdust I’m an enigma on the breeze-
green park
a frisbee flung my mind a disk-plastic everything is plastic
strangers’ eyes averted in my peripheral vision the periphery is promising
we’re all moving in world-circles like a spinning frisbee of death and wonder
chipping at our trapped on the concrete bridge a life-size image of Isis
spray painted there where I slipped and landed here where I buried treasure
you will find someday hieroglyphics and tatters there will have to be bone
beads
evil eye beads I don’t know how else to say this on the littered banks:
broken glass bottles
cell phone boxes discarded
torn paper bags
plastic everything
and glitter
all moving inevitably into dark beer-brown Amazon Creek

JW James is an outsider poet having lived with chronic disabling illness for 30 years. This informs her life but does not define it. Before that she had 3 tough years in a hospital nursing program and worked as an RN. She hasn’t been rich in money or formal education, but wealthy in time, images, dream, curiosity. Her work has been published for 30 years and her book-length poem, Fish Dreams, 2004 won Mellen Press’ contest; “poetry as ecstatic visionary narrative.”

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