Jeanie Tomasko

There might have been starfish

by on Sep 6, 2017

The seas of October
were calm and

the moon hung
like a small ocean

in the sky
Little globes

of Noctiluca
spilled liquid fire

and animals tinier than
radiance sparkled visible

in the cold metal sea
It was as if

a mirror had been created
to slip through,

and so I did
as a sand grain drifting

between rain and sea moss
Under the wind

a fisherman’s oar—
abandoned.

Darling, if
the sky

was sustained
under water

the beauty of things
should return

 

—
Jeanie Tomasko is the author of several books of poetry, The Collect of the Day being the most recently published. Two other chapbooks are forthcoming in 2017. She lives in Wisconsin with her husband, Steve and two new beehives in the backyard.

Shorts-and-long-sleeved-shirt-kinda-perfect-Sunday afternoon at the beach

by on Aug 23, 2016

here where everything is broken
[i] fragment of

sand dollar, sea star, clam
[I think] this day didn’t

start well
whelk, wrack, knotted wrack

knotted yes, unable to
tide, ebb, endless, crash

[I think I]
burrow like a sand crab

run from
like the small gulls

in and out, pursuit of
oyster, whorl of inner ear

[I think I finally]
the first thing I said

I picked up this shell for you and
you placed a small stone

in my hand,
harbor, home, hard love

washed up, wrack line
how all this broken

[I think I finally get
it] inside

 

—
Jeanie Tomasko is the author of a few poetry books, most recently (Prologue), the recipient of an Editor’s Choice award from Concrete Wolf Chapbook Series, and Violet Hours (Taraxia Press), a collection of the antics of a unique little girl. She can be found on her website (jeanietomasko.com), walking around somewhere near Lake Superior with her husband, Steve, or enjoying the antics of her cats at home, where she endeavors to always have a bottomless honey jar, garlic from the garden and bees in the front yard hyssop.

and if you sketched the view from here minus

by on Jul 22, 2016

the streets and alleys, minus the motels and the three rollercoasters, minus the jetty and the lighthouse and the catamarans lined upside down on the sand, minus the evening’s surfers, the young women with their dogs, street poets, booksellers, guitars and glass jars stuffed with old dollars, minus pizza toppings, car keys, small lamps burning in windows, minus the fathers calling time to come in

and minus even this wharf where people sit with their fried clams and slices of lemon, where people fall into the sea as you draw in reverse dismantling the boards, erasing all but landscape and a pod of sea lions arcing in for the night and a few gray gulls flying toward the mountains off to the left; all that was before anyone ordered decaf for two or touched another’s face with a hand small as rain

 

—
Jeanie Tomasko is the author of a few poetry books, most recently (Prologue), the recipient of an Editor’s Choice award from Concrete Wolf Chapbook Series, and Violet Hours (Taraxia Press), a collection of the antics of a unique little girl. She can be found on her website (jeanietomasko.com), walking around somewhere near Lake Superior with her husband, Steve, or enjoying the antics of her cats at home, where she endeavors to always have a bottomless honey jar, garlic from the garden and bees in the front yard hyssop.

Gossamer

by on Jul 14, 2016

gos-sa-mer \  n  [ME gossomer, fr. gos  goose + somer  summer]  1 : and if wings could wing : and if summer could last : and if we could be as soft and careful as milkweed air :  as in, too soon we grab the net or nail and try to pin things down when  2 : it’s enough to know they are there1   3 : and right here in the middle of writing this, I get an e-mail from Orbitz, subject line: You’re so fly  3 : Dear Orbitz, how did you know?   4 : because the wind is blowing and the yellow leaves are flying and, I am so fly  5 : here with you under the available sky, a silver airplane2  &

 

 

1I think, as birds fly past our morning window

2two ravels of [goose + summer] geese

 

—
Jeanie Tomasko is the author of a few poetry books, most recently (Prologue), the recipient of an Editor’s Choice award from Concrete Wolf Chapbook Series, and Violet Hours (Taraxia Press), a collection of the antics of a unique little girl. She can be found on her website (jeanietomasko.com), walking around somewhere near Lake Superior with her husband, Steve, or enjoying the antics of her cats at home, where she endeavors to always have a bottomless honey jar, garlic from the garden and bees in the front yard hyssop.