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D.R. James

DR James   D.R. James has taught writing, literature, and peace-making at a small college for 34 years and lives in the woods east of Saugatuck, Michigan.
 
His poems and prose appear in a variety of magazines and anthologies, and his most recent of seven poetry collections is If god were gentle (Dos Madres Press).
 
A new chapbook, Surreal Expulsion, is to be released in Spring 2019 by The Poetry Box. www.amazon.com/author/drjamesauthorpage
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

D.R.'s microchap & selected poems are available below. Download the microchap by clicking on the title.  

Origami Microchap

All Her Jazz

   

Click on above title to download PDF microchap.

 D.R.James CVR All Her Jazz 2018

Cover artwork by Lauri Burke

 

Every microchap
may be downloaded
for free
from this website.
 
(Set printer for landscape)

 

 

All Her Jazz


   — after W.C.W.

 

My striking wife
is the cat’s strut—
cello sass
with a syncopated
escalator to
move
these languid feet—
Bet yer bottom
her fleet laugh
‘s enough to please.

Wham
giv’er the day
and watch’er de-roost—
She quakes my phase-y
ass with tympani—
Scoot it, Jimmy!
Ev’body
Ev’body else
and me—
We bop to it.

- First published in Third Wednesday

D.R. James © 2018

 

 

Reassurance to My Future Spouse
 

You may not know me yet,
but I’m learning just who you must be,

trusting you’re getting ready
for the rest of our lives.

Perhaps you’re already emptying
several mental drawers, clearing psychic

spaces for another razor, another coffee cup,
disrobing the slender shoulders

of a dozen wooden hangers
in the scented closet of your subtle heart.

Don’t worry, I’m not voyeuristic—
not strictly speaking anyway—

though I have been watching your
comings and goings—goings, mostly—

in the sector labeled maybe in my mind.
And you’ve surely bided your sweet time,

perhaps sometimes willingly, or as unwillingly
as I, waiting for the grip on our two fates—

on our two lines of blind perspective—
to converge at that distant but critical point

where we collide, and teeter, then tip
over an imagined ledge, falling, finally,

hopelessly into love. Meanwhile,
I’m enjoying the way the wind

will want to splay stray strands of hair
across your face as you pose for a corny photo

by a springtime pond, and how the waves
of your dear body, the surf

of your complicated soul, will form
and conform to the shores of mine—

and how this will work just as perfectly
the other way around.

D.R. James © 2018