Poetry Breakfast

Looking for a Sign of Life

His eyes were already burning
from the smoke of the cigarette stuck to his lips
when the river running southeast
towards Felton took a shallow leap
and headed east. He stood in the rush
and held his hands out like oars
to the water, as if he were a dike
and could hold back the flood.

Two days later they found him,
lodged in a tree that crossed
between a house and rookie
sandbar, an unlit cigarette
stuck to his lower lip,
and his thumb and forefinger
snapping against each other
giving the universal request for a light.

About the Poet:
Jeff Burt lives in California with his wife amid the redwood and two-lane roads wide enough for one car. He has work in The Nervous Breakdown, Amarillo Bay, Atticus Review, and forthcoming in Per Contra. He was the featured summer issue poet of Clerestory, won the 2011 SuRaa short fiction award, and been nominated for a Best of the Net Award.

Poetry Breakfast accepts submissions of poetry and poetry related creative non-fiction year-round.  See our Submission Guidelines page for details on submitting your work.

Photo by Chraecker Heller.

Whole Wheat

We break bread together,
not the soft stuff either,
the whole grain,
not the barely held together,
yeast noticeable to the tongue,
the firm-wrist-ripping type
measured in torques,
risen without ruse,
no oat to lighten,
no lie of rye to darken
like a fallen comment,
a cynicism, a schoolyard wink
that makes one untrustworthy,
but toasted, trusted,
lying underneath a butter tab
like a lover beneath a warm sheet.

About the Poet:
Jeff Burt lives in California with his wife amid the redwood and two-lane roads wide enough for one car. He has work in The Nervous Breakdown, Amarillo Bay, Atticus Review, and forthcoming in Per Contra. He was the featured summer issue poet of Clerestory, won the 2011 SuRaa short fiction award, and been nominated for a Best of the Net Award.

Poetry Breakfast accepts submissions of poetry and poetry related creative non-fiction year-round.  See our Submission Guidelines page for details on submitting your work.

Photo by Ash.

The Setting of Type

Knuckles reshaped
by letterpress,
fingerprints erased
by hot metal slugs,
inked hands rough
and calloused by linotype
setting elegant sentences
composed by others,
under the dim forty
watt bulb in the bathroom
he mixed water with darkness
and rinsed his fingers’ eloquence,
touched his palms,
traced for the syntax
of his marriage, his self,
in those small, creviced maps
of his own vocabulary.

About the Poet:
Jeff Burt lives in California with his wife amid the redwood and two-lane roads wide enough for one car. He has work in The Nervous Breakdown, Amarillo Bay, Atticus Review, and forthcoming in Per Contra. He was the featured summer issue poet of Clerestory, won the 2011 SuRaa short fiction award, and been nominated for a Best of the Net Award.

Poetry Breakfast accepts submissions of poetry and poetry related creative non-fiction year-round.  See our Submission Guidelines page for details on submitting your work.

Photo by Brigitee Werner.