PETER W. YAREMKO - POEMS

Peter W. Yaremko taught college writing classes and is author of three non-fiction books: A Light from Within; Saints and Poets, Maybe; and Fat Guy in a Fat Boat. His novel, Billy of the Tulips, was published in 2018 by TouchPoint Press. His poetry has appeared in Dual Coast Magazine, Poetry Quarterly, Allegro Poetry Magazine, Ariel Chart International Literary Journal, and Third Wednesday Magazine

BLOSSOM AND WITHER
​

​Why do we bury them
on their backs?
As hydroponic blossoms
in mellow wombs
they rode bottoms-up
except for the breeched.
But now forever on their backs.
Never on tummies,
cheek on tucked-up arm.
Never on sides or seats. No.
Always on their backs.
Is it danger of drool perhaps?
Or to recall the sky
they see no more and kill time
considering past cloud pareidolia?
Caskets coffins crypts
rockhard berths softened by
loamy soil and sateen cushions
to cradle winter-cold skulls.
They wither beneath unheard
whispering in obverse incubation.
 

ISAIAH 66:1
​

​Thus says the Lord:
Heaven’s my throne and
earth my footstool, all made
by my hand, all mine.
 
So what’s left for mortal me?
Humble myself and tremble
at such Olympian hauteur,
trusting my quaking to quell him.
 
And hope Isaiah heard him wrong.
 

THE MAJESTIC DINER
​

​7:04 on a New Jersey
Monday morning. I have to link
time and place if you didn’t know
this ornery state swaggers along
to its own time zone.
 
A silver-sided diner
at the side of State Route 17, the side
hustling the proletariat toward Manhattan.
It dances in the blinding rising sun
like a spangled, strutting cheerleader.
 
Alone with my omelet enchantment,
lox scallion double mascarpone,
I watch them,
drop of jam on my buttered English
touch of envy on my tongue.
 
Newly together, one can tell,
she in dental braces still,
his tie tossed over a shoulder.
They lean to smooch: touch of tooth,
coffee’s tang, orthodontics pewter smack
all at play amidst the osculation. And
hi-ho hi-ho, it’s off to work we go.

PAPAYA
​

​Can’t say wet, but slippery,
evading my grasp wantonly
as a fish in water until finally
yielding to my blade, noir seeds,
precise ball-bearings
flee the concupiscent flesh,
helter-skelter across the board,
unfettered, freed, yet compelled
to launch new life.
I make toast.

NOW
​

​ 
To see what now is,
look to clouds.
No past we know of,
no future, either.
They are.
Kinetic.
 
To see what now is,
look to fog, moving,
though it seems not to.
Mist melting within mist
as souls in a crowd.
Unfixed.
 
To see what now is,
look to the sea.
Even calm it knows no stasis.
Only flux and flow and
lingering chaos of creation.
Liquid.
 
To see what now is,
look to you, look to me.
No further. For now,
for always, for ever we
are. We are.
Becoming.