I’ll be holding a book signing & reading of my new book of poetry “Breaking The Surface”, a collection of poems dedicated to Lake Katherine and all who love her. Here’s the details:

Date: Friday, August 27, 2010

Time: From 10am Until 12am (Reading At 10:30-11:00)

Place: Yawkee Hall in Hazelhurst, Wi

Book Signing & Reading Breaking The Surface is a post from: Janet Taliaferro

Read the full text of the 4 poems:
Looking for Perfection
Always Decisive
Today
Past and Future Tense

Breaking the Surface—4 Poems (video) is a post from: Janet Taliaferro

Read the full text of the 4 poems:
Looking for Perfection
Always Decisive
Today
Past and Future Tense

4 Poems from “Breaking the Surface” (video) is a post from: Janet Taliaferro

Under my hand the lichen
gray and sage
abrades like sandpaper.
but I hold the tree trunk
close, the way I hold
my grandchildren
and pray for their safety.

I know the humble spores
have survived ice and fire,
will outlive the saw
bitter rain and the bomb
and when all my children’s children
have long disappeared
the decent lichen
will spread itself
to cover the nakedness of stone.

Past and Future Tense is a post from: Janet Taliaferro

Fine furniture made in the late years
between World Wars and marked “Germany”
sits on tiny needlepoint rugs
Mother made one summer.

Rearranged first by me
and then by the careful fingertips
of daughter and granddaughters,
miniature dishes and lamps
have lost their tags and stamps
that said “Made in Japan.”

Two weeks after the bombs
fell on Hawaii
Mother and I went downtown
to the small shop
a few steps off Broadway
eager to buy candlesticks
or vases of flowers
from the almond eyed woman
and her slender husband.

Hand in hand we stared
at the empty shop
door with a cross of raw lumber
battered plate glass window
held in place by wide strips of tape.

“Where did thy go?”
She shook her head.
It would be four years before
we realized
the full meaning of the word
“internment.”

©2010, Janet Taliaferro

The Doll House is a post from: Janet Taliaferro

At eight years old
she stood in the empty bedroom
of the new house
in Cairo, West Virginia
and said to her six-year-old sister
“This is my room. That one’s yours.”

As her husband drove across the bridge
in Northern Wisconsin she announced,
“I want a house on that lake.”

He didn’t slow the dark blue Packard
with the metal covered spare tires
on the front fenders,
but seven miles up the road
the family stopped for the night
at a white clapboard inn with a green roof.

He never mentioned her remark.
She took notes—
town location,
address of real estate agent,
name of lake,
place to stay the following summer.

It all began like dropping a stone
into the crystal blue of the lake
the ripples gently disturbing
the surface of our lives
now into the fourth generation.

©2010, Janet M. Taliaferro

Always Decisive is a post from: Janet Taliaferro

My daughter says everything in this house
has its own story
from great-grandmother’s quilt
and mother’s ruby depression glass
to things I once unwrapped
from white paper and ribbon
reserved for wedding gifts.

Each spring, when I open the house
to clean and wash and rearrange
I remember the stories
and whisper them away with the dust
to make the ghosts more comfortable.

©2010, Janet Taliaferro

Spring Cleaning is a post from: Janet Taliaferro

Each fall
I walk the asphalt road
turned to satin
by rain
and search the splatters
of maple leaves
to find one
perfect crimson star
the size of a baby’s hand.

Today I found one
or so I thought
until I saw
some rogue insect
had preceded me
eating a hole–

–a perfect oval.

“Looking for Perfection” appeared in The Northern Virginia Review, Vol. 22.

© 2006, Janet M. Taliaferro

Looking for Perfection is a post from: Janet Taliaferro

my grandchildren, quarrelling in the bedroom
made me remember how much
I hated him.

Three years older, he got to do everything
I wanted to do.

He thought of me as spoiled and pampered
and I thought of him as privileged in that special way
a first born can be.

He was an expert tease, careful to ply his trade
out of sight or hearing of our parents
and sometimes teasing
pushed at the edges
of abuse.

I cried
and earned that superior contempt
reserved for younger siblings.

I raged
and the punishment I felt he deserved
came down on me like red fire.

I competed
but victories came only in their due time
like the driver’s license I coveted.

Life’s eraser dimmed the lines
transformed the hate
into a bond I miss.

Today
I am one day older than he will ever be.

© 2006, Janet M. Taliaferro

“Today” appeared in The Northern Virginia Review, Vol. 20 and on Robin Chapman’s Poem a Day Blog.

Today is a post from: Janet Taliaferro