BURLESQUE AND THANKFUL

The trees, who have inexplicably decided that nudity
serves the cold, wash over the blacktop in a spill of
tawny veins. November spins frost where once moods
pooled. In a loop a sky failing nothing but this death
of autumn on pavement and traffic sands falls through
each phase in a blink that stutters. She wants warm
cooking to ease the chill from her hands. The burden
of mothers sums all familial marks in the arc of her
loving the kitchen with thankful motion. As male, I
wash in the lighter stones of strange birds calling my
eyes glued shut to a physics of remorse. This season
is good for stripping.

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     Lewis LaCook was born in Lorain Ohio on November 5, 1970, making him a Scorpio. At fifteen he joined the Black River Poets, and had his first published poems appear in their review. Leaving the group in his early twenties, he wrote features for the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram, and the Lorain Journal. He is currently an undergraduate English major at Kent State University.
     His poetry has appeared in  LOST AND FOUND TIMES, WORLD LETTER, POTEPOETTEXT, POTEPOETZINE, WHISKEY ISLAND, LUNA NEGRA, ARIEL, BLACK RIVER REVIEW, THE COVENTRY READER,  etc.
     Lewis is working on a long collaborative e-mail poem called OUTSIDE THE BOTHER OF SUNLIGHT with Sheila E. Murphy and a collective text called UTOPIA which features several authors, among whom are Murphy, Thomas Lowe Taylor, and John Cone.

      Editor of the e-zine IDIOLECT, Lewis lives in Kent, OH.

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