Stanzaic Stylings

AT 62: Spectacle Island, Boston Harbor It is time to sit on an island far away enough from your life to look at it. It is time to notice the slender waves of the grass. It is time for your worn shoes on the warm gravel. You shuffle like a vaudevillian. You let the wind slap you affectionately with fragrant  ocean air. You are no longer a second-rate pugilist boxing your way into a corner. And the flies that buzz your pale,  spindly limbs with their blood lust-- you finally understand they do what they must. Doug Holder is the founder of the Ibbetson Street Press.  Holder has been published in a wide variety of journals and newspapers like: the Boston Globe, The Somerville Times, Bay State Banner, Rattle, Cafe Review, Constellations, Boston Literary Magazine. etc.. He has a new poetry collection coming out    Last Night at the Wursthaus  ( Grey Sparrow Press). He teaches at E...

The Newspaper  The Long Island Railroad- all the  Dashing Dans fortresses of print- winged tabloids and fedoras the headlines splayed on the counter in the bar car-- "Headless man--found in topless Bar!" And the long scrolls of newspapers in the Boston Public Library felt like I was reading the Torah. The morning coffee, the slap of the rag on my table, my glasses-- four eyes are now part of the  ritual. At night I saw the New York Times flutter in the wind an ephemeral bird flapping toward a street light to come out of the dark. ***** Dashing Dan was an emblem on the Long Island railroad phased out in 1966. My work has appeared in Spoke, Toronto Quarterly, Poetry Bay, Rattle, Constellations and elsewhere. I am the founder of the Ibbetson Street Press and a lecturer of Creative Writing at Endicott College in Beverly, Mass. I have run poetry groups for psychiatric patients at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass. for over 30 years. I direct the Newton Free Library Poetry ...