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Write On Magazine's Featured Poet

Joseph Shaffer

Poet/writer from Albuquerque, New Mexico


Journey
By Joseph Shaffer

One tankful at a time:
a poem is really like that.
Tires beat a meter
against black lines
in the hot concrete
with occasional interruption
signaling necessary repair.
Hot air seizes, then releases
the ear through the open window
much as thoughts appear to,
and as quickly, disappear from
the mind's fleeting eye.
The sun is a muse
through the windshield,
the race to catch it
a constant burning.
The old dog suffers
on the front seat,
accepts a pat, a word or two
between labored breaths
exactly as paper accepts pen.
Dust devils, watery mirage,
phantom metaphor all taunt the grasp,
then gasp and fade
before the clutch of metal fingers.
One tankful to Baltimore,
one more on to Indiana,
yet another to New Mexico
and always a place, somewhere,
to fill the tank again.
The road goes on,
unfolding like an old love letter
lost between the pages of an older Atlas.
One tankful at a time:
a poem is really like that.

Second Place in the NFSPS Past Presidents Contest, 1991

© 1996 copyright Joseph Shaffer

 



Joseph
By Joseph Shaffer

There were only three women
in his life
who referred to him thus.
His mother,
in anger or disappointment...
but there was love.
And then there were two.
One could fix his name
to his ear with pleasure,
and regardless of the tone involved,
say everything
needing to be said, needing to be heard...
and there was heart.
And then there was one,
one who could lay his name,
penciled to paper in such a way
as to suspend it
between his eye and hers...
and there was soul.

But then, one passed on to cryptic grave,
and two on to the beds
and the children of other men,
and the love, the heart, the soul
are now but
the charred trunks of West Virginia trees,
wheat wasting in Illinois fields
and dry stalks covered with Kansas frost...


First Place in the NFSPS Louisiana State Poetry Contest, 1994

© 1996 copyright Joseph Shaffer

About the poet. . .

Joseph Shaffer was born in West Virginia and raised in Baltimore. He received his high school and college level GED certificates while in the US Air Force and later attended both Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland.

Joe has published two books of poetry, Oh Waitress. . . I Love You, 1977, and Just Because. . .I Needed to, 1979. In 1994, he published his first novel, The Trowbridge Women. He currently has a fictional political novel in progress concerning the 1996 elections. He has won prizes for his work in poetry and in fiction and he has lectured on creative writing
to students of all ages in several states.

Joe is a widower, father of four and grandfather of six. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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