Writing poetry since 1993 Marilyn Peretti has attended the Iowa Summer Writers’ Festival, a poetry workshop in Galway, Ireland, and other workshops, submitting poems and seeing publication in the places listed below. In the Chicago area she has been a part of  The Arbor Hill Poets, The Arlington Poetry Project, the Illinois State Poetry Society, and Upper Crust writing group.

Past poems published in: California Quarterly, Christian Science Monitor, Black Bear Review, Rockford Review, Urban Spaghetti, Seeding the Snow, The Bugle (Int’l Crane Foundation), Our Developing World’s Voices, Luke Lookout, Prairie Light Review, Parnassus Literary Journal, CURRENT of Ann Arbor, The Leaflet, (Nature Artists’ Guild of The Morton Arboretum), http://www.poetrysky.com (Chinese translations), Talking River Review, Arts Beat magazine, http://www.seastories.org by Blue Ocean Institute, 2005 anthology Beyond Katrina, the 2006 anthology on endangered species, The Dire Elegies, program of Breast Cancer Connections (Palo Alto, CA), CRAM 2, CRAM 3, CRAM 4, CRAM 6, CRAM 8, CRAM 10 (Chicagopoetry.com Press; name changed 2012 to Jrnl of Modern Poetry), Journal of Modern Poetry, 2013; Kane County Chronicle’s Poetry Pages, 2008; Talking River, 2009; The Deronda Review, 2010; posted in Highland Park/Evanston busses, January, 2010; online 2013, 2016; Fox Cry Review (U.Wis), 2012; seven poems in The Ultimate Chicago Poetry Anthology, 2012; Kyoto Journal #77, 2012 (pgs 102 & 105); Tipton Poetry Review, Fall, 2014; Fukishima: Words Fly Away, 2014; Wilda Morris’ Poetry Challenge, online, 2015, 2018; New Verse News – http://www.newversenews.com (8 poems), 2015, 2016; Li Poetry, Chinese bi-monthly poetry journal, Winter 2016; Grey Sparrow Journal (online), 2017; Snowy Egret, Spring/Autumn 2017 (Issued in 2018).

Various prizes; and nomination for Pushcart Poetry Prize, 2010. Poetry books in the “bookstore” at http://www.blurb.com: To Remember, To Hope (Japan and Haiti tragedies); Lichen, poems of nature; Angel’s Wings (poems on various fungi, with her ink drawings). Crane poems (2 books) with her ink drawings and other small books available from the poet. For other credits, see http://www.pagesbyperetti.com

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Once Again

Not yet March
and the bright pink trumpets
are playing again!

They’ve come to impress me
and even though they bend
and droop

I hear high pitched tones
from the Christmas cactus,
tooting and roaring

a goodbye
to winter.

Fragrance

sweet tart orange—
tinges of this taste
embed a fragrance

the old mock orange
vines over a fence
in gentle greeting

 

At old house in Lombard, IL

flowers made of air
petals dense in color

colors beyond palettes
sky bluer than ever

blue I can breathe
spring surging

beyond expectations
fulfilling hopes seeded

in coldest times

Morton Arboretum April 23

Four Clerihews
as published online: Highland Park Poetry

Here comes Michael Phelps
through the water to wild yelps.
I’m jealous of his skill to swim.
For me, it’s straight back to the gym!

Take a look at Joe Biden,
the high road he’s sure been ridin’,
but pretty soon he’ll disappear
to V.P. heaven and a beer.

Of the Obamas I’ll take Michelle,
a tall and gorgeous bombshell.
Soon she’ll have to take backseat
to pretty daughters: admit defeat!

Have you heard of Elizabeth Warren
harping on good fiscal carin’?
For my money I like the mattress
to counteract the dollar stress.

Because

Because of what happened
this garden is my refuge,
this silence amongst purple coleus
trailing inquisitive vinca vines.

I hear not one opinion
uttered from the plants,
just their perky faces toward morning light,
their spines straight with innocence
and disregard for my life,

or possibly standing tall
to demonstrate graceful endurance.
Only their lives matter—being God’s
earthly ambassadors, holding
no one accountable for silliness.

Even the overgrown fern
showers delight from its crowded
nest of green fronds,
drooping, bowing to reality.

Time, I say.
Time they tell me is needed
for strides of growth. Time and rain—
rain from dark clouds pouring
into patient soil, rearing
the pointed caladium leaves of fiery red
and starlight of white impatiens’ flowers.

My Patio in August

Are You Abdullah?

Are you the father?
The father who carefully escapes
overland the dread, the torment,
threats, fire and bombs of Syria,
then gathers up your family again
with small bags of clothes
and biscuits, climbs aboard
a rubber raft heading
to the island of Kos, bound
in an armor of hope?

When high waves topple
the boat and the captain deserts,
do you steer until impossible?
Are you the father who watches
your wife float away,
your little boys struggle
for air, then vanish?

Are you the father who cries
as he picks up one beautiful son
washed up on the beach,
who wonders where the world is
as the ocean swallows his nation?

• Published on newversenews[dot]com, Sept. 4, 2015
• Awarded First Prize by Illinois State Poetry Society, Oct. 2015

Centenarian Overload
. . . . Japan 2015

We are very well
eating simple rice
fish and seaweed
stretching in the park
we are now 100 years
poised to accept
sterling silver gifts

so well we number
twenty-nine thousand
thus no silver anymore
maybe crisp paper
letters signed
by Shinzo Abe
Congratulations

This poem published September 1, 2015 on newversenews[dot]com

A book of poems about fungi, mushrooms.

One wild mushroom is named Angel’s Wings, pure white and shell shaped.
This new book is poems dwelling on the wonder and surprise of so many kinds of mushrooms
that are found in the woods. Peretti watercolors on both covers; ink illustrations inside.
Find this book in the “Bookstore” of http://www.blurb.com

Still Living

I will be alive
when I am dead,
did you know that?
I will not be still
like a hard stone,
but breathing
as roses do,
as robins do,
as the heart
of mountains
which change
and move,
as the mycelium
of mushrooms
under the soil,
unseen, ignored,
sprouting up
at a moment’s notice.