Welcome to Verdugo Online's Poet's Corner featuring Sunland's:

Gen Krueger


On Wednesday night when the TV is blaring and children are doing their homework, poets and writers are talking and sharing ideas on McGroarty Street in Sunland.  The Chuparose Writers have been gathering, drinking tea, and discussing writing weekly for over twelve years at Genevieve Krueger's home.  Gen is a bookfinder by trade and a book lover by nature and nurture, and the lively interchange of the group lights up the lamp in her window.  The meetings stimulate new ideas and growth, community involvement, and, of course, diversity and improvement in writing.  And lots of laughter.
Here's a sample of Gen's poetry:
 

Generations

     The sun is behind me now
     shadows stretching
     rosy reflections bounce back
     (child of my child)
     sharp corner soften, diffuse
     golden edges cloud the years
     of evening.

***

        The Message

     Men and their mistresses
     meet at midnight
     beneath the prevailing moon
     wail, oh wail
     in your wolf suits
     your noses pointed to the sky
     in painful rapture!

     the sign of Mordant creases
     your skin
     in small ugliness
     and purple lines

     the chimney smokes Bibles
     and fills the air with
     psalms and exultations
     streaming on the white wind

     I read there of Moses
     and Isaac and Jacob his son
     (the bush was burning too)
     and the message is the same
     return to me
     return to me
     all you who fill the air
     with scorched wings.

***

  The day before I met you

     I bumped into the lamp-post
     eyes spiraled
     with jagged light
     feet tangled on concrete
     spinning around
     I touched ground
     with an angled grin
     as I met the sidewalk
     in a personal way.

     I waited for you to pick me up
         but it was the day before I met you.
 
 
 

 
Apparent Wind

          Leeward 
          the stillness cuts through 
          the trough of sadness
          inherent in the wind
          we hoist the halyard
          wishing darkness could obscure
          in in-the-face horror
          the near-death experience
          brushing us tonight

          apparent wind cannot save us
          time cancels out
          miles per hour
          courage per minute
          leaving our sails diminished
          clewless
          helpless to spin
          this last voyage to the stars

***

       August 2, 1931-April 2, 1990
       Westwood Memorial Cemetery

          Gunnar,
          this is what I think of
          when your ashes drop quietly
          unreluctantly
          into the rose garden earth
          mulching next year's growth, 
          blooming
          in a burst of golden rose
          accenting the skies of Westwood
          with your pungent breath
          making comment below
          business-suit skyscrapers
          sifting across pavement of green
          between life and death.

          I think how small 
          your body has become
          how filled-up I am 
          with memories of you
          and what is gone
          and what stays with me forever.

          Rest in peace 
          my friend.
 
 
 

Naked Lady Flower

 

Visit these sites of
Past Featured Poets:

Marlene Hitt, Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga
Shari Borders,  "Singing in Tongues"
George Raabe,  "Solving Fermet's Last Theorem"



 
 
 
 
 
 

All poems appearing in The Poet's Corner are under the copyright protection of the authors.  Writers who wish to submit works to The Poet's Corner do so with the implicit understanding that the poems sent are copyrighted as their original works.