Recenter Press
  • About
  • Books
    • Rest of US by Richard Hamilton
    • evening primroses by Emma Loomis-Amrhein
    • Profit | Prophet by Patrick Blagrave
    • To Hold Your Moss-Covered Heart by Schuyler Peck
    • The Good House & The Bad House by Doe Parker
    • The Road Is Long & Beautiful by Terra Oliveira
    • And Still To Sleep by Terra Oliveira
    • An Old Blue Light by Terra Oliveira
    • Processes: A Meditation by Terra Oliveira
  • Journal
    • Issue Four: Fall 2020
    • Issue Three: Spring 2020
    • Issue Two: Fall 2019
    • Issue One: Spring 2019
  • Interviews

The Stones of Memory

BY STEPHEN MEAD.


Sit in your hand, reflective,
polished, well-traveled.

How dead ends, promises
have tended their destiny:
the wind river, mistral sea now condensed
in the light of some beloved’s breath.

That was the buoy through long nights
of sickness when you retched & retched
until the water finally stayed down.
That was your island 
when the spasm-gripped body
cried for mom and knew in the dark
not death but life, life’s agonizing fears.

After that, cleansed pure, ceremonious as Christ,
the simple pleasure became, became:

that basket of apples there, sun falling on red
& ripened green, the particular brilliance
of the rain, its resonance too, 
a sound near to sun
the small stones behold
while as if to a shell

you quietly listen in.

A resident of NY, Stephen Mead is an Outsider multi-media artist and writer.  Since the 1990s he's been grateful to many editors for publishing his work in print zines and eventually online. Currently he is artist/curator for an Historical LGBTQI site in progress, The Chroma Museum,  www.thestephenmeadchromamuseum.weebly.com.
  • About
  • Books
    • Rest of US by Richard Hamilton
    • evening primroses by Emma Loomis-Amrhein
    • Profit | Prophet by Patrick Blagrave
    • To Hold Your Moss-Covered Heart by Schuyler Peck
    • The Good House & The Bad House by Doe Parker
    • The Road Is Long & Beautiful by Terra Oliveira
    • And Still To Sleep by Terra Oliveira
    • An Old Blue Light by Terra Oliveira
    • Processes: A Meditation by Terra Oliveira
  • Journal
    • Issue Four: Fall 2020
    • Issue Three: Spring 2020
    • Issue Two: Fall 2019
    • Issue One: Spring 2019
  • Interviews