An award-winning author, poet, and emeritus English Professor, Sterling Warner’s works have appeared many literary magazines, journals, and anthologies including Verse-Virtual, Fixed & Free Quarterly, the Lothlórien Poetry Journal, The Galway Review, and As it Ought to Be. Warner’s poetry/fiction include Rags and Feathers, Without Wheels, ShadowCat, Edges, Memento Mori: A Chapbook Redux, Serpent’s Tooth, Flytraps, Cracks of Light: Pandemic Poetry & Fiction 2019-2022, Halcyon Days: Collected Fibonacci, Abraxas: Poems, Gunilla’s Garden, Seaboard Magic (2026), and Masques: Flash Fiction & Short Stories. Presently, Warner writes, hosts/participates in “virtual” poetry readings, turns wood, and enjoys boating and fishing in Washington.
Enigmas
Like an ice palace during
A free skate,
Everyone’s on edge
Chipping away
While rappers twizzle
Laying out on the gold chains
Pontificating values of the hood,
Showcasing precious metals
So when’s the last time you been back to
Sleepless streets, alleys that never yawn,
Strategic thoroughfares that initiate
Nike photo-op footwork?
Pacing forms pop jump after jump
Create slinky shadows behind
Warped plywood plank backboards
Braided wire hanger hoops where
Rim shots morph each fragile circle until
Nothing drops through—
Only imaginations slam, dunk, spin in
Another universe without traveling.
Remember Friday afternoons?
High school kids choking on silver whistles
Bullies tossing tied tennis shoes over
Low hanging power lines, sometimes
Walking home barefoot, victimized by
A familiar hustle, their own hostile game?
Escape artists, misty eyed dreamers
Like Sufis, shamen, fakirs, and aesthetics
Center their social paralysis and
Disenchantment, find solace in
Future tattoos, exotic piercings
Becoming thoughtful enigmas,
Legends in their own minds.
Virginia Valediction Revisited: A Haibun
For David, My Brother
Tanbark trails stretch out like splintered, spiritual highways from DC/Dulles airfields to Virginian hills where ticks pepper arms and legs, digging in for corkscrew supper. These days seek measurement—refinement—amid structural chaos, a cosmos aligned through promise, scientific certainty seeking emotional purgation. The feral child within us all grasps for clues to clarify craft and lore, honoring heritage, suckling life span’s variations.
Gazing across glassy chocolate colored waters, a pond where baritone bullfrogs set nature’s metronome in motion. Buzzing June-bugs quicken the pace: clicking…clicking …clicking…, and the woods, the trees, the eastern seaboard’s song cradle cries from lonesome memories healthy heartaches, anniversaries that might have been, yet remain empty fountains, fragile unexplored possibilities.
Championing ecology, resting on religion, David quivered like an arrow through wind gusts, arching, piercing an emerald Charlottesville meadow. Exodus followed triumphant smiles, tortured tears, truncated, courageous fellowships, as his life’s ripple splashed outwards, curled like circular embraces, moved every direction, clutched for land, merged with twilight’s chorus, adagio, became one with the lofty landscape, till pastoral harmonies softly faded, leaving behind still water’s wake.
motley colored leaves,
nature’s tattoos, awaken
memories past
Intrepid Belle
a
lone
ashen
cigarette
hangs like a minute
smoldering streetlamp held between
flawless charcoal lips perpetually pouting; puffing
drag after drag, saintly halos
circle her raven
tresses with
smoky
grey
crowns
eyes
gaze
beyond
vague New Year’s
resolutions, she
earmarks pageantry for future
emancipations; crossed arms convey sheer attitude,
glares caution each discomforting
conviction—yet brows
visibly
invite
love’s
touch
Flowerchild Dementia
Walking down 19th Avenue,
hugging parking meters, Dawn
imagined she’d stepped backwards
in time, returned to Golden Gate Park,
expressing warmth unrequited
mixing with strangers who flocked
at the panhandle to hang with hipsters
or crack open walnuts, feed squirrels
red & grey that scurried across
San Franciscan shoulders searching
for husked kernels & questions with answers
nature’s kabuki theatre in a Japanese Tea Garden.
Between fleeting perceptions, Dawn recalls dancing
like a whirling dervish under shady oak trees,
her freewheeling spirit acts out spectator phantasies;
déjà vu visitors wave, nod, smile, toss coins
in open guitar cases unaware of her street musician
disconnect outside of entertainment magic;
a whiff of patchouli oil or old familiar tunes conjure
her hazy memories—brief glimpses that quickly fade;
still, Dawn embraces her dementia, merges past & present,
allows unannounced touches & soft summer kisses
to pepper masses, confer indiscriminate blessings,
preserve intimate exchanges for phantom dream lovers.
Nocturnal Fête
for Carole
Neither Gods nor Goddesses
could elevate Carole skywards, accept
her spirit into an afterlife of pain, pleasure,
or mere existence beyond confrontation
after she departed this world life’s weary soldier
yet there she was—8 bottle rockets later—
a ballistic fiesta sparking an inky welkin;
as starbursts and peony blossoms flashed,
rising tails shimmered, spider brocade
patterns glittered, danced, and swirled
scorching nightshade’s ebon countenance
like luminous fine lace, persistently
punctuating her heavenly blast
into the stratosphere with explosive bangs,
sonic booms, and whistling lead atoms
preferring spectacle to a passive celebration
of Carole’s life ashes incarcerated
inside a sealed silver funeral urn where
silence mourns loss in muted darkness.
