World Enough Writers Author and Editor: James Bertolino

James Bertolino's Web site: http://www.jamesbertolino.com

James Bertolino’s poetry has been appearing internationally in books, magazines and anthologies for over 40 years. His first book was published in 1968, and his most recent of 25 titles appeared in 2009. Bertolino’s poetry has been recognized nationally by the Book-of-the-Month Club Poetry Fellowship, the Discovery Award, a Hart Crane publication award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, two Quarterly Review of Literature book awards and, in 2007, the Jeanne Lohmann Poetry Prize for Washington State Poets.

"Sprung Dualities" from Every Wound Has A Rhythm was featured on Verse Daily!

Barbara Lloyd McMichael's Review

Every Wound Has A Rhythm

Available now from Amazon

Poem from Every Wound Has A Rhythm

The Distances

Over the patterned feathers
and up the elegant curved neck
of the heron, to where the point

of its beak seems to touch
the snowfields on Mt. Baker:

that great space between
islands and mountain opens,
and someone steps off through
the seven distances

to where the high cooling light
becomes a doorway.

Poem from Last Call: The Anthology of Beer, Wine, & Spirits Poetry

A Drinker's Love Poem
by Carly Sachs

I could drink the glass of you down,
the vodka of you— 
how you can lose yourself in anything,
the woo-woo of you,
the kamikaze of you,
the fuzzy navel of you.
The rocks of you melt into another
round, the Maker’s Mark of you,
the martini, dirty of you, the extra
olives of you, the Sapphire eyes
of you, the Effen body of you,
the make it a double of you
until we order tequila shots past
the midnight of you, no salt, no limes,
the pure scotch of you, the peaty
sex of you, the my father of you,
the Freud of you, the Oedipus of you.
Mornings of bloody mary sting of you,
afternoons of the perfect manhattan
of you, the sleepless city of you.
I want the distillation of you, the fermentation
of you, the rim of my finger
on the glass of you.