Robert Allen - Issue 34

Robert Paul Allen lives on a lake near the coast of Maine. He is surrounded daily by the state’s rugged beauty. He has been a serious poet for the past ten years and has published over 50 poems. His second chapbook, Full Circle, was published in June 2025.

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I Am Green

You encounter me everywhere:

a lush pasture’s verdant beauty,

the lustre of paper money,

a treehugger’s passion.

The color you turn before

you empty the whiskey sours

from your stomach into the porcelain throne.

I’m used as a pejorative for unripe fruit,

the tint of meat left too long in the fridge,

or of moldy bread that went bad.

A person wet behind the ears

a raw rookie, a surgeon who’s never cut,

the heart healthy food in your diet

your mother could never get you to eat.

I’ve been linked with the sin of envy

and firewood not yet ready to burn.

But best of all I connote youth, freshness,

new growth, springtime,

crème de menthe, the game’s goal for all golfers,

and a grassy park with a bandstand

for cool concerts on summer nights.

Lovely is the Hourglass

Thin is in.

Glide across the catwalk.

Let the applause rain down.

What a ride!

Inbox full of bookings.

Cover photo shoots each week.

Pout and stare back at the world.

Feel the love

The sand is falling through.

Fast two meals a day.

savor the food,

the bathroom calls.

Gag on your knuckles,

wretch the worry,

flush the fat away.

Half the sand is gone.

A cell phone beeps,

your tests came back.

You need IV feedings.

The sand is almost gone.

How can you refuse?

You don’t love this life?

Your sand has run out.

Lovely was the hourglass.

Aunt Corky

After my Aunt Corky laid on the horn

for ten seconds, I slunk down into the footwell

of her 54 chevy so no one would see me.

Her role, as she saw it, was to police bad drivers.

She didn’t seem to notice I had disappeared

from view and was cowering on the floor mat.

She also didn’t seem to notice the offenders

didn’t appreciate her efforts at enlightenment.

She followed each miscreant as she honked

for blocks, undeterred by pointed 3 rd fingers,

till she felt she’d done enough. She was a force,

a Feminist before Feminism, she wore

the Liberal label with pride, and considered

anyone opposing her political stance ignorant.

She had no children of her own. In the summers

I used to spend a week with her. She was a school

librarian and had an apartment not far from

the beach. With her every day was an adventure.

When the entire clan gathered she would read

stories to all the children. She had of way

of reading that had us hanging on her

every word, from ages 3 to 15.

Aunt Corky was obsessed with living to 100

and believed that a healthy diet and exercise

was the answer. She skied cross-country

into her 80’s and swam laps into her 90’s.

Had she realized she was dying of a stroke,

that day in her 97 th year her words wouldn’t come,

she would have been indignant. After she passed,

my sister and I went through her desk

and discovered a raft of thank you letters

from charities that helped those in need.

She indeed practiced what she preached.

Among her nieces and nephews, her progeny,

her memory always conjures up smiles.