Bio of B.E. Stock

BIO OF B. E. STOCK B. E. Stock has been writing poetry since the age of eight, and has lived in New York City since age 16. She studied...

Hi, all.

I highly recommend a poetry magazine called Blue Unicorn, published out of Kensington, California. I was introduced to it by Dr. Alfred Dorn, a master of traditional verse who taught at Queens College. He gave a course through the old Brooklyn Poetry Circle which I attended a number of times. Blue Unicorn has published many of my poems through the years. Here are three of them.

YOGA

Muscle weary, my neck
Hardly able to turn, I wake
Swaddled in the silence of dawn,
Then hear a solitary sparrow
Try his notes amid the fog
Clearing from the invisible river.

And what have I done, striving
To make a metaphor of flesh
Bashing itself against the walls of time?
There is so much given to us
And then no more. We walk
Between the unseen fences, dreaming
Of freedom in the maze of our skull.

The teacher brings us lessons in breathing
And staying still in strange positions.
Rebels all, we obey him to the letter
Or engage in permissible adaptations.
Sometimes we stumble, and he untangles
Our process in a moment, laughing.

Our thoughts are like spring rabbits;
He places collars on their necks
And leads them back to the room.
We are relieved; our hearts doze.
Under us the train rumbles on;
We listen, and let it pass.

B.E.Stock
BU XL # 1, 10/16

SCAPEGOAT

They said their sins to God of sky
The priest laid hands upon his head
And prayed on him the penalty
A burden soft and deep as lead

He wore a sign to warn all hearts
That no one might be taken in
With cries and stones they made him part
To die alone of all their sin

For years within that wilderness
He bore his lorn and haunted breath
Until he found a kind of peace
But never could discover death

One day he met the Sorrow Man
Who on his shoulders raised him up
And bathed him by the well in town
And offered sweet compassion's cup.

But how the haunted people hissed
To see their victim still alive
Till better offering than this
A few were willing to believe.

B.E.Stock
BU XXXX #3, 6/17

I HEARD OF HIS PASSING

I heard of his passing between laundry and the bus.
The goons took my bike light the day before; my husband
Had root canal the next day. There was a sale on eggs
At the store; the robins were out.

I heard of his passing, and happiness took me --
I sat in the silence and listened to the rain,
A radio far away, the pulse inside my ears,
The sufficiency of life.

B.E.Stock
BU XXXVII #2&3, Spring 2014

Love, Barbara

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