logo
  • Issue 34 – Spring 2017
  • Issue 33 – Winter 2017
  • Issue 32 – Fall 2016
  • Issue 31 – Summer 2016
  • Previous Issues
  • About Silver Pen
    • Silver Pen Bylaws
    • Writers Forum
    • Fabula Argentea
    • Liquid Imagination
    • Youth Imagination
    • Write Well Blog
  • Silver Blade Staff
  • Grand List of Cliches

  • Home
  • Sandi Leibowitz

Posts Tagged ‘Sandi Leibowitz’

Published by Poetry Editor on August 24, 2015. This item is listed in Issue 27, Issue 27 Poetry

The Man Who Loved a Poem

Sandi Leibowitz

 

The instant he read it, he loved it.poetry-reading
He adored its metaphors
marching across the page like an army
of black brides, exultant and shining.
He lauded its alliteration,
its loose and lovely vowels,
the queenly crooning of its consonants.
He admired its profundity.
It had changed his life.

He tore it from the book
and kept it in his pocket,
pulled it out six times each day,
wore its paper thin with caressing,
creased it into tatters with his constant
folding and unfolding, even though
he’d memorized it.

Once an hour, he declaimed it
loudly for friends and colleagues,
dramatically at cocktail parties
or on the occasional street-corner,
or softly to himself, such reverent whispers.

The poem, however, did not love him.
He didn’t understand her.
He read her all wrong,
stopping at the ends of lines,
ignoring her enjambments.
His tongue poked
at her soft syllables.
She detested his incessant handling,
the probing of his dread eye.
Always, always, he put her
on display.
He acted like he owned her.

One night, when once again
he had laid her down upon his desk
in the lamp’s cruel glare,
subject to his obsessive dissection,
she decided she had enough.

They found his body the next morning—
death by a thousand paper cuts.

And the poem? Gone,
flown out the open window,
free to pursue a million ears
or none,
to a world without pockets.

 

 

Sandi Leibowitz is a school librarian, classical singer and writer of speculative fiction and poetry. Her work appears in Liminality, Stone Telling, Inkscrawl, Mythic Delirium, Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year 5 and other magazines and anthologies. A native New Yorker, she has ridden in a hot-air balloon over the Rio Grande, traveled in the footsteps of medieval pilgrims to Santiago de la Compostella and visited with Arthur in Avalon.

  • Continue Reading

Published by Associate Editor on February 24, 2015. This item is listed in Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Poetry

Weathering

When she asked what the weather was like here,
I sent it to her—
coastal winds to tame her fever,
scent of sea-brine to undo the hospital’s nosegay
of disinfectant and disease.

Days later, when her voice on the phone grew distant
as she said the room was cold, so cold,
I blew across the miles the island sun
brave as a browning sunflower nodding on its stalk.

wiltedsunflowers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sandi Leibowitz was born and raised in New York, lived for seventeen years in northern New Jersey, and then thought better of it. She resides in Astoria, Queens. She has a B.A. in English from Vassar College, an M.A. in English from NYU, post-baccalaureate certification in teaching from William Paterson, and an M.L.I.S. from Rutgers. As an elementary-school librarian she sometimes sings the ABC song but promises not to use any more acronyms in this bio. A classical singer and early-music player of recorders and other old instruments, she writes speculative poetry and fiction, which may be read in places like Mythic Delirium, Strange Horizons, Stone Telling and Luna Station Quarterly. Feel free to visit her on the web at www.sandileibowitz.com.

  • Continue Reading
  • 1 Comment

Published by Associate Editor on February 9, 2014. This item is listed in Issue 21, Issue 21 Poetry, Poetry

Attic Dust

Narrated by Sandi Leibowitz

by Sandi Leibowitz

Attic Dust by Sandi Leibowitz

 

AUTHOR BIO: Sandi Leibowitz is a native New Yorker who has been the Sands Point hag, a ghostwriter for a monsignor, a classical musician and a school librarian.  Her speculative fiction and poetry appear in places like Strange Horizons, Mythic Delirium, Apex, and Luna Station Quarterly.

  • Continue Reading
  • 1 Comment

Published by Associate Editor on February 9, 2014. This item is listed in Introductions, Issue 21, Poetry

Introduction to Issue 21 Poetry

john-mannoneby John C. Mannone

I get excited in presenting a slate of poets to you every issue, which I try to make better (if that’s possible). I also like to try new things. In this issue, the celebrated poets, Geoffrey A. Landis and Mary A. Turzillo, husband and wife, are our Featured Poets. I think you will find it interesting, humorous, and enlightening to see how two speculative poets and writers develop their craft, under the same roof. Enjoy the interview and a sampling of their poetic styles with “Curiosity” and “Night at the Manatee Motel” by Geoffrey, and “Blue Tulips” and “Whales Discover Fireworks” by Mary.

Marge Simon treats us to a creative poem, “Catana,” which segues nicely into a love poem by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer. Steven Gordon translates this passionate poem from Spanish to English. (This is another new feature I hope to see more of in future issues—poems-in-translation.) “Attic Dust” by Sandi Leibowitz is emotionally charged is an experimental poem (with respect to structure). John Grey’s “The Last Ride” brings a bit of fantasy to the table, but it is much more than that.

Thank you for reading and listening to these poems (most of them have an audio file for your extended enjoyment.)

John C. Mannone
Poetry Editor

 

Issue 21 Poetry

Interview with Featured Poets Geoffrey A. Landis and Mary A Turzillo by John C. Mannone

Curiosity by Geoffrey A. Landis

Night at the Matinee Motel by Geoffrey A. Landis

Blue Tulips by Mary A. Turzillo

Whales Discover Fireworks by Mary A. Turzillo

Catana by Marge Simon

Cuando entre la Sombra Oscura (When the Dark Shadow Falls) by Gustavo Adolfo Becquer, translated by Steven Wittenberg Gordon, MD

Attic Dust by Sandi Leibowitz

The Last Ride by John Grey

  • Continue Reading