children

The Quiet Ones

John Manesis

John Manesis is a retired physician whose poetry has appeared in over fifty literary publications, including Wisconsin Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Zone 3, The Lyric, and Measure. His first poetry book, With All My Breath, was published in 2003 and his second, Other Candle Lights, was published in 2008.

Balloons

Barefoot the children are running, their fists in the air.
They laugh a ticklish laughter, not the mind’s.
The strings they clutch are as thin as the air at this altitude.
What are they running from? Ask a forget-me-not.
Sunflowers read their passage from west to east.
The flowers are foreground: beyond them, the precipice.
A broom of a wind swishes across a footprint.
That little piggy was hearing, that little piggy was vision....

Adopting Heroic Dreams

In asbestos gloves and oxygen tank,
I snatched a girl from a smoldering cot
last night, lay her on my shoulder, and thanked
her for coming. “You’ve been through a lot,”
I said. “I can’t wait for you to meet her.
She’s been going nuts to have a sister.”