Leland James
was a recent winner of the Portland Pen Poetry Contest and the Writers’ Forum Short Poem contest. He was runner up for the Fish International Poetry Prize and received the Franklin-Chistoph Merit Award for poetry.
Leland has no favorite poet, some days T.S. Eliot, some days Ogden Nash, always William Blake and sometimes Sylvia Plath.
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The School Sentence
To-day we have taking apart. Tomorrow
We have joining. Next we will raise
Our hand to end-stop; bottling our words
Like flat water—to keep them from flowing
Like country streams babbling above smooth
Stones that shine like emeralds and black glass
Beneath cool spring-fed water.
To-day we have taking apart, then joining,
Then end-stopping; an efficient execution
Versus cultivation—the inefficient
Teasing of motion and sound
Into twist and tango and waltz,
The water flowing around boulders,
Winding through pastures caressed
By the breeze and pierced by the sun.
To-day we have taking apart. Tomorrow
We have joining. And next we will put
An end-stop to the sound of flowing water.
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