Coleridge, and other poems

Revised Edition: LukivPress (Victoria, BC), 2021.

Previously published as Men and Women (LukivPress [Quesnel, BC], 1999).

Various poems in this collection have appeared in one or more of Firm Noncommittal, canadian content, Coffee Break, The Speaker, The Cariboo Observer, The Journal of Secondary Alternate Education, *spark, Krax Magazine (England), Ammonite (England), Splizz (Wales), SchoolNet Africa (South Africa), Artslink (South Africa), Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream (USA), Coffee Bean Shop (USA), Poetry of the People (USA), To Dream of Roses (USA), NeoVictorian Cochlea (USA), Fresh Ground (USA), Poetic Bridges (USA), Poetree (USA), Fullosia Press (USA), Poetic Realm (USA), Blind Man's Rainbow (USA), Up Dare? (USA), and Poetic Voices (USA).

An excerpt

Dinner for Two

White wine, soft jazz,

An awkward touch,

An eye's occasional twinkle,

Eons interrupted

With words like, "You were born

Where?"

Then dinner arrives.

Cutlery clinks;

The man and lady thank the

Ramrod-waiter.

The man winks;

Boldness swells

In his lungs.

He slices through

Cordon bleu.

"I've never had cordon green,

Either," he says, laughing.

Her upper lip twists

Into an Elvis-lifeline.

His eyes widen as the knife

Opens the protein-bolus-

"Yuck!" he exclaims,

"It looks like puss inside!"

He laughs.

She,

Beneath her ballerina-bun,

Halts in time, like a poem,

With unchewed cordon bleu

In her gape.

He laughs again,

And then chews heartily.

The author

Dan Lukiv is a poet, novelist, columnist, short story and article writer, and independent education researcher (hermeneutic phenomenology). His creative writing has appeared in 19 countries. Recently, he has been experimenting with temporal shifts and narrative strings in his haiku and senryu.