Patty Dickson Pieczka
Watching My Husband Read
He white-knuckles his book.
An ancient ship eddies from
its dock between two sentences,
floating toward his head
through currents of bed quilt,
choppy as green waves of sea.
On the creaking, wooden deck,
Samurais in hakamas attack, sun
honing their swords with its glare.
But he is a Zen roshi,
master of the unfought fight.
In a stance of absolute stillness,
he slices his blade into the clash,
wins his ship back
moving only to turn the page.
Bio
Patty Dickson Pieczka's second book, Painting the Egret's Echo, won the Library of Poetry Book Award from Bitter Oleander Press (2012). Other books are Lacing Through Time (Bellowing Ark Press, 2011) and a chapbook, Word Paintings (Snark, 2002). She won the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest in the Best Sonnet category (2014), first prize in the 2012 Illinois Poetry Society contest as well as the Frances Locke Memorial Award (2010). She graduated in Creative Writing at SIU. Writing has appeared in many journals such as Bluestem, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Versedaily.org, and Willow Review.