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  1. Home
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  3. Index F
  4. Forges-Ryan, Sylvia

Sylvia Forges-RyanSylvia Forges-Ryan

Born in 1937 in New York, New York
Current Residence, North Haven, CT.
From 1991 through 1993 I was the Editor of Frogpond. I am the author of Take a Deep Breath, published in hardcover by Kodansha International in 2002, with a Russian edition published by Sophia Press in Kiev, and a paperback edition published by Apocryphile Press in 2006. My new book is What Light There Is, published by Red Moon Press in 2016. Both books have been selected for permanent inclusion in the American Section of the Beinicke Rare Book Library at Yale University.
All the poems presented here are published in What Light There Is.


 

So much in love
     she hardly needs
         to see him

R. H. Blyth Award, World Haiku Review, 2006

How easy
     to fall in love with
          a perfect stranger

Having been with his lover
     how tender he is
          with his wife

Another year ends
     searching the Web for you
          for auld lang syne

Biopsy report
     the nurse breezes in
          with questionable cheer

How to explain it
     this unexpected tenderness
          for my aging body

Taking the only thing
     she could to her grave---
          family secrets

Her memory going
     she gossips to me
          about me

Ten times ten thousand
     terrible things in this world
          and still I don't want to leave it

With a stamp and a snap
     she strikes a defiant pose
          the flamenco dancer

Town council wisdom
     replacing the historic town hall
          with a faux new one

Waiting to bat
    the hitter swats
           a swarm of gnats

Blind date
     while helping with her coat
             he checks out the label

Divorce proceedings
          a slight shift
                along the fault lines

Equal custody
         their child says
                 she's always missing someone

Nothing like the holidays
          for renewing
                 old grievances

My neighbor's offended
           she and our new dog
                   have the same name

So large in my mind
             so small when I return
                     the house of my childhood

Rereading the Iliad
               another corpse dragged
                       through Fallujah     


(Grand Prix Prize, Kyoto Museum for World Peace, 2005)

Politicians' lies
                police and military torture
                         what else isn't news

Deep into winter
                 writing poems I can share
                            with no one      

( Robert Frost Key West Poetry Prize, 2014)

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