GAS Featured Poet: Ed Ahern

Ed Ahern resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He’s had almost four hundred stories and poems published so far, and six books. Ed works the other side of writing at Bewildering Stories, where he sits on the review board and manages a posse of nine review editors. He’s also lead editor at The Scribes Micro Fiction magazine. On Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram .

The Mixing Bowl

 

My parents had almost nothing in common.

True both personally, and in their bloods.

The recipe to make me included ingredients

foreign to each other and repudiating family lore.

 

My mother’s half was said to be evenly split

between English and Swedish forbearers.

But there was apparent hanky-panky.

In the distant past a German and a Scot

tossed 3% and 1% respectively into my bowl.

England and Sweden added only 10% and 20%

and a cross-border Norwegian or two

provided 16% of my ingredients.

 

My father was vowed to be completely Irish.

And that seems closer to being true.

except for my long forgotten traces

of a probably marauding Scottish 8%

and a faint but defined Welsh 1%,

which is why I’m writing this poem.

 

 

 

 

Losing It

 

Acuity is a gift often stolen

by age or disease or self-abuse;

furies jealous of a mind so clear

that living well is subconscious.

The theft is subliminal and slow,

imperceptible and immutable,

leaving strong emotions searching

for their lost champion.