GAS Featured Poet: Stark Hunter

 

    Born in Whittier, California in 1952, Stark Hunter was an English teacher for 38 years before retiring from the classroom in 2017. He has written and published 12 books, which are available on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com. His work has appeared in the Lothlorien Poetry Journal, SpillWords Press, GAS: Poetry, Art and Music Journal, and several poetry anthologies.

    In 2015, fourteen of Mr. Hunter’s poems were set to music by Dr. George  Mabry, former conductor of the Nashville Symphony Chorus, for his musical drama, Voices. The performance took place at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee.

    Mister Hunter has been a literary guest on Chat and Spin Radio in the UK, and  the GMAP1 Network in the U.S. His poetry works can be perused at Poetrysoup.com. and Allpoetry.com.

Reunion

Eighteen thousand sunsets recline under the freshman bridge.

All my teachers are buried deep in the cemetery now,

And the wise burritos at the Cardinal Cafeteria, 

Are quivering still, and are eternally on the edge.

Familiar faces grown ancient reveal nothing new,

Except for a sliver of humility among the finger foods,

Atop the round tables with apprised eyes that can smell time,

Astonished that life has brought us to this high dive into the darkness.

Old songs from the old times dance to themselves without sound.

Memories made of perfume and cologne glide by unseen.

On a side table, pregnant with haunted photographs from 1970,

Are the insistent dead, looking in from the outside.

Candles burn before their frozen smiles; these dead know now,

The secrets of the big party beyond the final bell at 3 p.m.

They know now that life is a death dance under the stars—    

Even among friendly strangers.

The Coming Andantes

you are flying on a hazy dream carpet —
floating up there, above these old streets, 
these ancient genuflecting pines and cedars,
rising above the sleeping dead on Broadway, 
soaring now through the white tombstones—
the low walnut branches that flail like hungry cats.
now the sudden rush out of death’s hand we fly,
whirring by faster than blood flow in a silver sieve,
in and out of the shadowed majesties far inside,
these soul itchers that foretell the coming andantes, 
here in this perfumed dreamland with only you, 
as we seep through the spinning pines and cedars,
the long extending blood rivers naked with stones,
of venison death and fish spasms in the final sun.