It was snowing here in St. Louis the other day, but 2River continues to move forward toward spring. Read and Listen:
Sally Van Doren, a poet and artist, is the author of three poetry collections, Promise (LSU Press 2017), Possessive (2012) and Sex at Noon Taxes (2008), which received the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American poets. She lives in New York and St. Louis and posts daily excerpts from her ongoing poem, The Sense Series, via Instagram.
Sally Van Doren, a regular contributor here at 2River, appeared in Poem-A-Day on April 4, 2014. It’s alway rewarding to see a 2River poet elsewhere, especially at the prestigious poets.org.
Visit 2River late next week to read the 18.4 (Summer 2014) issue of The 2River View, with new poems by Bradley Fest, Kathryn Haemmerle, April Krivensky, Kristin LaFollette, Michael Lauchlan, Gloria Monaghan, Darren Morris, Sherry O’Keefe, Jacqueline Dee Parker, Sally Van Doren, and Kami Westhoff; plus new art by Heidi Daub. Meanwhile, enjoy this selection from the upcoming issue.
Sally Van Doren
Justice
The devil trains mother
To train her troubled son
To use a semiautomatic rifle
And he shoots her first
In the face before he opens
Fire on the elementary school.
(Father and brother spared,
Having long since fled the dirtied
Nest.) In his memoirs, the devil cites
As one of his greatest achievements
The introduction of war weapons
As recreational toys in broken
Suburban households. That,
And the deprivation of the
Rights of a six-year-old
To advance to the second grade.
“Call Us” by Sally Van Doren, who most recently appeared here in the Spring 2012 issue of The 2River View, was selected as the September 4 Poem-A-Day by the Academy of American Poets.
Muddy Bank 