Below The Mayonnaise Factory, 2nd Edition - Poems by Earl LeClaire

BRUSSELS - July 10, 2015 - PRLog -- In "Below The Mayonnaise Factory", Earl LeClaire's poetry takes on many shapes and colors. His frank observations on the human condition are absorbing. You walk away from them only to have them keep coming back. The work is, by turns, extremely funny and very troubling as he celebrates life: his, ours, and theirs.

"Very sharp... wonderful energy... talented and original and crisper than the sort of thing one sees getting published left and right. Just fine work!... a shock and a pleasure to read." -Steve Kowit, Gorilla Press

Author:

Earl LeClaire, poet and raconteur, has worked at a myriad of jobs including, fisherman, lobsterman, nuclear piping designer, historical researcher, cab driver, and chef. He has been writing poetry, fiction, and non-fiction since 1971. He has published poetry, fiction and food articles in many small press and major magazines in the USA and Europe. Earl was awarded first place in the Aquillrelle Poetry Contest 2 for the poem, “Below the Mayonnaise Factory”. He is the author of two cookbooks, Cove Creek Farm.Org‘s Old Timey Appalachian Good Foods and Game Cookbook and Old Swamper‘s Shellfish and Clambake Cookbook. His book of vignettes, Night Taxi, is currently out of print. His first book of poetry, Below the Mayonnaise Factory, is available through Catawba Press. Earl, 70, lives in the still rugged and beautiful Appalachian Mountains of Western North Carolina half a mile from the Tennessee Line. Deliverance, he is quick to remind you, was a product of the late James Dickey’s sometimes strange and twisted mind. However, he says, if you hear banjo music, paddle faster.

Prayer for a Husband

What are you waiting for
now that you know I am here?
If you wait, when you get here,
you will have seen me
and be in love with me,
but I'll be gone.
I'll have gone far away.
Perhaps, even,
to where you came from.

I Have Charted Now

I have charted, now
The coast of your body
And the depth of your grace
Made passage through your reef
Of bone and honey.

I have been becalmed
In the perfume of you
In the taste of you
In the stillness of you.

I woke to you and built a nest
On the island of your heart
Where I, now live
And drink from the spring
Of your eyes.

You, to whom I revealed
The harsh tract of my past
That burned blue-flame
In my bush of ghosts

That mad life of rage and sorrow
Left behind, now
In the ash of my ascension
Which was buoyed by your strength
And the fierceness of your kisses.

And here I give to you
And here I hold, for as long as you allow,
In the vault of your beauty,
In the open, white rose of your love.

Author: http://www.aquillrelle.com/authorearl.htm

To order: http://www.lulu.com/shop/earl-leclaire/below-the-mayonnai...