Janet Smith Post
CONTACT:
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BIO:
Janet Smith Post grew up in Missouri, spent middle age years in Colorado, and moved to Galena, Illinois in 1993. She moved two years ago, to Sinsinawa Mound area, near Hazel Green, Wisconsin. She has been writing, as writers do, nearly all her life. Her first novel, Cotton Rock, was written when she lived in Galena, Illinois. It was read on Chapter-A-Day in Madison NPR. She won a short story contest, "Moonlight Memory," which was read on NPR in Little Rock, Arkansas, and that reading is available on YouTube. She co-authored two children's books with her late husband, Jim Post: Barnyard Boogie, and Jungle Beat.
In her latter years, she turned exclusively to poetry, and has placed in several poetry contests in Poet Society of Colorado: "I Remember Carlos," won first place," as did her poem: "Chandler." She's had some of her poems published by Quill and Parchement, an online publicaction in Illinois.
PUBLICATIONS:
Barnyard Boogie (published by Accord, and later purchased by Simon and Schuster)
Jungle Beat (also published by Accord and later purchased by Simon and Schuster)
Cotton Rock (a novel, read on Chapter-A-Day in Madison NPR)
Where Two Rivers Meet, the story of Blackhawk and Larken Carter, Ingram Press
Eyes of the Heart, Ingram Press
Children's Alphabet Songs, Jim Post, Inc. and carried by CD Baby
Poetry
Country Woman’s Lament
Not enough light here for old eyes.
‘Course those stars are leaning in, trying to help
hanging nearly in my window, trying to
have a look see at my sewing on this dress.
A rejigger job—the dress—a do-over.
Not much confidence in it—the goods may be too worn,
too tired from too many wears.
Nothing comes along to knock those stars off kilter.
That little dipper’s been holding a cup full of night sky since Adam.
Down here, a blow can knock you right out of your own life.
Now everything’s a do-over. This dress isn’t happy ‘bout changing, either.
Means ripping out seams that were doing just fine.
Insulting really. Threads holding on tight as old habits.
A start-over needs time. Nearer to my end
than my beginning. No do-over for that.
Those stars have all the time in the world—in the universe—
got young energy to burn. Mighty jumbled up, though,
Like God just flung out a dresser drawer.
No clear map up there—none down here either.
But reckon if God had lined those stars all in rows,
we’d only have to look up once.
So, it’s the mystery, like they say—
the wondering—if I can re-do things one more time,
for another wearing to places I can’t yet see myself going.
I Remember Carlos
No one knows who set the
bottle of kerosene too close.
A woodstove the only heat
inside four walls of adobe.
Maybe his weary mother,
brain-blurred from scrubbing
a week of white toilets.
Maybe his father who saw the
bottle through tequila eyes, tossed
it there as he spat his mistake.
(But people say things like that.)
Maybe it was the cat who tripped
the bottle’s roll—batting at its stopper rag.
Any story was enough to burst
the sheet of fire, gusting its
veil of molten lace across the face
and arms of little Carlos.
He floated for days, sometimes
on the wing of an angel flown very
near the door of heaven. Sometimes
on the witch’s ghost of La Llorona
wailing for her lost children
New forming skin first bleeds a milk
rubbering into furrowed webs—whorls
As thick as the streaming tube of
saline to his charred and thirsty vein.
I remember the day he returned
at last, to his place within
the circle of little preschool chairs.
I made Valentine sugar cookies,
one pink braid of icing to outline
all around the edge.
Little Carlos held his cookie,
looking down at it in silence,
then met my gaze with sweetest
pull of crooked smile,
to say the words, he could not
speak—a crinkled little finger
tracing all the way around
his small shape of heart.