D.E. Steward
Is Azeitão a strong red of the Sierra da Arrábida
A long Belle Époc zinc bar in Oporto as if still
Up the hill on Rua de Sá da Banderia as it was
Extending foreshortened Van Gogh perspective
Gleaming brass and glass and mirrors vigilant on
Its corner ready for the reflux of Portugal’s Africa
Half a century ago coming into Lisbon in cold rain
Off the January Atlantic quiet city to a boisterous
Cervejaria on Rua du Ouro spewing boiled shrimp
In marvel of graciousness and dim reflected light
D. E. Steward writes serial month-to-month “months” in a project, Chroma, now in its twenty-fifth year. Nearly two hundred of the months are out in literary magazines. Shorter poetry appears in the same manner. A literary magazine writer with one trade paperback novel, Contact Inhibition, and one poetry collection, Torque, he plans to continue Chroma ad infinitum. Google or Bing “d e steward poetry” for more than you want to know.
“The front porch of Chilao Hotshot Camp headquarters in California’s San Gabriel Range, talking with the camp boss, Pete Trujillo, a Taos Pueblo chief, whose name is now on a memorial at the entrance to Chilao with two other US Forest Service people I worked with there. Pete was a genius on wildfires. A few of us would sit there in the dusks of many evenings listening to the poorwills and an occasional whoop-whoop from a long-eared owl while Pete talked on in English, some Spanish, and a bit of Tiwa about fires past, life, and people who’d come and gone.”