ArLiJo, the Arlington Literary Journal online, currently is featuring Arlington, Virginia poet Mel Belin.
Belin who has published his work in various journals over the years also has been a frequent reader at local poetry venues.
Here below is a sample of his work.
Barco Negro —from a Portuguese song
She lay beside him on the sand, worried about when he\’d awaken and see her in the first stirrings of day: would he find her plain, or worse?
Later, he\’d left in a dark boat with a cross . . . But oh, how she\’d been wrong, had half-laughed, cried that way he looked at her, flush in morning\’s sun.
Let the old hags gossip: it\’s what people do who have nothing left. When they say he won\’t return, she thinks, they\’re crazy. And though the years that pass leave her
stooped, frail . . . she\’s ready, lies back one night, eyes closed, for that space, precious, when God-willing, after an in-breath,
the barco negro slips up to the pier for her, pauses . . . and, before any out-, moves off, sails billowing: a spectral glide to the horizon—like a dip into sleep, gone!
Copyright © 2006 by Mel Belin. Barco Negro was previously published in The Legal Studies Forum 2005 (West Virginia University).
Please visit the ArLiJo link to see more of his work and others who have been featured. Click here:
Washington, DC writer C. M. Mayo, who translated Agustin Cadena\’s short story Lady of the Seas for her collection entitled Mexico: A Traveler\’s Literary Companion, will be featured next at ArLiJo.
Biography:
Mel Belin\’s first book of poetry, Flesh That Was Chrysalis, was published by The Word Works, Inc., in September 1999. He was a winner of Potomac Review\’s third annual poetry competition, and a runner-up in an Antietam Review competition. He has read from his work on the Theme & Variations Program distributed by National Public Radio. A graduate of Dartmouth College, and George Washington University Law School, he is a retired lawyer, who currently resides in Arlington, Virginia.