POETSWEDNESDAY & More

Passover by Susanna Rich

PASSOVER

 

My father wouldn’t lead me down the aisle:

you were a Jew

and hadn’t asked him—

cognac to cognac—for my hand.

 

Good Catholic Hungarian girls marry

Royal Austro-Hungarian Empire types,

and have children to speak Hungarian

for Grandfather’s Holy Communion and dollars.

 

For years—no, decades—my father bragged

about The War: how he ministered to German

soldiers, and gave chocolates, Gillettes,

and stockings to their wives.

 

He brought wine from Polish vineyards

I feared

unspeakably fertilized—

a sympathetic magic I couldn’t bear.

 

Don’t let them lie to you, he spoke

like a spell over my Holocaust books,

Catholic priests, good people were killed

more than Jews—

 

Jewish bankers, Jewish doctors,

Jewish control of the media…

I asked him not to.

Robbed of his conjugating adjective,

 

he can’t speak.

He holds vigil outside our bedroom window,

his eye filling the pane like frost,

assuring himself no children will mix

 

his blood with the Jews’.

In spring, I gather flowered Seder plates

from Bed, Bath, & Beyond, a saffron-colored tablecloth,

and a new five-fingered vase.

 

I bury our pots in the garden,

as your mother once did,

to purify them,

so we can all eat. 

self-portrait twilight on a thursday by John Amen

self-portrait twilight on a thursday

for frederic tuten

 

yr hand slides down the banister

it’s 2001 you cough

ten more years pass

the doctor says everything is ok

 

clocks become decorative

you walk by them as you would any other still life

 

miniature men in the tributaries

outside the town where you grew up

go on panning the ripples of sin

 

stumbling towards an altar

no longer there

you grab for pages in the sky

 

don’t worry someone will say

these reactions are common

the primary colors of this theatrical extravaganza

 

you smell a storm coming

corral the animals

get the ark primed & ready for sailing

 

towards open sea you glance back

stone idols perched on distant cliffs

white shirts hanging in the evergreens

 

you sense that something important happened there on the shore

but new voices are calling
& already the old world is barely familiar

Shifting Gears by Edwin Romond

Shifting Gears

 

The time it takes to snap my fingers

seems longer than the years

since I first held my son

on a bicycle then watched

him make his world a little larger

pedaling down our street and disappearing

onto the next before returning

with a Lindbergh grin to our driveway.

It all seems less than a breath

ago as I watch him now at age 11

commandeer his roaring dirt bike,

80 cc’s of galloping Honda power

shifting from first to fourth,

rocketing up, down, and around

the hills, his smile the smile

of one born for propulsion,

who could not be more different

from his father who thinks twice

before taking an escalator.

He screeches to a stop and asks

if he can give me a ride

and my love blinds my fear

as I get on the back, my old bones

and butt already feeling each lump

and bump on the motorcycle trails.

How quickly it has come to this

shifting of gears that I, his father,

depend upon my son for safe passage,

that I now trust him as he trusted me

to steer through all the twists and turns.

I put my arms around his waist as he revs

the engine, lets out the clutch and shouts

over his shoulder, “Hold on to me, Dad!”

And I do.

 

                        Edwin Romond

                        from Alone with Love Songs (Grayson Books)

 

The Fruitful Woman by Diane Lockward

The Fruitful Woman

Today I dress for you in scarlet. I am a tomato, plump and luscious. I pulsate with seeds. Today I clothe myself in yellow. I am a peach, succulent and ripe. For you, I swathe myself in gold—all melons, oranges, tangerines, nectarines. I am a garden of earthly delights. I am the red apple you would fall for a thousand times. I am the apricot you would die for. I am all strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, and cherries, all these and more. Today I am royal for you. I dress in a gown of purple plum. Come, lift me out of my skin.     —from Eve's Red Dress (Wind Publications, 2003)

WEATHERED, NOT WORN by Andrew Lowe

WEATHERED, NOT WORN

        --Andrew Lowe 

It does not matter how smart the man

Save what makes up his bones

Sitting with cigarette in hand

Pretending to be all of his own

 

But does he drink his liquor warm

or sip it straight from the morning sail?

 

And can you smell the wicker, sleeping cool underneath his bitter nail?

 

Only the ocean can tell

But too dense to frown

Too light to smile

Too long to unravel

 

Look how young its eyes once were

Collecting shards of wind

To wage war upon the mourning, I begin

 

But sleeping through the rich days of lavender and haze

While only time will know its truth

Suffer not, for you know it is not true

 

While tiny birds of glass can only fly in the afternoon

We hope the sun remains strong, but not too cruel

Chris Rockwell

http://thepedestalmagazine.com/cms_wfc/uploads/222.mp3

 

click the link above to hear a poem by Chris Rockwell

       --previously published by Pedestal Magazine

Field of Vision by D.M. Dutcher (Dutch)

Field of Vision

I drove the seven crows away, the hawk

Beset and bloodied--just my shouting scared

Off two, the other scattered by a round

 

Of snowballs aimed their way. I called to him

I couldn't be there every time there's trouble.

He pulled his ruffled feathers in, ignored

 

My call -- aloof I thought--but then what proud

Sailor of the skies would recognize

Such a lowly creature that couldn't fly.

 

He seemed to know the majesty we see

In hawks, the graceful flight with hunter's skills,

Vision we can hardly comprehend.

 

And today he rested on the split-rail fence

Along the drive, six feet from where I'd walk,

Motionless in spite of my approach.

 

I spoke to him and felt a bond arise,

Wondered if he'd sensed my help that day.

Wondered if these spinning thoughts were just

 

Anthropomorphic chatter. The hawk

Of course, stayed mute--then turned his head away,

Stared out over the vast field of white.

 

                       --first published in The Carriage House Poetry Series 10th Anniversary Anthology, 2008

St. Petersburg Has Many Churches by Phil Provance

From 'The Day the Sun Rolled Out of the Sky'

by Phill Provance St. Petersburg Has Many Churches St. Petersburg has many churches that no one prays in. Their soft serve-swirl spires are ironic like that. You and I ellipticizing the Savior on the Spilled Blood, speaking of what to name our housecat as we drag our fingers along the garden’s toy gates and walls— that is also ironic. If there is anything ironic about St. Petersburg it’s that no one may hold its soft spires. Or wouldn’t there be spilled blood and a toy cat praying in the gardens? Or you and I ellipticizing our house name, wouldn’t that also be a church? When you look at a tree in a garden it is clearer when you look at all the things that are not a tree; when you sleep under a blanket it is important to remember that it’s not the blanket that is warm but the space between it and your skin. I heard it is day for so long in St. Petersburg that you forget that blankets are warm. I also heard it’s so cold that when you piss the stream freezes into a yellow arch. The first statement is true; the second is ironic. The cat and I think talking about you in a house makes a gate ironic. How else to explain the many names of spilled gardens? If I had to forget about the day in warm blankets I would do it by ellipticizing trees no one prays in. I would drag my fingers in the toy blood on the walls and piss on the church spires.

                                          --First Published in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, November, 2011

Of Sleep & Dreams by Deborah LaVeglia (From Edison Literary Review: 10th Anniversary Issue)

Of Sleep and Dreams

by Deborah LaVeglia

 

 

The sun wakes me.

Its light coaxes me out of my dream,

forces me to crawl back inside my skin.

 

What is real

and what is unreal

divide themselves,

as blissful sleep puts on its coat and hat.

Departs.

 

I reclaim my  body one section at a time.

Mouth: dry.

Muscles: stiff.

 

What I want is to find a way

back into that dream,

where there are only the two of us

in black and white,

and we share a cigarette, an inside joke

and some whiskey.

 

And , like a Frank Capra movie,

everything turns out right in the end.

All our friends line up to support us, and

nothing is allowed to prick our skin unexpectedly.

--published in Edison Literary Review:

Anniversary Issue, Sept., 2011

Bimbo's Devotion by Maxine Susman

Bimbo’s Devotion

            for Larry

 

Those dogs will save you a piece of work.

The farmer, see, would have to walk

all over hell and gone collecting those cows

and they’re some mean if they don’t want to move—

whereas the dog will run right up,

look them in the eye and nip their heels

to make them go the way he wants them—

they pay more heed to a good dog any day.

Take no time to train, got it in their blood—

you just show them what to do a couple times,

teach a few commands like round ‘em up

and take ‘em home—they have the instinct.

Bimbo my father’s dog to give you one example,

she was some smart, part collie other things mixed in,

Dad didn’t have to say a word—

come suppertime she’d go out on her own

and bring the whole herd home,

every last one regardless where they strayed.

Dad was crazy proud and took her everyplace,

if he got in the truck she jumped right up in back.

Well one day he just drove off without her—

she watched the truck pull down the drive,  

then got to work, killed all the chickens in the yard.

 

 -- 1^st published in US1 Worksheets, reprinted in “Creamery Road,” Finishing Line Press, forthcoming Summer 2011.