Feature
Literary 2003: POETRY
edited by Franci Levine Grater

Would You’ve Gone?

Have you ever been coaxed to the funeral
of one you hadn’t known existed?
The caller said the soul had been my father’s
friend when they were boys. “Your father would’ve gone.”

Masons staged an arcane rite.
Around me strangers wept.
Eulogists enunciated facts
as foreign as the Almanac’s
on agriculture. No one said hello.

Outside the caller took my arm. “You’re coming
to the cemetery—aren’t you?”

I fled.

—Saul Bennett

Poetic Justice (Bearsville 8/25/02)

So there he was, the poet laureate,
sleepy and wrinkled,
looking for a seat.

Now, many things in this good life
have conspired to separate me
from Mr. Collins. He gets big bucks
to read. The most I ever made
was one-twenty-five at a college once.
Someone invariably publishes his books.
I bind my own and give them funny names.
He lives in northern Westchester (ouch!)
while I have found reasonable contentment
in the Catskills. I’ve never met Mrs. Collins
but I’m willing to wager pronouns to proverbs
my wife’s prettier and she’s got a good job to boot.

But for today, the most obvious difference
between me and our bemused laureate is
a simple one. I’ve got my seat. Guess that’s just nature
sticking up for the little guy.

—Mike Jurkovic

Stone Soup

Ingredients are as follows:

To 5 gallons of crystal spring water,
add a pound of love, forgiveness and peace,
an ounce of brotherhood, compassion and joy,
a tablespoon of a child’s playful innocence,
a pinch of acceptance of any difference,
and a stone from a garden or a stream.

Slowly simmer until the juices flow together.
Be careful not to let the anger boil over.
Ladle the warm liquid
into a pure, wood-fired, clay bowl.
Feed yourself into the well of your being,
and feel God flow gently through your veins.

—Dennis Wayne Bressack

All in life is a trap
the “I’m right” argument trap
the better job than you trap
the buy more stuff trap
the “I love you forever” trap

which leads to
unrequited love
suicide or another marriage
or eternal love
which leads to adjoining plots
in the graveyard,
the end of the trap

My advice: just find the cheese
& run like hell the other way!

—Christina Starobin

A Prayer

I guess I’d have to thank
bananas.
Without them,
I’d probably never bake.
There’s something compelling
about the rapidly blackening skin
of the fruit
as it lies
corpselike on my counter.
The flies help,
swirling too near
just prepared food,
a reminder of nature’s demise.

I almost hate to buy them,
knowing that it always ends
like this,
the air perfumed
the oven warm
the mashed flesh
going the way
of all flesh
and me
waiting
for redemption.

—Mala Hoffman

What Do I Know About Peace?

What do I know about Peace?
I have been angry all my life,
calling names, pointing a finger
always in my heart feeling righteous
at others’ expense.
This is where war begins
in the angry heart
with flutterings of righteousness
always in secret.

What do I know of Peace?
I who was raised on fear & rage & shame
a daily feeding that comes back to me every day
a little white serpent
that has never left my house.
I must leave this house
taking nothing with me
that would put a false name
on my embrace
of the children I never bore
nor the god who brings me to them now.

—Holly Beye

Owner, Debtor, Worker

The year has been forgotten
Anyway let me tell you
Sadly sick in the skull
He passed away that year

‘’Underneath you’ll go’’
were his last words
I shrugged and smiled
Non-knowingly agreeing happily

The year has been forgotten
Anyway let me tell you
Police protruded on my property
They stepped in my flowers

‘’You’ve got no property papers’’
were their words
I shrugged and smiled
Non-knowingly agreeing happily

The year has been forgotten
Anyway let me tell you
Debt destroyed my only dissolution
I paid off interest with everything

‘’Sell father’s things’’
My daughter said
I shrugged and smiled
Non-knowingly agreeing happily

The year has been forgotten
Anyway let me tell you
This was when it happened
I turned down a proposal
Maybe I was wrong
But no....

‘’You’ll be sorry, woman’’
Was what he told me
I shrugged and smiled
Non-knowingly agreeing happily

The year has been forgotten
Anyway let me tell you
Sadly sick in the stomach
She passed away

“Only if’’
I whispered to myself
I shrugged and smiled
Non-knowingly agreeing happily

The year has been forgotten
Anyway let me tell you
Debt destroyed my only dissolution
I paid off interest with my daughter’s golden locks.

—Jimena Castria

Allegiance

Cloaked in spangled banner
stripes wrap enough to crush
my bones in binding sheath
beneath stars prickle skin

Left with the faintness
of Oh Say.
repetitive lullaby
repetitively lulling me to sleep

sleep.

Being rocked at a dizzying speed
still believing
perilous fights
are what cause the gleaming

I am caught
taught/between/extremes
waiting for a single beat
in this rhythmless scene
itching for a beat

beat.

—Zadi Diaz

Taking Off Billy Collins’ Clothes

It was easy, with the spotlight in his eyes,
focused as he was on his poetry, the crowd,
the floral arrangements girdling the podium.
I slunk across the dark stage, my movements obscured
by guffaws and applause.
I reached around and, almost silently,
pulled up the Velcro tabs on his loafers.
What was it about academics and loafers, I wondered.
Some kind of contractual thing?

I had him where I wanted him then.
I slipped off the shoes, then rolled the argyles down
with equal ease, going on as he was about
the dog, the phonograph and the orchestra.
It was no challenge to reach up for his buckle,
unfasten the scuffed brass catch,
slip the old leather strap from its loopy
cage around his tender gut.

His chinos all but fell from his hips then,
exposing pale boxers at the edge of the reading light.
Boxers? I marveled. Boxers?
Even a hatful of candles couldn’t have stopped me then.
Gliding up from the blue igloo of his manhood,
I slipped my hands under Billy’s jacket,
poet king corduroy, mandatory elbow patches
from all those hours of musing late on Friday afternoon,
September sun slanting in under tin blinds,
dust motes doe-see-doeing in the ivory air.

He helped me with a shrug, while on the page,
in the air, out of the speakers—
I slowly rose and reached down over his shoulders,
my arms slithering down his chest like fuzzy pink cobras,
and loosened his tie, navy with red media stripes.
It slipped gratefully from its Windsor noose,
out from under the plain white collar, and I thought,
Old Spice? Old Spice? What about Aramis, Calvin Klein,
something a bit more—

The shirt itself, stiff with laundry starch, fell into
a crisp origami boulder at Billy’s feet.
He went on with the one about the Buddha, the cocoa
and the shovel, and I thought of him out there, like this,
shovel in hand, soft feet trudging through the snow,
on to the card table, strip poker with the Enlightened One.
Billy’s t-shirt, v-neck, was marked by a slight shadow under the arms,
tuft of hair poking up like a gray nosegay.

Of course, I cannot tell you everything—
About how the volunteers assembled at the wings of the stage,
how they tossed the white net over me before I could escape,
the pretty red lights singing in the starry night like midway barkers,
the reporters, the headlines, the bad credit.

What I can say is that the three blind mice
scurrying around my feet, humming Art Blakey’s version of
the theme from “The Dick Van Dyke Show”
cannot be said to have made matters any better.

—Cheryl Rice

In the Beginning

To our ark we each carried a wary cat
then a parakeet coaxed from a park branch
plants liberated from a Chinese laundry
last a castoff mutt wandering
the subway on frozen Valentine’s morning.

Books paired off on shelves:
Two Siddharthas meditated shoulder
to shoulder while twin Steppenwolfs
hid their identities from each other.
In the dark of the record cabinet
White albums reflected each other’s glow.
Watered by our sighs, a garden
sprouted on the ceiling, vines
embraced the walls.

Those first years sustained
a tolerant geometry.
We measured all things
by our congruence
ignored our disjunctions.

In dreams I float there still
still on those untroubled waters.

—Judith Lechner

To Do

Poems I should write:
about breaking up
about making love
about breaking down
about packing: toothbrush
toothpaste
underwear
single earrings
jeans
tshirts
books—be specific
pens
highlighters
camera
film
skin cream
mouthwash
shorts
cd recorder
minidisks
notebook
about trust
about cheating
about lust
about needing
about Newfoundland to Vancouver Island
about New York to Washington
about hay: round bales
long bales
square stacked bales
cutting hay
moving hay
hay lofts
silos
mows
how many ways you can store hay
how describing the tastiest hay depends on the horse that’s tasting the hay
cows, cows, and more cows
name song titles without songs
I Won’t Go to the Mall for You, Baby
about 3 scrambled eggs, whole wheat toast, homefries, oj, coffee w/ milk
about American billboards and American billiards
about places I keep forgetting to get to
start with Heart’s Content, Newfoundland
end with Timbuctoo, New York
about men I have loved
men who loved me
men who I loved and who loved me
but not at the same time

—Michele Scarff

Litany of the Ten Toes

Have you climbed upon some piece of driftwood
That you thought would be nice to rest on
And found yourself floating down
An uncharted turning river
And suddenly it’s not Sunday anymore, it’s not sunny
And you’re on your way and the shore
Doesn’t exist as long as you can’t see it?
Is that what’s happened?

Have you forgotten that I am the poetess with barrettes?
The truthspeaker in the treehouse?
The small awkward goddess on stilts?
The cranky blessing witch
who wants to sing the sun up for a living?

Have you forgotten that it is the best thing in the world
To sit silently in the grass?
Hand in hand in hand
To slowly stir the ocean?
And what about living inside the broad arms of sunrise
Despite city grit and the fact of hunger?
What about midnight birth and a stormy potato field?
What is the call to be held between sky and ground?

Have you forgotten how cold my feet get at night?
How vulnerable my ten toes are to the elements?
They still seek the blanket of your body in bed
Not caring that it is summer, that you are gone.
These feet have their own memory
Based in forgetting everything
But warmth.
My heart must be a foot.

—Valerie Linet