On the Rondout
I find a tree to lean against;
this is where I feel at ease—
with roots, with buds.
Beside me, the Mariner’s—
full of men:
throwing darts, bellowing,
drinking beer. Embracing their lot.
Amongst them, I think, is a man who wanted me—
he’d caught me at the light:
“It’s been a good day, and we’re going downtown.
We’d like to see you there, if you’re around.”
So I came, and I don’t see him.
I do see his car, though:
black, with chrome, leather upholstery,
fuzzy dice and Arizona plates.
He wasn’t handsome, but exciting.
I lean against my tree,
and think about those men in there.
I want them, they frighten me;
my jacket is loud, and so are they.
What if they say the wrong thing?
How do I ground myself in their midst?
How can I be discreet, when the bartender
has a waist like that? Arms like that?
When the man over there is trying not to look at me?
And when I’m trying to see a man I can’t see,
who I only want because he wanted me?
—Ben Rendich
Liberty Song Cento
I wonder how it all got started, this business
announced by all the trumpets of the sky.
Waking, these mornings, is like being thrown from a train.
What defense can one mount against an avalanche?
Spare us all the words of the weapons, their force and range.
The Declaration of Independence was written with a feather.
It will happen here. No doubt. Someday, here,
but history has never stopped me from praying.
How circumstances can save us from catastrophe.
We the people, we the one.
The cento key includes the following poems: Billy Collins’ “The Art of Drowning,” Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The Snow Storm,” Michael Ryan’s “Poem at Thirty,” Amy Gerstler’s “The Ice Age,” Richard Wilbur’s “Advice to a Prophet,” Dean Young’s “Belief in Magic,” Laura Kasischke’s “After Ken Burns,” Saeed Jones’ “A Memory,” Pam Bernard’s “Field Notes,” and David Hernandez’s “We Would Never Sleep.”
—Richard L. Matta
Good. Intention
Why would you build high rises
For people who used to live
Close to the ground
Why would you build sidewalks
For people that used to walk
Barefoot on sandy ground
What heat source do you plan
To give to the people that used
To gather around the fire
What kind of solution
Do you have
For world hunger
Without food
What joke would you tell
Around the fire
After you run out of wood
—Ze’ev Willy Neumann
Distance
“I have lost my sense
of direction. I turned
the wrong way on the road,”
I overheard an old woman
say this morning in the post
office. I understand her.
We’re the same age, but
that’s not me. I still have
my sense of direction. I turn
the right way all the time.
What I have lost is my sense
of distance, the two miles
I drive to pick up my mail
get longer, the walk to the car
in the lot gets longer, the drive
home gets longer, the ascent up
the front stairs, oh the ascent,
the ascent gets longer, one risen
riser at a time longer.
—J. R. Solonche
For There Is Nothing Quite So Fine
For there is nothing quite so fine
as a lovingly woven little line
—Christopher Porpora
Hudson Valley Spring
Today outside the toy shop
I found $20
And there was time leftover in the meter
so I went in and bought a flower press
to preserve those things which cannot be saved
My flower smusher
Sidney called it
When she opened the door
she was fresh as a lamb in her new white fleece
with a halo of silver bangs
Sat in my favorite blue and white pitcher
quinces on the branch
devotedly supplied year after year
by a mysterious benefactor
who vacations in Italy
Aside country roads
the dandelions have burst wide open
kicked down the door
The unrestrained fecundity of spring
a welcome violence
I wouldn’t want you too close
I’m glad for the distance
I’m sorry to say that when it comes to love
I’m a bit of an anorexic
Absence and the heart and all that
Can you tell
I am trying to say something
that can only be spoken in tears
or in a child’s drawing?
The tulips too
they bloom
In colors so pure
I glance quickly
I put my cigarette out three quarters of the way through
(I place a single petal in the press)
I am afraid
To have too much of a good thing
—Emily Gaynor
Cold Comfort
If you have the sense
that each year seems worse
than the one before,
Relax. You’ve not lost
your marbles; you’re right.
It is worse. Much worse.
—George J. Searles
Even the Wintering Chickadee
Even the wintering chickadee
outside my window
must think she is only a bird
singing her songs of
warning, her songs of love
believing, like me,
she is only the form she inhabits.
I am a danger to her
despite my hands full of seed,
I pierce her pleasure at the feeder
with my yearning.
So it is, each day
our mutual mysteries
count for nothing
and the carousel turns,
bird fearing man
man longing bird,
our habits and needs
keeping our friendship at bay.
So on this early spring morning
I offer my covenant:
blessed bird,
skittish, intrepid pirate,
furious flier who drops in
and scatters without malice,
I see you.
I want nothing from you.
You are released.
As am I.
—Kemp Battle
Reflections in the Black
Not the shagbark of hickory, life-beaten,
hanging brown and cold,
peeling the former parts of itself;
emptied and waiting
by the pond near my home.
Not the dying daylight flame on the water;
its smoking cold fog
of memory, of sinking along the shallows
with lily pads and frosted reed.
But all the nights spent alone; pitch black,
new moon and my eyes to the sky:
Does starlight ever end—
when all of this is dead; cragged branch
and frozen-snapped limbs.
There as the sun at dawn; this is the ruse
of the stars. And—oh, how I dream
to tell you of that morning
where I wish for songbirds to speak;
and how it will make me understand
our language.
—Brandon Wolfe
Wanting a Forest
See the word as “for rest,” joined.
In such wakeful watchfulness,
what rests? Old roots, youngest shoot,
each cell of budworm, hemlock, spore
eats, multiplies, dies. Sometimes
I rest like this, in what is, no different
than a forest, a forest in me
in want of nothing.
—Janet Kaplan
I Stand Here
I stand here
watching the faithful
wash the feet of fools
sharing their lies better than bread
I stand here
rusting on this rock
sinking in this harbor
a colossus of failed destiny
perhaps
you’ve been inside me
parted the copper
and slowly worked your way up my robe
searching for my promise
and a little taste of America
perhaps
you’ve climbed into my mind
starry eyed me
red capped me
tied me up and wrapped me
in flags and patriot grins
perhaps
you fancy me
as some quaint antebellum girl
with a childish dream
I stand here
in grey waters
my torch
my poor
my homeless
out with the tide
I stand here
Ashamed
—James Christopher Carroll
Greek Tragedy
Some wise-ass Greek—a poet—
has a line above his name in posterity
Honoring his deep thought:
“Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.”
Renaissance artists set the scene in stone.
A marbled hand on a heavy, noble brow:
Euripides’ reed poised to get his wisdom down
before the ink dries.
But is that how it happened?
Hypothesize: Perhaps, some long weekend,
a soma-drunk bar-fly—
belligerent, kicked out, he’d had a skinful—
Slipped and splayed akimbo in the Athens mud,
raised a fist, wobbled at the gathered town,
and moaned his piece.
A passing scribe, amused, exclaimed
“‘Make mad.’ That’s good! I’ll write that down.”
—Matt Clifton
The Mind
“the foul rag and bone shop” —W. B. Yeats
The mind is like a puddle on a dirt road. It
dries to caked mud, then becomes a puddle
again. There’s nothing to be fathomed in
a puddle, other than passing reflections of sky,
its muddiness, and tiny frogs that dart
deeper into the murk, evading intruders.
She brought a dried washcloth from upstairs.
She said, “Here, this is yours.” I said, “Yes,
it looks like my brain.” She said, “You got that
right.” It had been a wet cloth used to soothe
tired eyes. Now it’s all I ever wrote.
The heart, let’s not even dwell on it.
—Steve Clark
This article appears in May 2025.
