On Halloween I Rearrange My Spice Rack
After all, it’s almost baking season:
cinnamon into a new glass jar,
cloves and allspice in small square tins
I take down, polish, set back upon
my woven wicker shelves above
where my striped cats drink water, crunch
dark food from shining silver bowls.
Edge of the year, veil wavering
between human breath and spirit reach
through time no longer time. My mother
waves to me and smiles, her crimson
fingernails around her final cigarette.
My father offers a smooth tomato,
perfect gleaming globe in his curved palm.
My grandmother holds up her wrists
and looks to see if I still wear her
jewelry. Then there’s him, my brother,
half-rising from his suicide, mouthing
our pain’s secret from far ago, his ashes
thin and trembling with long plea.
All of them call to me through clear air
how they will welcome me, the last.
But my warm kitchen’s all around me
and the stove stands bright and clean.
I reach for sugar, deep cups of sugar.
How good the solid wooden spoon
still feels in my old hands!
—Katharyn Howd Machan
Metro
On a train traveling south,
the Hudson streams (shades
of blur) out windows;
passengers moving
isolated—but
startled when
instead of ticket purchase is
the obligation
to tell anything to offer
an explanation (somber maroon or
joyful yellow) how come
this trip to the City
that
will color our journey,
which can be boring,
so much more
interesting…
don’t you think?
—C. P. Masciola
Kindergarten
It was her first, first
My heart swelled with pride and fear
She looked back just once
—Dana Muwwakkil
My Mighty Hudson
Thank you for treating me so well as I swam across your moving waters.
I have not doubted myself. I knew I could reach from one side to the other. From Newburgh to Beacon.
So little am I in comparison to you. You are streaming here in this land for so long. You have seen it all.
You let me enter your body. For a while it felt like we were one.
I swam first to reach some space for myself. Then I swam diligently. Calmly but steady. Then I came to feel your motions. Where I first felt like I move through you, I started to feel how you move me.
You put my body in motion and I adapted my strokes. You heightened your motions creating more currents and I needed to get more powerful. I had to give a little more, add more strength to my stroke. Be more adaptive as I attuned my body to the motion of the water we encountered as we got closer to the shore. And swim north. Up. Getting stronger, maybe faster in my strokes.
Still feeling hugged by your water, breathing, gliding through it.
I know you now a little bit.
It feels so big, so relieving and so rewarding that I believe I will thank you forever. For allowing me to swim inside of you, and for gaining so much joy and strength as I did it.
The current of your water, rhythmic and changing, affecting my flow, the flow inside of me. I feel you changed me. Maybe.
I felt alive, and as I think of you, invigorated, filled with love. I feel love for you. Thank you for being so kind to me, for making me feel held. Maybe you, too, showed me love as you kept me safe. You moved me, my body and my mind, my heart.
My mighty Hudson.
—Heike Jenss
Villanelles Don’t Buy Houses
For Stone
Lord let me die by the Hudson, this whole valley’s gone to hell;
We don’t sing the springs anymore, not since the cats all drowned.
Poetry won’t buy us pretty houses, and villanelles don’t sell.
When I heard the news, I thought it just as well—
I yearn to fill my pockets with rocks, tie books to my feet, and drown.
Lord let me die by the Hudson, this whole valley’s gone to hell.
It’s time to hit the road, pack your pillowcase with Durrell.
Hell is empty and all the devils moved to town.
Poetry won’t buy us pretty houses, and villanelles don’t sell.
New Paltz has grown tired, downtown is but a shell.
No one sings river songs anymore, I’ll miss seeing you around.
Lord let me die by the Hudson, this whole valley’s gone to hell;
Seven feet tall, no match for the tales you’d tell—
I swear I can still hear you singing hymns six feet underground.
Poetry won’t buy us pretty houses, and villanelles don’t sell.
But when I walk by the river, my heart can’t help but swell.
May the circle be unbroken; hallelujah innyhow.
Lord let me love by the Hudson, this whole valley’s gone to hell;
Poetry may build us more than houses, my villanelle’s not for sale.
—Alexandria Wojcik
When You Took Your Shoes from the Closet
One of those things I almost missed
however usually meticulous
Your shoes, always scattered
across the floor were gone—
they weren’t there anymore
Summery shoes—sandals, straps
once strung about, vanished
And standing there, by the open
door, looking down upon that naked
floor I stopped—and lost a breath
When you took your shoes from
the closet, I suffered a kind of death—
Yes—there was some little, silent
death
—Christopher Porpora
Stone House
The blue corner store
grew cabbage and kale in tall pots
beside the cornfield and the colonial bridge
across to the stag headed bar
amid stone houses
everything they lacked in warmth
they made up in character
—C Kuhl
Stage Light Migraines
You must forgive me for not knowing any better than
to consider you an audience of one.
I am a creature possessed
by my voice-box and my diaphragm, filled up
by air and sound and noise.
You are sitting at the sticky table in the dining hall
with your raincoat still on and dripping pools onto the just-cleaned floor
but I am on the stage
and the lights are bright in my eyes and the house is so dark
that I cannot see your face
and I am only guided by the sound of your applause
and your laughter.
—Lily Raper
I Had A Typewriter
I had a typewriter.
All writers of a certain type had one.
By a certain type, I must mean a certain age.
It was a good editor.
The writing was slow, methodical, deliberate, plodding.
So it was a good editor.
You could think of the right word before you typed the wrong one.
You could write two lines ahead in your head.
It was stupid.
It was an editor.
It was a frustrated poet.
But it was smart enough to let you be the smart one.
It was smart enough to know bad from worse.
—J. R. Solonche
Safe Harbor
Buried deep in the Sound, a tetrapod of poles
supporting a crow’s nest with two “red, right,
returning” triangular signs, a beacon
for boats coming back to a harbor sheltered
from rough seas. Out here on the long jetty
with flat-topped boulders forming a wide
walkway, you know that the winds won’t blow
you away; you’ll be okay holding onto your hat
and stepping past the bits of crab shells
and claws left by gulls. You’ve come out today
because the skies are finally clear, and, for
a few moments, you can get far enough away.
—Jim Tilley
Kind Word
It is the
wind
that my ear
reaches
out for hoping
that
it brings a
gift.
—Duane Anderson
Puddles
Let the radio
play on
Come lie
back down
turn toward
the window
and let me
hold you
like broken
ground
holds the
falling
rain.
—Ryan Brennan
Betty’s
There’s a place up Saratoga way
you may want to check out
tucked north of the grey and pink houses
where east-facing windows
stare bleakly at the lake shoreline
sprinkled with the skiffs of summertime.
Drive past some long-haired cows, once white,
now the color of old men’s teeth,
sprawled contentedly in lumpy mud
on straw laced fields,
bovine leftovers of yesterday’s farms.
Stumble on into Betty’s
…Sunnyside Cafe
Crack a Molson and sit,
rest your bottle on the red vinyl tablecloth,
where gingerbread men prance gaily across,
remnants of Christmas past.
You may feel unwelcome at first
as you notice the farmers’ backs,
behind a blue curtain of smoke at the bar
on red leather stools, solid and unyielding,
…a stranger with a notebook is a foreign sight
The knotty pine walls are thickly coated
with the stink of sixty years of beers,
displaying a crooked canvas of neon-lit clocks,
Budweiser, Miller, Schlitz, Beck’s
Soon you’ll feel warm and safe,
watch the fat black stove rocking,
stuffed with snapping logs
Betty serves up the brewskies and
kicks open the door behind her
to shuffle in a sliver of hard March air.
The water doesn’t reek at Betty’s
like the miraculous springs of sulfur past
and blue linen towels unwind endlessly in the
bathroom dispenser
walls whisper of pool hall hustlers and
farmers with a week’s pay from their grain.
A tractor-wide man with big black suspenders
parks his John Deere outside
and a young farmer with a wedding band
approaches your table to quote Shakespeare
a twinkle in his eye born of boredom
and boondock daydreams.
Stumble on into Betty’s
…Sunnyside Cafe
—Fern Suess
Muse
You give just enough
to hook my heart, fire my brain,
leave me wanting more.
—Elizabeth Young
