The creaking as the wind holds the door open. The breeze pushes back the yellow tipped grass with a swish.
By Iliana Melissis
Apr 1, 2018
Tags: poems
one foot in front of the next
with only one toe stubbed
By p
Apr 1, 2018
Tags: poem
God’s messenger drifts
through the hallway,
scattering scraps in her wake. She keeps The Word
on a Post-it,
mistranslates Rilke to taste
truth in a foreign tongue,
tears leaves from old books and
whites out lines to reveal
the kernel that sprouts because
poetry
is the seed of all things.
By Nancy Ebel
Apr 1, 2018
Tags: poems
No Se Perite La Pesca
On the Rondout Creek, we watch a heron tiptoe across a tight rope from dock to boat. We cheer him on to rev the engine, speed out on the water, wave his legs
to a gaggle of geese.
By Mary Leonard
Apr 1, 2018
Tags: poem
You were all tiny then,
excited to play with each other in the morning
on the patch of grass in front of our home
until the yellow bus appeared. In the afternoons, we rushed from work to gather you up
with twirls and hollers of joy,
tussling your heads, or sometimes with silence and
a quiet, questioning glance.
By Robin Perls-Shultis
Apr 1, 2018
Tags: poems
We make eye contact
Instantly, I am dazzled. I know that sparkle
because it’s inside of me, too
and always has been.
By Christine Castellana
Apr 1, 2018
Tags: poem
You don’t write to me anymore
Cursive curves and letters forgotten
You don’t want to waste the paper
By Kerry Hegarty
Apr 1, 2018
Tags: poems
Number six train: dad
reads book to son amid din;
leaf and tree seem one.
By Howard Sage
Apr 1, 2018
Tags: poems
I can’t explain to you
why I’m suddenly in the market
for antique Spanish swords
from our war against Iberians
in Teddy Roosevelt’s Caribbean
but here I am
hoping that geographic cures
will work—
A call to arms
that only the wounded
would heed. It hurts to be so sober
on a Friday, half past eight
scouring Bannerman catalogues 110 years old
for militaria that one can no longer purchase
though if your love has left you
then perhaps you can relate.
By Mike Vahsen
Apr 1, 2018
Tags: poems
I live in the street
I sleep in the gutter
Among the shabby hordes that stumble and mutter
I do my best to sing for my supper
And distinguish myself before you
It’s true
I do steal cigarette butts from ash cans
And I have been known to drink
But suffer me my friends
I am a man
I can still think
And with this sidewalk as my stage
I know that I can entertain you still
With poetry
Pure verse
In the most beautiful way I know how let me converse with you
About how I tried to be like you
To do things the way the way that you do
Until I broke my hands, and my ribs, and my mind on the task
Now all I ask is to be forgiven
And be given one last chance to dance for you
With all that is left of me
And if I can make you laugh
If I can make you cry
if it’s worth anything at all to you
help me survive
I am the last of the living poets
That ply my trade in the streets
And I live and I die in the hearts and the minds
Of the beautiful strangers that I meet. And try to make my friends
By Lotus Streetpoet
Apr 1, 2018
Tags: poems
I remember a Sunday
winter in the Bronx
the barren streets
enveloped by a bitter cold sky
a grey blanket covering
our apartment buildings
I remember the wind
cutting through the alleyways
whipping across the elevated train tracks
lifting falling swirling passing McArdle’s bar
the cutting wind issuing a drunken howl
before turning the corner
The barbershop pole of colored stripes
whirling red white and blue
the sweetshop awning
flapping fiercely
Joe’s shoe repair sign
creaking back and forth
I also remember so clearly
on that Sunday afternoon
snapping Liz’s picture
as she stood in close-up
smiling
facing the wind
By Kathleen MacKenzie
Apr 1, 2018
Tags: poem
I found you coiled
on my doorstep,
patiently waiting
for the locks to turn
so you could
show me
how to shed
my old skin. But I hissed
and slithered
back to safety,
unwilling to accept
the time had come.
By Chala Fidan
Apr 1, 2018
Tags: poems
Pushed by the wind,
A leaf skates across the icy pond
Though the day is mild.
By Jennifer Fiorile
Apr 1, 2018
Tags: poems
“Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroke its sum,
You did not come…”—Thomas Hardy
I stole a jelly jar
of wishbones
once from a dead man—
they sang like a rattle,
those ten conjoined
clavicles, and I spent
the day dreamily
shaking them
like a cup of dice—
wondering
if I could harvest hope;
wondering if
one day
you would return;
wondering if
un-granted wishes
arrived like
a still-born? I buried the forked
bones in the yard.
By Evelyn Augusto
Apr 1, 2018
Tags: poem
Through April mud I track cloven hooves
to tread the trail of hidden deer,
though a subtle music on the boughs
suggests instead that Pan is near.
By Jared Bertholf
Apr 1, 2018
Tags: poems
A poem for you
sits
meditates on the blazing woodstove
puts its feet up on the hearth
oak smoke permeates every line
This particular poem
talks
freely says what it wants
breaks a sentence but
does not judge
knows when to stoke the fire
By Caroline Wolfe
Apr 1, 2018
Tags: poem
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