New Bathing Suit

 

My friend is wearing her new black bathing suit.
It came with the proper cups, made to fill
with one breast and the memory
of another—which is not to say emptiness—
but the fullness that comes to us, with sacrifice.
There is no one more alive than she is now,
floating like a lotus or swimming, lap after lap,
parting the turquoise, chlorine-scented water,
her arms as sturdy as wooden paddles.
And when she pulls herself from the pool,
her new suit dripping—the pulse is so strong
in her wrists and throat, a little bird
outside the window will hear it, begin to flap
its wings to the beat of her heart.

Terri Kirby Erickson, ‘American Life in Poetry’ #849 June 28, 2021

Teaching in the 21st Century

 

A kid I didn’t know committed suicide last night,
shot himself in the head on Asheville Highway.
Things like that, things that don’t happen
in our small town, they happen now. They happen.

We went into lockdown last week, huddled
in a dark corner, teenage girls giggling
because they’ve never been in the dark
next to a boy before. Things like disgruntled
parents waving guns outside schools. They happen.

Evacuated to the football field last month
because someone read on social media
that there was a bomb. An hour and a half
of instructional time wasted. Things like sad,
ignored kids posting threats online. They happen.

A girl cried on my shoulder because her boyfriend
hit her. A boy asked me how to get the girl.
One restraining order, a new seating arrangement,
and a group project later, girl + boy fall in love.
Things like that, good things, they still happen.

Sam Campbell, moriaonline.com, Spring 2021 April 26, 2021

How I Stopped Eating Sugar on My Cornflakes

 

Somewhere in the 100 billion cells

of my brain is the memory

of the playground in second grade

when Jenny told me birds could fly

because their bones were hollow,

and, she reasoned, if we could lose

enough weight, we, too,

could have hollow bones, and we, too

could fly.

 

Surely linked to that memory

are thousands of other neurons

that disprove her claim—

neurons related to air pressure, thrust,

strong breast muscles, osteoporosis—

but there is, perhaps,

still one cell in there somewhere

across the synaptic gap,

that lights up at the memory

of Jenny’s suggestion

as if to say,

wow, that’s cool,

let’s try it.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, ahundredfallingveils.com November 2, 2016

Hoodie

 

A gray hoodie will not protect my son
from rain, from the New England cold.

I see the partial eclipse of his face
as his head sinks into the half-dark

and shades his eyes. Even in our
quiet suburb with its unlocked doors,

I fear for his safety—the darkest child
on our street in the empire of blocks.

Sometimes I don’t know who he is anymore
traveling the back roads between boy and man.

He strides a deep stride, pounds a basketball
into wet cement. Will he take his shot

or is he waiting for the open-mouthed
orange rim to take a chance on him? I sing

his name to the night, ask for safe passage
from this borrowed body into the next

and wonder who could mistake him
for anything but good.

January Gill O’Neil, greenmountainsreview.com June 15, 2015

Compost Happens

 

Nature teaches nothing is lost.
It's transmuted.

Spread between rows of beans,
last year's rusty leaves tamp down weeds.
Coffee grounds and banana peels
foster rose blooms. Bread crumbs
scattered for birds become song.
Leftovers offered to chickens come back
as eggs, yolks sunrise orange.
Broccoli stems and bruised apples
fed to cows return as milk steaming in the pail,
as patties steaming in the pasture.

Surely our shame and sorrow
also return, composted by years
into something generative as wisdom.

Laura Grace Weldon, Canary Summer 2018

At the Vietnam Memorial

 

The last time I saw Paul Castle

it was printed in gold on the wall

above the showers in the boys’

locker room, next to the school

record for the mile. I don’t recall

his time, but the year was 1968

and I can look across the infield

of memory to see him on the track,

legs flashing, body bending slightly

beyond the pack of runners at his back.

 

He couldn’t spare a word for me,

two years younger, junior varsity,

and hardly worth the waste of breath.

He owned the hallways, a cool blonde

at his side, and aimed his interests

further down the line than we could guess.

 

Now, reading the name again,

I see us standing in the showers,

naked kids beneath his larger,

comprehensive force—the ones who trail

obscurely, in the wake of the swift,

like my shadow on this gleaming wall.

George Bilgere, Big Bang (Copper Beech Press, 1999)

My Errata

 

For angel read angle
deed read died
freed read creed
creed read cried.

For think read thank
please read pleas
police read policy
fast read feast.

For ghost read host
Christ read Chris
emergency emerge and see
that read this.

For Eastern read Easter
saint read ain’t
tasty mint testament
vomit omit.

For depart read deep art
apart meant apartment
together to get her
manufacture man you fracture.

For candles read scandal
fishin’ line finish line
manages man ages
comedy come die.

Keith Barrett, American Scholar June 26, 2018

1969

 

My brother enlisted

in the winter. I pitched

for the sixth-grade Indians

and coach said

I was almost as good

as Johnny. My mother

fingered rosary beads,

watched Cronkite say

and that’s the way it is.

I smoked my first

and last cigarette. My father

kept his promise,

washed Johnny’s Mustang

every weekend. Brenda Whitson

taught me how to French kiss

in her basement. Sundays

we went to ten o’clock Mass,

dipped hands in holy water,

genuflected, walked down

the aisle and received

Communion. Cleon Jones

got down on one knee, caught

the last out and the Mets

won the World Series.

Two white-gloved Marines

rang the bell, stood

on our stoop. My father

watched their car

pull away, then locked

the wooden door. I went

to our room, climbed

into the top bunk,

pounded a hard ball

into his pillow. My mother

found her Bible, took

out my brother’s letters,

put them in the pocket

of her blue robe. My father

started Johnny’s car,

revved the engine

until every tool

hanging in the garage

shook.

Tony Gloeggler, Rattle #25, Summer 2006

Basal Cell

 

The sun is still burning in my skin

even though it set half-an-hour ago,

and Cindy and Bob and Bev and John

are pulling on their sweatshirts

and gathering around the fire pit.

 

John hands me a cold one

and now Bev comes into my arms

and I can feel the sun’s heat,

and taste the Pacific on her cheek.

 

I am not in Vietnam,

nor is John or Bob, because

our deferments came through,

and we get to remain boys

for at least another summer

like this one in Santa Cruz,

surfing the afternoons in a sweet

blue dream I’m remembering now,

 

as the nurse puts my cheek to sleep,

and the doctor begins to burn

those summers away.

George Bilgere, poetryfoundation.org

Let There Be Peace

 

No more war

said the bomb to the bullet

the shell to the tank

the missile to the rocket

 

No more

said the ploughshare to the sword

said the soldier to the slaughter

the widow to her children

 

Let there be peace

said the cemeteries to the skeletons

the fields to the poppies

the lion to the lamb

 

Amen again and again 

Helen Bar-Lev, hewemunhak.com April 23,2021

Things Shouldn't Be So Hard

A life should leave
deep tracks:
ruts where she
went out and back
to get the mail
or move the hose
around the yard;
where she used to
stand before the sink,
a worn-out place;
beneath her hand
the china knobs
rubbed down to
white pastilles;
the switch she
used to feel for
in the dark
almost erased.
Her things should
keep her marks.
The passage
of a life should show;
it should abrade.
And when life stops,
a certain space—
however small —
should be left scarred
by the grand and
damaging parade.
Things shouldn’t
be so hard.

Kay Ryan, The Niagara River (Grove/Atlantic, 2005) 

Goldfinches

 

Some goldfinches were having a melodious argument
at the edge of a puddle. The birds wanted to bathe, or
perhaps just to dip their heads and look at themselves,
and they were having trouble with who should be
first, and so on. So they discussed it while I stood in
the distance, listening. Perhaps in Tibet, in the old
holy places, they also have such fragile bells. Or are
these birds really just that, bells come to us--come to
this road in America--let us bow our heads and
remember now how we used to do it, say a prayer.
Meanwhile the birds bathe and splash and have a
good time. Then they fly off, their dark wings opening
from their bright, yellow bodies; their tiny feet,
all washed, clasping the air.

Mary Oliver, tidingsofmagpies.blogspot.com, August 23, 2008

Girdle

 

In our teens we all bought girdles
with rubber knobs to hold up our stockings.
We wiggled into them, our “foundations.”

So many things look absurd from a distance
that people still take seriously,
like whether there’s a Heaven for pets.

What ever happened to my girdle?
One day I peeled it off for the last time
and all hell broke loose.

Connie Wanek, Rival Gardens (University of Nebraska Press, 2016)

Aunties

 

There's a way a woman

            will not

relinquish

 

her pocketbook

            even pulled

onstage, or called up

 

to the pulpit—

            there's a way only

your Auntie can make it

 

taste right—

             rice & gravy

is a meal

 

if my late Great Aunt

            Toota makes it—

Aunts cook like

 

there's no tomorrow

             & they're right.

Too hot

 

is how my Aunt Tuddie

            peppers everything,

her name given

 

by my father, four, seeing

            her smiling in her crib.

There's a barrel

 

full of rainwater

            beside the house

that my infant father will fall

 

into, trying to see

           himself—the bottom—

& there's his sister

 

Margie yanking him out

           by his hair grown long

as superstition. Never mind

 

the flyswatter they chase you

            round the house

& into the yard with

 

ready to whup the daylights

            out of you—

that's only a threat—

 

Aunties will fix you

           potato salad

& save

 

you some. Godmothers,

           godsends,

Aunts smoke like

 

it's going out of style—

             & it is—

make even gold

 

teeth look right, shining.

             saying I'll be

John, with a sigh. Make way

 

out of no way—

            keep they key

to the scale that weighed

 

the cotton, the cane

            we raised more

than our share of—

 

If not them, then who

           will win heaven?

holding tight

 

to their pocketbooks

            at the pearly gates

just in case.

Kevin Young, Dear Darkness: Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008)

Red Rover, Red Rover

The only rule:
keep the chain intact.
I didn’t know
in the grade school gym
it was a way to practice
meeting all that would try
to break us apart,
practice being bombarded,
practice calling in our fear.
Red Rover, Red Rover
let sickness come over.
Once it felt like a game.
Now—oh friend.
Hold on to my wrist.
I’ll hold on to yours.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, wordwoman.com April 28, 2021 

Seven Haiku

recycling day

bundling up

all the bad news

      Ian Wiley, Frogpond 43.2 2020

 

drinks around the grill –

uncle Joe’s fish

get bigger and bigger

      Kendall Lot, Frogpond 43.1 2020

 

google earth

I zoom in on

my childhood

      Mark Dailey, Frogpond 42.1 2019

 

wanderlust

his license plate collection

nailed to the barn wall

      Michele L. Harvey, Frogpond 41.3 2018  

 

coffee table books

changed out

for the pastor’s visit

      Marsh Muirhead, Frogpond 41.3 2018

 

crowded subway

I let him have

my wiggle room

      Francine Banwarth, Frogpond 41.2 2018

 

downpour

the cows that fit

under one tree

      Jennifer Thiermann, Frogpond 41.2 2018 

Fifteen Years Later, I See How It Went

 

They say you fall in love with your child

the moment you first hold them,

the cord just cut, still covered in blood

and vernix. I held the strange being

just arrived from the womb and felt curious,

astonished, humble, nervous, but I didn’t feel love.

That didn’t come till later. Came from holding him

while he was screaming. Waking with him

when I wanted to sleep. Bouncing him

when I wanted to be still. Love grew as

my ideas of myself diminished. Love grew

as he came into himself. Love grew

as I learned to let go of what I’d been told

and to trust the emerging form.

Until I couldn’t imagine being without him.

Until I was the one being born.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, ahundredfallingveils.com, April 23, 2020

Our Other Sister

 for Ellen

The cruelest thing I did to my younger sister

wasn't shooting a homemade blowdart into her knee,

where it dangled for a breathless second

 

before dropping off, but telling her we had

another, older sister who'd gone away.

What my motives were I can't recall: a whim,

 

or was it some need of mine to toy with loss,

to probe the ache of imaginary wounds?

But that first sentence was like a strand of DNA

 

that replicated itself in coiling lies

when my sister began asking her desperate questions.

I called our older sister Isabel

 

and gave her hazel eyes and long blonde hair.

I had her run away to California

where she took drugs and made hippie jewelry.

 

Before I knew it, she'd moved to Santa Fe

and opened a shop. She sent a postcard

every year or so, but she'd stopped calling.

 

I can still see my younger sister staring at me,

her eyes widening with desolation

then filling with tears. I can still remember

 

how thrilled and horrified I was

that something I'd just made up

had that kind of power, and I can still feel

 

the blowdart of remorse stabbing me in the heart

as I rushed to tell her none of it was true.

But it was too late. Our other sister

 

had already taken shape, and we could not

call her back from her life far away

or tell her how badly we missed her.

Jeffery Harrison, Feeding the Fire (Sarabande Books, 2001)