Incident

By Countee Cullen

Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, 'Nigger.'

I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That's all that I remember.

Waiting for the date to be set

By Marge Piercy

Sheets of rain slither through the trees
rain that looks coherent as tissue paper
buckled by the wind but still coming
sideways ghostlike to hit the siding.

The threat of an operation hangs
before me like a black curtain
I can’t see through. I know there
are weeks of pain on the far side.
I take my fear out like a marble
I polish with the sweat of my palm.
Fear, you warble to me constantly
like a hopped up canary.
There is nowhere to go but forward
each grumpy day at a time toward
where I have no desire to arrive --but
the delay eats my brain for breakfast.
Pain’s my faithful companion already,
the yellow dog in my aging body
howling at the moon’s curved tooth.
Choice has narrowed. Onward!

All Their Stanzas Look Alike

By Thomas Sayers Ellis

All their fences
     All their prisons
All their exercises
     All their agendas
All their stanzas look alike
     All their metaphors
All their bookstores
      All their plantations
All their assassinations
     All their stanzas look alike
All their rejection letters
      All their letters to the editor
All their arts and letters
     All their letters of recommendation
All their stanzas look alike
     All their sexy coverage
All their literary journals
     All their car commercials
All their bribe-spiked blurbs
      All their stanzas look alike
All their favorite writers
     All their writing programs
All their visiting writers
     All their writers-in-residence
All their stanzas look alike
     All their third worlds
All their world series
     All their serial killers
All their killing fields
     All their stanzas look alike
All their state grants
     All their tenure tracks
All their artist colonies
     All their core faculties
All their stanzas look alike
     All their Selected Collecteds
All their Oxford Nortons
     All their Academy Societies
All their Oprah Vendlers
     All their stanzas look alike
All their haloed holocausts     
     All their coy hetero couplets
All their hollow haloed causes
     All their tone-deaf tercets
All their stanzas look alike
     All their tables of contents
All their Poet Laureates
     All their Ku Klux classics
All their Supreme Court justices
     Except one, except one
Exceptional one. Exceptional or not,
     One is not enough.
All their stanzas look alike.
     Even this, after publication,
Might look alike. Disproves
     My stereo types.

Opening Day

By Dick Flavin

The long snow-bound winter casts a dark pall
Till one day an umpire hollers, “Play ball!”
Then skies start to brighten, blue displaces gray.
Baseball springs eternal. It’s Opening Day.
The birds begin singing. The trees start to bloom.
The umpire’s dusting home plate with his broom.
It’s a brand new beginning, a time we all cheer.
In baseball language it’s, “Happy New Year!”
The setbacks will surface, the losses, the gloom.
Each team except one is destined for doom.
But the Red Sox might win it, so let’s start to play.
And that is the magic of Opening Day.

Touching Tomorrow

By A.J. Huffman

Another sleepless night hovers, tangles
my mind. I try to focus,
force ritualistic countings of imaginary
sheep. Mine are electric and pulse
their numbers in mock Morse code. I decipher
the twisted language of faceless clock, figure
an hour has passed, maybe two. Not
enough. I try to rewind the ceiling
fan. Follow its rotation until we sink. Psych
it out. It slows, refuses to reverse. The effort
sucks my eyes into stalemate, between
sleep and awake. I almost miss shadows
lightening through the shades. I push
apart the blinds, palm to pain, almost prayer.
I have been delivered to another
dawn.

A.J. Huffman has published eleven solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses. Her new full-length poetry collection, Another Blood Jet, is now available from Eldritch Press. She has another full-length poetry collection, A Few Bullets Short of Home, scheduled for release in Summer 2015, from mgv2>publishing. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and has published over 2000 poems in various national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, Bone Orchard, EgoPHobia, and Kritya. She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press. www.kindofahurricanepress.com

Occupying Mumia’s Cell

By Alice Walker

I Sing of Mumia

brilliant and strong

and of the captivity

that

few black men escape

if they are as free

as he has become.

What a teacher he is for all of us.

Nearly thirty years in solitary

and still,

Himself.

He will die himself.

A black man;

whom many consider to be

a Muslim, though this is not

how he narrows down

the  criss-crossing paths of

his soul’s journey.

Perhaps it is simpler

to call him

a lover of truth

who refuses

to be silenced.

Is anything more persecuted

in this land?

No boots will be allowed

of course

so he will not

die with them on;

but there will always be

boots

of the mind and spirit

and of the heart and soul.

His will be black and shining

(or maybe the color of rainbows)

and they will sprout wings.

Mumia

they have decided

finally

not to kill you

hoping no blood will

stain their hands

at the tribunal

of the people;

but to let you continue

to die slowly

creating and singing

your own songs

as you pace

alone,  sometimes terrorized,

for decades of long nights

in your small cage

of a cell.

We lament our impotence: that we have failed

to get you out of there.

Your regal mane may have thinned

as our locks too, those flags of  our self sovereignty, may even have

disappeared;

waiting out this unjust sentence,

until we, like you, have become old.

Still,

if you will: accept our gratitude

that you stand, even bootless,

on your feet.  We see

that few of those around us,

well shod and walking, even owning, the streets

are freed.

Somehow you have been.

Enough to remind us

of freedom’s devout

internal and

ineradicable seed.

What a magnificent Lion

you have been all these

disastrous years

and still are,

indeed.

inShare

The poet must die

By Don Mattera

For James Matthews and Gladys Thomas after their poems were executed

The poet must die
her murmuring threatens their survival
her breath could start the revolution;
she must be destroyed
Ban her
Send her to the Island
Call the firing-squad
But remember to wipe her blood
From the wall,
Then destroy the wall
Crush the house
Kill the neighbours
If their lies are to survive
The poet must die

Solar Eclipse

By Gustan Koumantaros

Once
in a while

our orbits
cross

and we
dance

until
the day

is night.

Shema/V'ahavta

Shema
Hear, Israel, you are of God and God is one.
Praise the name that speaks us through all time.

V'ahavta
So you shall love what is holy with all your courage, with all your passion
with all your strength.
Let the words that have come down
shine in our words and our actions.
We must teach our children to know and understand them.
We must speak about what is good
and holy within our homes
when we are working, when we are at play,
when we lie down and when we get up.
Let the work of our hands speak of goodness.
Let it run in our blood
and glow from our doors and windows.

We should love ourselves, for we are of God.
We should love our neighbors as ourselves.
We should love the stranger, for we
were once strangers in the land of Egypt
and have been strangers in all the lands of the world since.
Let love fill our hearts with its clear precious water.
Heaven and earth observe how we cherish or spoil our world.
Heaven and earth watch whether we choose life or choose death.
We must chose life so our children's children may live.
Be quiet and listen to the still small voice within that speaks in love.
Open to that voice, hear it, heed it and work for life.
Let us remember and strive to be good.
Let us remember to find what is holy within and without.


By Marge Piercy

Harlem

By Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Ego

By Denise Duhamel

I just didn’t get it—
even with the teacher holding an orange (the earth) in one hand
and a lemon (the moon) in the other,
her favorite student (the sun) standing behind her with a flashlight.
I just couldn’t grasp it—
this whole citrus universe, these bumpy planets revolving so slowly
no one could even see themselves moving.
I used to think if I could only concentrate hard enough
I could be the one person to feel what no one else could,
sense a small tug from the ground, a sky shift, the earth changing gears.
Even though I was only one mini-speck on a speck,
even though I was merely a pinprick in one goosebump on the orange,
I was sure then I was the most specially perceptive, perceptively sensitive.
I was sure then my mother was the only mother to snap,
“The world doesn’t revolve around you!”
The earth was fragile and mostly water,
just the way the orange was mostly water if you peeled it,
just the way I was mostly water if you peeled me.
Looking back on that third grade science demonstration,
I can understand why some people gave up on fame or religion or cures—
especially people who have an understanding
of the excruciating crawl of the world,
who have a well-developed sense of spatial reasoning
and the tininess that it is to be one of us.
But not me—even now I wouldn’t mind being god, the force
who spins the planets the way I spin a globe, a basketball, a yoyo.
I wouldn’t mind being that teacher who chooses the fruit,
or that favorite kid who gives the moon its glow.

One Day

One day after another -
They all fit.
Perfectly.

Travel

By Edna St. Vincent Millay

The railroad track is miles away,
And the day is loud with voices speaking,
Yet there isn't a train goes by all day
But I hear its whistle shrieking.

All night there isn't a train goes by,
Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming,
But I see its cinders red on the sky,
And hear its engine steaming.

My heart is warm with friends I make,
And better friends I'll not be knowing;
Yet there isn't a train I'd rather take,
No matter where it's going.

Wildpeace

By Yehuda Amichai

Not the peace of a cease-fire,
not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb,
but rather
as in the heart when the excitement is over
and you can talk only about a great weariness.
I know that I know how to kill,
that makes me an adult.
And my son plays with a toy gun that knows
how to open and close its eyes and say Mama.
A peace
without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares,
without words, without
the thud of the heavy rubber stamp: let it be
light, floating, like lazy white foam.
A little rest for the wounds —
who speaks of healing?
(And the howl of the orphans is passed from one generation
to the next, as in a relay race:
the baton never falls.)

Let it come
like wildflowers,
suddenly, because the field
must have it: wildpeace.

Dust of Snow

By Robert Frost

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
 A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

Holding Pattern I

By Julia Rose Lewis

 We are greeting,
greedily holding and hugging

he and I. I retreat to the beach
to read

beneath the umbrellas: yellow,
blue, green. Then

to the blue bench, looking to the parking lot
the beach lies to the left.

While I watch the end of the afternoon
he takes the flag down.

Fulfilling
long-time part-time island traditions,

the seagulls here are all called Herman,
for the man who listened to Captain Pollard’s tale.

I wore gray
on gray on faded denim

sea-stained and sand encrusted.
He passed over gray floor boards full

of splinters. I have been on the wrong side
of the cliffside for so long.

Here he was an ant
soldier in the war

he taught me was waged against the sand,
afterward I rolled up my jeans. Inside,

he paused beside
me to brush the hair from his eyes.

Learn all the stories the hotel has to tell,
I tell myself,

the little Pennsylvania girl with the man
who comes from the northeast

of Indiana, he points out the nearest
town on an atlas, his family farm

is too small to see.
He lets himself blush; he really

needs a headband. His beautiful hair
falls into his eyes and I allow

my fingers to follow. Yet,
I can’t taste yellow, only old salt.

Memorial Day to Labor Day,
I land

isle while away.
Could I love a place as I should

love a person?
He is

a guy with
a green soft-top Jeep Wrangler,

a permit to go out to Coatue,
a long picnic at Great Point,

Terrible teeth are meaningless
when kissing,

On hot sand and broken shells feet harden,
he has beastly feet;

I have reading hands.
He reaches for his reading glasses

as the sun burns through the fog
in the morning.

I’m leaving,
reaching out to hug him.

Where the seagulls are all called Herman,
We are good at hugg
ing.
A holding pattern
here we are as old as our beloved.


Julia Rose Lewis is a working towards her MFA at Kingston University London. She received her BA in Biology and Chemistry from Bryn Mawr College PA. She lives on Nantucket island and is a member of the Moors Poetry Collective of Nantucket.

Siren Song

By Margaret Atwood

This is the one song everyone
would like to learn: the song
that is irresistible:

the song that forces men
to leap overboard in squadrons
even though they see the beached skulls

the song nobody knows
because anyone who has heard it
is dead, and the others can't remember.

Shall I tell you the secret
and if I do, will you get me
out of this bird suit?

I don't enjoy it here
squatting on this island
looking picturesque and mythical

with these two feathery maniacs,
I don't enjoy singing
this trio, fatal and valuable.

I will tell the secret to you,
to you, only to you.
Come closer. This song

is a cry for help: Help me!
Only you, only you can,
you are unique

at last. Alas
it is a boring song
but it works every time.

Survival Course

By William Stafford

This is the grip, like this:
both hands. You can close
your eyes if you like. When I say,
"Now," it's time. Don't wait
or it's all over. But not
too soon, either just right.
Don't worry. Let's go.
Both hands.

An Abandoned Factory, Detroit

By Philip Levine

 The gates are chained, the barbed-wire fencing stands,
 An iron authority against the snow,
 And this grey monument to common sense
 Resists the weather. Fears of idle hands,
 Of protest, men in league, and of the slow
 Corrosion of their minds, still charge this fence.

 Beyond, through broken windows one can see 
Where the great presses paused between their strokes
 And thus remain, in air suspended, caught
 In the sure margin of eternity.
 The cast-iron wheels have stopped; one counts the spokes

 Which movement blurred, the struts inertia fought,
 And estimates the loss of human power,
 Experienced and slow, the loss of years,
 The gradual decay of dignity.
 Men lived within these foundries, hour by hour;

 Nothing they forged outlived the rusted gears
 Which might have served to grind their eulogy.

Ode to a Blizzard

By Tom Disch
 

O! wonderful for weight and whiteness!

       Ideolog whose absolutes

               Are always proven right

                      By white and then

               More white and white again,

       Winning the same argument year

After year by making the opposition

                            Disappear!

O! dear miniature of infinity with no

       End in sight and no snow-

             Flake exactly like

                      Another, all

             A little different no

       Matter how many may fall,

Just like our own DNA or the human face

                              Eternal!

O! still keep covering the street

       And sidewalks, cemeteries, even

               Our twice-shoveled drive,

                      And all that is alive,

               With geometries that sleet

       Will freeze into Death's

Impromptu vision of a heaven

                              Wholly white!

For we know who your sponsor is, whose will

       You so immensely serve,

               Whose chill is more severe

                      Than any here.

               Though his name may be unspoken,

       His commandments are unbroken,

And every monument that you erect

                              Belongs to him!