Tag: poetry – other people’s

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The Braid, by Carla Drysdale

First, my cry, then yours, split the sky
above that Brooklyn hospital
as you, limbs curled and purple
slid out of my body
after a prolonged and irreversible journey.
Pain, then
absence of pain.

The midwife held you up,
newborn body, alive in this world.
You peed an arc of urine
sparkling over the bed
and over her.

The champagne cork popped.
We all drank to life.
You suckled on a nipple.
Your lips still rimmed
with watery blood from that
other life inside.

We lay together, suspended,
holding on to each other.
Tough braid of blue and red
still binding us
cut for the first and last time.

From All Born Perfect, by Carla Drysdale. Published by Kelsay Books. This poem first appeared in the chapbook Inheritance from Finishing Line Press. Republished with permission of the poet.

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Cucumber Psalm, by Lisa Bellamy

Flourish, unwashed, unpeeled, bouncy boys;
grow, citizen-workers, clothed in good dirt—
dearest ones, I place my hope in you—
your green is king, in my garden. Chopped, you are cukes,
(my Wisconsin mamma loschen)—fluted, celebrated,
bobbing in vinegar and dill; tastiest brine.
Emperor Tiberius, whom Pliny the Elder called
the gloomiest of men, enjoyed cucumbers every night
with dinner—yes, an attempt to self-medicate depressions—
but was his gloom depression or prophetic vision?
Caligula succeeded Tiberius. Today, the sky is blue—
so what. I cannot stop worrying about the republic.
When a Roman woman wanted a child, she tied
cucumbers about her waist; what, you ask,
do I want? Regime change. I want a sister or three,
subversive, fomenting coffee klatch, chatter,
plots against fascists over our Gurkensalat,
lopped, swished with sour cream—dearest cukes,
delight, nourish, fortify me—I want insurrection.

by Lisa Bellamy. Originally published in Salamander No. 50, Spring/Summer 2020. Reprinted with permission of the poet.

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When Was My Anger Conceived? by Jennifer Martelli

The summer of assassinations?

By the man-made lake? A hole
so shallow and muddy, all the men
held hands, formed a human net and
walked toward each other to the center
to feel for some kid who might have
gone under–there,

on its shore, in the Kodak, me,
in my little terry cloth bikini,
all round as the moon stomach.
I’d worn a Batman mask attached

by a thin rubber band all summer,
my hands fisted, the nails bit crescents
in my palms.

The summer of my menarche? I stood

against the lazy Susan in the kitchen and
watched the President resign on the small TV:
I cried because of the cramps and blood,
the garter belt biting me. My mother said
we’d never see this again and she was wrong:

even married to my father,
she couldn’t predict the depth
of a man’s rage.

A year after my abortion?

The clinic three stops down
from my dorm, three quick stops
on the Green Line, and no one shot
there yet but escorts needed, one pink
set of rosaries flung at my face.

That year, the year of Ferraro, my aunt said she wouldn’t vote
for anything

that menstruated, could get pregnant,
could bear a child.

– Jennifer Martelli, from In the Year of Ferraro, published by Nixes Mate, 2020. Republished with permission of the poet.

Buy Jenn’s chapbook at:

Please consider supporting small presses and local bookstores.

See all of Jenn’s publications on her website.

Read an interview with Jenn at Broadsided Press (where you can download broadsides and spread poetry in the streets).

Read an interview with Jenn at The Rumpus

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Rafael’s Question, by Carla Drysdale

My son carries the name
of the healing archangel. He

sits on my lap, at the computer’s
luminous screen. We look at photos

of my parents, divorced
when I was two. Their faces

sagging, eyes hopeful.
Still alive, but their visits to us

number less than a handful
in his five-year-old life.

Sometimes, after brushing our teeth
he’ll say, “Mom, make it like a river.”

And I’ll cup my palms together
under running water, and he’ll drink.

Tonight as we sit together
I’m silent, because it’s hard to explain.

He asks,” “Do you still love them?”
So gently, so gently.

— Carla Drysdale, from Inheritance, published by Finishing Line Press. Republished with permission of the poet.

Photo credit: Daniel Padua via Flickr, Creative Commons License 2.0.

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Widows, by Jacqueline Lapidus

You are the salt of the earth
If the salt has lost its savor, wherewith
shall it be salted?
—Matthew 5:13

She was driving home on a Friday night
suddenly he slumped forward in the passenger seat
and in mid-sentence he was gone I pulled over,
I called 911, I begged him, talk to me, talk to me!
Every move is sad and hard to make
the only positive distraction for her is work
her friends make sure she’s not alone during the week,
rattling around in that enormous house I’m numb,
I’m on automatic pilot, I still can’t talk

He was closing the summer house and didn’t want help
The fridge was full of food for Thanksgiving
her pie was cooling on the rack any minute his key
would be turning in the lock
I called the caretaker and told him to look
everywhere, even up in the attic
He was in the kitchen, he’d had a stroke

Continue reading “Widows, by Jacqueline Lapidus”

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My Mother’s Instructions for How to Prepare for a Last Phone Call with a Dying Ex-Husband, by Tom Daley

Find an uncomfortable chair.
There are old letters from a bomber pilot in the South Pacific. Discard them.
Do not conjure the lemony rot in the collar of his pajama top.
Find the ear syringe behind the ice cap in the medicine cabinet.
Give up vindictive nightmares for Lent.
Try on the dead dog’s collar that hangs on a nail in the basement.
Pull all the brown leaves off the geraniums.
Apply hot compresses of clam broth to your forehead.
Research the pain indices for bone cancer generated by malignant tumors in the prostate.
Invite the children over to watch home movies, and when they arrive, take a long trip in the car.
Inquire about the current rates at the motel where you checked in the afternoon you found
the tacky, sequined lady’s cigarette case on the passenger side of the front seat of the Falcon station wagon.
Search scrap metal junkyards for the cast iron skillet you threw at him on Mother’s Day,
and missed.
Turn over the mattress.

-Tom Daley
from House You Cannot Reach: Poems in the Voice of My Mother and Other Poems, FutureCycle Press, 2015. Reprinted with permission of the poet.

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Abortion Spell, by Annie Finch

Let’s keep the world through its own balanced kiss,
the kiss come from women made of our own blood,
the holder, the cooler (redeeming the earth,
shaping the room where we give you your birth).
Hands born of woman will not stop this flood,
this generous, selfish, long-opening gift

— Annie Finch

from Spells: New and Selected Poems. Wesleyan University Press, 2013. Reprinted with permission of the poet.

Read an interview with Annie Finch here.

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Persephone, to Demeter, by Shawn Fawson

This poem comes from a collection put out by Dancing Girl Press in 2008 called “Billet-doux” (Love letters), which comes like a box of letters and postcards, each poem printed differently on a different missive. It must have taken the press a great deal of effort to produce these by hand. The format wouldn’t mean much, however, if the poetry itself weren’t high quality. I have many collections of poetry, and this is by far one of my favorite.

The myth of Persephone and Demeter has a great deal of personal significance for me. I appreciate the bare quality of this poem, and the hope offered at its end.

Persephone, to Demeter

I gather
handfuls of asphodels,
but their white edges
waste into air. I should be
thankful roots taste buttery
sweet and a feeling triggers–
your hair shaking out blue
sky, fingers pulling down knotted
threads of white birds
You seem
tiny then: stalks thicken with
shade distorting the light,
a shatter of wings where breast
and earth meet. But you are
careful, the rolling cart stands
upright on the precipice. Farmers
steady the harrow; smoke toils
on the horizon.
Each spring
I walk into daylight and offer
you this bouquet, this earth stripped
from my side making you radiant.

– Shawn Fawson
Billet Doux, Dancing Girl Press, 2008. Reprinted with permission of the publisher.

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What Happens to a Dream Deferred?

Harlem

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?

Langston Hughes
From Collected Poems

There are many kinds of cages. Some of them are more comfortable than others. But they are all cages.

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I Met Berserk (After Wallace Stevens)

Through the rain
And the lights
I met myself
I met berserk
On the traffic island between fifth and main
“you have so much left to learn” he told me,
Taking hold of the scruff of my neck
And shaking
And shaking

[This is a stub. It echoes three poems: one that I wrote in high school, which was inspired  “Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks,” by Wallace Stevens; and also The Great Figure, by William Carlos Williams]

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