roses, black birds rising
from the Live Oak. How the children
ran alongside as they drove past, waving.
The open windows. A man with a camera,
an umbrella
that opened. A raincoat. In the car,
her body covered with bone,
hair. The bright pink suit against the gray
November. And all that red inside her hands.
(Today’s poem originally appeared inRattle, and appears here today with permission from the poet.)
Amanda Auchter is the founding editor of Pebble Lake Review and the author of The Wishing Tomb, winner of the 2012 Perugia Press Award, and of The Glass Crib, winner of the 2010 Zone 3 Press First Book Award for Poetry. She holds an MFA from Bennington College and teaches creative writing and literature at Lone Star College. She is currently at work on a memoir about adoption and the foster care system, What Took You So Long.
Editor’s Note: There is a certain ease in the presentation of today’s subject matter that makes the devastation somehow more powerful. A softness in the notion of “The bright pink suit against the gray / November” that at once heightens and dulls the impact of the poem’s final blow. It is as if the poem is a grenade exploding flowers.
all teeth and hot,
wet breath stomping about
on my new-found squatness.
My body was torpid, outward elbows
moving skyscrapers, that
scene in a nightmare
where the director Slows. Everything. Down. for effect.
But then, everything
was vibrant, crashing
and I was alive
mud-yellow ivories snapping shut
on the rubber tent stake
of a flamingo leg,
feathers muffling the splintering noises,
crumpling pink and red on my tongue.
***
Jessica Dawson is a modern-day Wendy. She lives in California with Peter Pan, a baby bear, and a future Supreme Court justice. She’s ecstatic to see her first book of poetry now e-published by Verve Bath Press/ Words Dance.
She has had poems published in Thunder Sandwich, The Hold, Passenger May, killpoet, Words Dance, remark., The Seed, MEAT, Triptyph Haiku, Lit Vision, Mastodon Dentist, Nefarious Ballerina, The Montucky Review, Red Fez and Slurve Magazine. Download your copy of her book here.
The long national nightmare is finally over—or, if “nightmare” is too strong a word, then at least the really bad national daydream. The final Twilight movie has been released. Audiences horrified at sparkling vampires and angst-ridden teen melodramas can now safely consign both books and movies to the oblivion they deserve. Already the bookshelves at Wal-Mart have removed their depressing shelves filled with teen vampire romances. Still, with the nostalgia industry being what it is, perhaps the memory of these trying times will never entirely go away. Certain consequences will endure—sometimes even personal consequences.
Some time ago my younger brother Nick approached me with intriguing news. He had, apparently, read a book. “Not just a book, either,” he said to me, “but an entire series!” Suitably impressed, I naively asked which series. As a doctoral student in English literature, you see, I had several times over the years suggested books that he might like, but I gave Nick up for lost after he ignored even Harry Potter. So I was curious to see what great piece of literature had finally broken through to him—what stunning plot, which colorful character had finally reached through to someone bibliophobic since being forced to symbolism-hunt The Scarlet Letter in high school?
My brother beamed at me. “Twilight by Stephanie Meyers,” he said.
Not literally the entire series, he hastened to assure me before I could disown him. He’d only read the final three books of the tetralogy. The first Twilight movie had utterly absorbed him, for whatever reason. He could not wait until the release of the second movie, so he decided to turn to the books. (No need to read the first book, he patiently explained, seeing as how he’d just seen the movie.) Habitual book readers will understand what my brother felt, though—that keyed up feeling of gotta find out what happens next.
Typically, we call such books “page-turners,” and such experiences usually drive our love of reading. Movies much more rarely facilitate that what-happens-next? experience, however. First, movies almost never come out in a series. (Sequels do not count.) Second, and more importantly, movies tend to rigidly control the viewing experience. Books are page-turners because readers know that faster reading will get them to the end quicker. Films offer no such incentive; they are inflexible in their refusal to give up control to the reader. Thus we might say that books are a liberal democracy while movies are a totalitarian regime. So I could scarcely believe that my brother received a book-reading experience from a (mediocre) film.
My shock worked on a number of other levels as well, which leads to why I think this incident so revealing about contemporary notions of American masculinity. Cutting down to the heart of the issue, Twilight is a romance novel. You know, the genre of heaving bosoms, restless passions, excessive adverbs, etc. Judging by the covers of the newest books, the genre plays a little more subdued now than in its Fabio days, but the basic formula of a woman finding fulfillment through a relationship with a man remains the same. More importantly, romance is a female oriented genre. The first mass market publishers began distributing romance novels in supermarkets and drugstores precisely because it was easier to reach the “bored housewife” demographic that way, and feminism has done little to change the basic selling patterns. The success of 50 Shades of Grey—originally fan fiction for Twilight—in fact pays tribute to the generic roots of its parent. The Stephanie Meyers novels had created a teenage market for romance, and now that audience—older and more mature—has contributed to the success of the Twilight imitators.
And Twilight’s romantic roots are what make my brother’s literary revelation so startling. Nick is a guy. Not only that, but he’s a guy’s guy. While the Romance Writers of America (RWA) reports that more men are reading romance fiction than ever before (about 9% of the total romance audience in 2012), the genre nonetheless remains strongly gender specific. Does Nick feel embarrassed about liking a convoluted, cardboard, conventional teen romance? Apparently not in the least. When I tried to explain why Twilight was so bad, Nick cut me off and excitedly began a plot synopsis. This coming from someone who in his younger days was the quintessential clubber and male socialite! Although he never drinks, he dances well and dresses even better. Like other suburban white boys, he loves hip hop. Girls often find him irresistible. Even now that he has turned 30, he is most comfortable with people in their 20s. I have often been amazed at how positively people respond to him. He rarely meets anyone he dislikes. My little brother is a charming, gregarious crossbreed between Will Rogers and the Backstreet Boys.
Guys are not supposed to like romances. The general “go to” stereotype of masculinity entails watching ESPN or sports, drinking beer (or drinking beer as a sport), tinkering with cars or motorcycles, or venturing forth into lush woodland areas to shoot at Bambi’s mother. Any random survey of the History Channel’s programs will show anyone “typical” guy behavior. (Good luck finding any actual history on there, though.) Granted, general notions of masculinity have shifted over the last few decades. Toby Maguire has replaced Sylvester Stallone as the conventional Hollywood action hero, and nowadays only video games and toys have those hyper-muscled sorts of heroes. What does not go into this general image of male-ness, however, is novel reading.
Even stranger is that my brother—like myself—grew up in an area of the country where standardized notions of masculinity hold great sway. Western Pennsylvania is a predominantly working class area on the fringes of the Rust Belt. Sports and drinking are our largest community-building activities. When Art Modell, owner of the Cleveland Browns, moved the team to Baltimore in 1995, the event marked something like a regional tragedy. Likewise with Lebron James—who had temporarily made Cleveland basketball a national force—deciding to “take his talents to South Beach.” Our population, additionally, is rapidly aging. Many of our young people leave to more economically flourishing areas as soon as they are adults. Now that I no longer live in Pennsylvania, my facebook newsfeed is my primary way of keeping in touch with people from home. Overwhelmingly, their posts are about the Browns or the Pittsburgh Steelers or some other sporting events. To complete the standard stereotypes, western PA is also even one of the best places in the country to hunt deer.
Given such an area, it seems perfectly rational that my brother never became a novel reader (and perfectly odd that I did). Once, a long time ago, I stumbled upon a marketing website that offered to “define” any area for prospective businessmen. You simply type in the zip code and it provides the three most popular activities. One of the things that Western PA excelled in, apparently, was “video games.” Then out of curiosity I entered in “90210.” Interestingly enough, Beverly Hills emphatically did not excel at video games. This could have given us some regional pride, I suppose, as it is nice to excel at something. Still: video games, sports, drinking. These are the pensions of a rust-riddled region populated by blue-collar workers. The nearby city of Youngstown—a miniature Detroit, semi-abandoned, which was once known for its levels of mafia-related crime—has a small theater and a few other outlets for “high culture,” but generally such things are not typical for us. The book culture does not flourish to any exceptional degree. There are small pockets, of course, but never to the extent of any of the college towns I have lived in.
As such, although I complained about my brother reading Twilight of all things, I was nonetheless secretly happy that he had read anything at all. Any books, even bad books, are good for people. But I also felt real surprise at how much he actually enjoyed the series. When I asked my brother for an explanation, his answer was both obvious and enlightening. “Yeah, Dennis, but the books had good plots. They kept me interested. I wanted to find out what happened next.” And that was all he felt needed to be said.
Those are important sentiments, I think, and they show how our stereotypes of “masculinity” often fail to live up to the richer and more complex reality of maleness. Yes, my brother likes sports and clubs and poker. And yes, apparently, he also somehow likes a cheesy teenage romance novel. Growing up, both of us knew our fair share of working-class sports junkies, and today they’ve become adults with families and political passions. (Indeed, most of the conservatives I know today were high school classmates.)
But the stereotypes—as stereotypes always do—fall short, as the case with my brother shows. It is altogether too easy, sometimes, to attribute a fondness for ESPN and deer-hunting with a certain type of masculinity, ignoring how our categories are never really set in stone. Room exists for Twilight. Since that experience, my brother has ventured out into other books, and he recently bought a Kindle. Does he feel himself any less of a guy? I have never bothered to ask him because I knew he would find the question ridiculous. He likes what he likes, tending to follow his instincts in such matters. This is a healthy attitude, I feel. And, personally, seeing his example helps me avoid the various prejudices that evolve when all one’s friends are graduate students or university affiliated. And his attitude helps me remember that even a book-lover like myself, who no longer remains passionate about sports, can still feel a special knife-twist when the Baltimore Ravens win the latest Super Bowl, even eighteen years after Art Modell stole our football team.
***
Dennis Wilson Wise is a PhD student in English at Middle Tennessee State University.
Tear the line into pieces.
Open it out:
Let silence be
part of all that must be
said.
I can’t. I can’t.
It looks so disorganized. I want
to move it like furniture
back into place.
It’s a curse, your obsession for order,
my lover says, wanting me
wild—
So, to justify myself, I point out
that light in the night sky
may be traveling, but the stars stay
where they are.
Or do they?
What if some night Cassiopeia
fell apart,
splashed down like water?
What use the well-appointed bed,
the vacuumed rug,
the alphabetically arranged books
if a star came splashing down
like water, fiery water,
burning everything in its path?
All my molecules about to scatter—
just the thought of it makes me clutch
the sheets, press myself into the mattress—
but ah, the wonder of it, to be
moving inside my lover’s
arms then, any second bound
to explode—
(Today’s poem originally appeared inRattle, and appears here today with permission from the poet.)
Lynn Knight‘s fourth collection, Again, was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2009. Her previous collections are Dissolving Borders (Quarterly Review of Literature), The Book of Common Betrayals (Bear Star Press), and Night in the Shape of a Mirror (David Robert Books), plus three award-winning chapbooks. A cycle of poems on Impressionist winter paintings, Snow Effects (Small Poetry Press), has been translated into French by Nicole Courtet. Knight’s awards include a Theodore Roethke Award from Poetry Northwest, a Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, an NEA grant, and the 2009 RATTLE Poetry Prize. She lives in Berkeley, California.
Editor’s Note: The desire for order and the need to control. So tempting. And yet, what control have we in the face of nature? In the face of love? We can try to keep this life as tidy as we like, but what use are our efforts in the face of a falling star? From the macro to the meta, today’s poem takes us on a wild journey through the mind of a poet who struggles against the wild, only to succumb to the wonder of what is beyond her control.
Acerca de mi costumbre de leer varios libros simultáneamente, consigo dos en el mismo período de tiempo y los leo en forma alternada hasta finalizarlos en lo posible en la misma fecha. Es decir, mi cabeza ronda esas dos lecturas por unas semanas, incluyendo muchas veces una vuelta y releída de secciones de mi interés y anotaciones de reflexiones. Por lo general los libros no se vinculan uno con otro en tema o en estilo, más bien intento sean diferentes. Sin embargo en esta oportunidad a pesar de la divergencia encontré -y fue mi motivación a escribir sobre ello- una cercanía respecto del uso del espacio de las personas, en un ejemplo tan primitivo, limitado físicamente y discutiblemente necesario: la casa.
Casa. ruca. huaca. maison. house. haus. ev. huis. domus. oikos…etc.
Edificación material donde viven una o más personas. Lugar donde abrigarse del inmenso exterior abrasivo y permitir el interior abrazador.
***
Interior/ exterior.
Aquel que está afuera quiere entrar, el que está adentro quiere salir. Le agrego: lo que está en el medio quiere existir.
La casa ofrece un lugar seguro fuera de los espacios de encierro que por lo general comprimen demasiado: sea oficina, hospital, cárcel, la sociedad parece volverse individuo entre una continuidad de paredes familiares. Las paredes de mi cuarto me recuerdan quien soy cada mañana al despertar; el tapiz colorido que en ella colgué rememora mi viaje a Machu Picchu, la mirada congelada de un Jimi Hendrix con sombrero de ala ancha flota en ese aire, mis auriculares desde un clavo penden y serpentea su cable largo hasta la alfombra del piso; ahí mismo descansan mis botas negras que me llevaron por estrechas calles del afuera el día anterior. Para el interior elijo pies descalzos y la comodidad de saber que cuento con mis dedos para patear segmentos de espacio; desde el cuarto hasta la cocina, desde la cocina hasta el baño, desde el baño hasta la cocina y vuelta al dormitorio. Sin más que ascender a los extremos del cielo raso, ahora estoy en mi pieza tomando mate y contra la ventana se fuman las horas.
***
Privada propiedad/ público impropio
Existe un carácter urgente y determinante del anhelo de la clase obrera por ser propietario de una casa. En esta fracción social se incluye tanto el pequeño burgués, el proletariado, los artesanos, maestros, muchos más y varios conocidos míos. Todos ellos en una sociedad donde el perfeccionamiento de la tecnología priva de trabajo a multitudes de obreros generando un gran ejército de desocupados y por otro lado echa a la calle periódicamente a grupos de trabajadores que se amontonan en los márgenes de las ciudades. Y como esto sucede mucho más a prisa de lo que se edifica para ellos, entonces siempre es fácil encontrarse arrendatarios para las más feas locaciones. El dueño de una casa tiene el derecho y hasta el deber de exigir sin consideración los precios de alquileres más elevados para su inmueble. De este modo deviene que el problema de la vivienda no es producto del azar, es necesario, con sus varias repercusiones directas, por ejemplo sobre la salud del que alquila la pocilga.
Cabe mencionar, que es además oportuno, participar a la tierra donde se construye una casa y reposa al menos unos 100 años. Imaginarse solo que cantidad de personas podría habitar en el pasar de los años los espacios de una sola casa, por supuesto tomaría muchísimas lunas.
***
Orientación / desorientación
Ahora salgo un poco de las ciudades. Fuera de ellas las personas pertenecen a la tierra, y la única forma que tiene la gente de conservar la tierra es pisándola, porque si no se vuela. Como el campo abierto no entiende de renta y uso del suelo, se deja adornar y equipar para que el ser y estar de un grupo humano produzca y siga adelante.
Es común observar en el campo dos tipos de casas, la nueva de techo a dos aguas, revoque liso y urbano; la otra casa, vieja con paredes construidas de adobe, techo de ramas y barro. Muy claro observo, la artesanal representa el pasado, la nueva el presente, una copia de la ciudad llevada al campo. Las de adobe parecen devenir espontáneas, entonces se orientan a protección del viento, buscando la mayor iluminación del sol. Las casas nuevas se instalan de acuerdo al capricho de algún personaje político con ganas de seguir la ruta que viene desde la ciudad, como si hubiera sido remolcada desde allí con la intencionalidad del momento y luego olvidada.
***
Entrada/ salida
El marco y la puerta. Arco que anuncia los limites de un espacio a otro y obliga a decidir cual dirección tomar, hacia el interior o hacia el exterior. Ya no se trata de una edificación, es un espacio libre pero estrictamente regulado, hasta con medidas estándar de 1.20 cm. por 2 metros aproximadamente. La puerta no es muro, la puerta es flexible se abre se cierra, se entorna, cuantas veces se quiera. Por eso en el marco, el espacio libre, su puerta no molesta, hasta en muchos lugares es vaivén o de vidrio, tiende a desaparecer, parece ser solo un accesorio.
Me vienen a la mente los desgastados candados que cierran algunas grandes puertas en la ciudad de La Paz o en Cuzco, frente a la Plaza de Armas. Puertas resueltas en madera sin picaportes, solo cerrojo y gigantes candados, donde esto solo es el aviso de presencia o ausencia del alguien en su interior.
…luego vuelvo del viaje casero, como despertada suavemente por un golpeteo y pienso: -quien vendrá a llamar a mi puerta?-
***
Lecturas referenciales:
La poética de espacio. Gastón Bachelard. (1957)
Contribución al problema de la vivienda. F. Engels. (1873)
***
Sobre Pat Moggio:Nació en Patagonia Argentina, libre escritora de poesía y prosa desde niña. Leyó en vivo en ámbitos underground, realizó suelta de libros espontáneas en estaciones de bus, tradujo letras para música, redactó notas de prensa musical y para revistas digitales sobre temas culturales. Bailarina, exploradora de diversas técnicas, dio clases y participó en performances y flash mobs. En paralelo estudió y trabajó en gestión de turismo cultural. Viajó como mochilera por parte de Sudamérica participando en proyectos voluntarios. Actualmente vive en San Telmo, Buenos Aires, escribe y proyecta improvisación de danza contemporánea con músicos experimentales. http://residualplan.tumblr.com/
Who sells used sex toys at a garage sale?
I knew I had to pull over
as soon as I saw that table full of dildos
just to hear this woman’s story
A whole bed was for sale
and a claw-footed bathtub
a motorcycle, a large stack of books
lingerie and ten photo albums
Photo albums?
Leafing through, I could see that they were all
happy couple love photos:
their trip to Hawaii
backpacking through Europe
mountain climbing in Tibet
And I shouldn’t forget to mention all of the love notes
three huge cardboard boxes full of them. I picked one up: I stood outside your window for hours last night
while you were sleeping
hoping you would feel me there, and pull open the curtain
I approached her as she sat by the cash box
wearing a pair of oversized pink sunglasses
So, this is everything he ever gave you? I asked her, trying to be nonchalant
She nodded
I was going to light it all on fire, she told me
But what’s the point?
True, I replied, not sure what else to say
She seemed so peaceful about it. Almost happy
Just then I noticed a pile of cds:
Jane’s Joy Ride Mix
Jane’s Taking a Bath Mix
Mix for Jane for When She’s Feeling a Little Blue
And one called
In Case of an Emergency, I LOVE YOU
It was sealed with yellow CAUTION tape
and had obviously never been opened
Can I buy this? I asked her
$3.50, she said
I gave her the money and put the cd in my car
and cried and could not open it
(Today’s poem originally appeared inRattle, where it was a 2012 Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist, and appears here today with permission from the poet.)
Lytton Bell has published five books, won six poetry contests and performed at many California literary venues. Her work has appeared in over three dozen journals, web sites and e-zines. She lives in Sacramento, California. Lytton earned a poetry scholarship to the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for the Arts in 1988, where she studied with Deb Burnham and poet Len Roberts. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Bryn Mawr College in 1993. Feel free to send Lytton an email at lytton_bell@hotmail.com.
Editor’s Note: Clear, narrative, and heartbreaking. Lytton Bell has a knack for relaying the real. What a fascinating moment, the intersection of these two lives, and how breathtaking the way their shared story speaks to us all.
Alone in my kitchen, I copy
a chicken salad recipe from a Woman’s Day magazine
and plan tomorrow night’s dinner.
We don’t know what will happen
between one raindrop and the next,
yet we speak of August as if it were a contract,
a promise the sky made.
When I was twenty-five I married a drummer
and silenced him with disapproval.
Now I’m married to a poet—
he reads poems on the porch
and pets my head like a puppy.
My daughters grew tall as honeysuckle and left—
they took their soft skin, their buttermilk biscuit smell,
the endless hungers that organized my days.
My domain has shrunk to the narrow bone of my ankle.
I did what was asked.
I did what I feared.
Like every woman I have ever known,
I became my mother.
I stroll through the rows of houses and yards;
above me a skein of geese break in and out of formation—
fluid as laundry on a line.
Other women are out walking their dogs,
murmuring to the mothers inside their heads.
In the eastern sky the first star is out,
preparing for the long night of wishes.
At dusk every flower looks blue.
(Today’s poem originally appeared inRattle, where it was given a Rattle Poetry Prize Honorable Mention in 2010, and appears here today with permission from the poet.)
Valentina Gnup has her MFA in creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. She is the winner of the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize from Cutthroat journal of the Arts and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Prize. In 2005 her chapbook Sparrow Octaves won the North Carolina Writers’ Network Mary Belle Campbell Book Publication Award. Her poems have appeared in the Hiram Poetry Review, Nimrod, Chelsea, Brooklyn Review, Crab Orchard Review and many others. She and her husband live in Portland, Oregon.
Editor’s Note: Today’s poem could be about regret or acceptance. It could be about rites of passage or about the inevitability of the cycle of life. The young woman makes mistakes. The experienced woman knows what it is to have made compromises, to have made sacrifices, to bend with the wind, and to become her mother. There is a nostalgia inherent in today’s piece; a longing not for the past, but a bittersweet looking both forward and back. Gnup’s startlingly honest reflection is paired with beautifully-wrought moments of language and imagery that heighten the joy and pain of a lived life.
DEAR NEW YORK CITY, LEARN GENTLE
By Leigh Phillips
The sky regrets itself. By sky, I mean me.
Don’t let yourself get lost
because you think someone’s going to find
you. The story goes: no one’s
going to find you. You’re going to be on the
highway sifting Mountain Dew
bottles full of trucker crank piss and trading
them to eye‑wild tweakers
for a ticket back to tender. You are what is
tender. By you, I mean me.
The song goes: Heart. Ribcage. Envelope.
Heart. Ribcage. Envelope.
(Today’s poem originally appeared inThrush and appears here today with permission from the poet.)
Leigh Phillips is an Assistant Professor of English at Hostos Community College with the City University of New York. Her stories, memoirs, poems and criticism most recently appeared in Rhino, So to Speak: A Feminist Journal of Language and Art, and A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry, edited by Stacey Lynn Brown and Oliver de la Paz. She is currently writing an epistolary novel in verse, generously funded by a grant from the City University of New York Research Foundation.
Editor’s Note: Firstly, I am a sucker for a killer end-line. It is done well rarely. But what is even rarer is a truly fantastic opening line. The kind of entry that embraces you. “Dear New York City, Learn Gentle” is that rare poem that offers us a fantastic first line. The first stanza goes on to take me exactly where I want to be taken. Beautiful. Lyric. Telling. Guiding me into the second stanza, where I am ready to fall into the poem’s soft downy or resonant emotion. But, no. Suddenly there is Mountain Dew and piss and—where am I? But a soft turn and I find I’ve got a “ticket back to tender;” I’m back in the heartbeat of the lyric. And then I’m sung a lullaby that blends into dreamscape: “Heart. Ribcage. Envelope. / Heart. Ribcage. Envelope.” Today’s poem is both finely-wrought and an unpredictable experience. In that way, it deftly mirrors the city it was written for.
How gay is it
for two men
to stroke
the same dog
at the same time.
What if they’re both
sitting on a sofa watching
When Harry Met Sally.
How about two men watching
the same gorgeous sunset
from the same high ridge.
And if a man daydreaming
on a bus ride finds his eyes when focus returns,
quite accidently, on the crotch
of the man seated opposite.
How about two men riding
a bus into a gorgeous sunset
or two gorgeous men watching
a sunset in silence. How about
two men daydreaming and stroking
a gorgeous dog and the dog makes
a strange deep sound of pleasure.
What if the men are old friends.
What if they’re brothers.
What if there’s music playing.
(Today’s poem originally appeared inRattle, was a Pushcart Prize Nominee, and appears here today with permission from the poet.)
Christopher Crawford was born in Glasgow, Scotland. His poetry, essays and translations have appeared in magazines like The Cortland Review, Rattle, The Collagist, Agenda and elsewhere. His poems have been nominated for a couple of Pushcart prizes and he is a founding editor at B O D Y (bodyliterature.com).
Editor’s Note: We live in a day and age of extreme and imperative progress in the gay rights movement. Day by day, state by state, country by country, same-sex marriage is becoming legal and same-sex couples are fighting for—and winning—the rights they should have had all along. But the bigotry remains; the bullying, the violence. And this hatred is inextricably linked with language, with the politics inherent in language. When someone says “that’s so gay,” their intent may not be homophobic, but they are perpetuating discrimination none the less.
Today’s poem makes us consider the words we use—in our society, in our culture, in our day. What does it mean to be “so gay”? If you meditate upon the meaning of that phrase, Crawford shows us, you may discover the simple beauty of humanity.
Crawfish shadows on the street
and a gossamer elm by the drugstore―
a blind man on the corner plays a saxophone―
the locals say “he sees with his heart”
and, darling, I think I know what they mean―
the world gives as much as it takes.
(Today’s poem originally appeared inThrush Poetry Journal and appears here today with permission from the poet.)
Tim Suermondt is the author of two full-length collections: Trying to Help the Elephant Man Dance (The Backwaters Press, 2007 ) and Just Beautiful from New York Quarterly Books, 2010. He has published poems in Poetry, The Georgia Review, Blackbird, Able Muse, Prairie Schooner, PANK, Bellevue Literary Review and Stand Magazine (U.K.) and has poems forthcoming in Gargoyle, A Narrow Fellow and DMQ Review among others. After many years in Queens and Brooklyn, he has moved to Cambridge with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.
Editor’s Note: Today’s poem offers us a little song, a little food for thought, and a little optimism. In the end, it’s all about perspective; how do you see the world?
As It Ought To Be 