Tag: American Poetry

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: LAWRENCE CRONIN

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MY FATHER WAS A WANDERING ARAMEAN
by Lawrence Cronin

Behold, I was somebody back there!
Then this guy, who calls Himself
‘I AM who I AM’, let me tell you, He
looks more like three hooligans, and
comes talking about blowing up
Sodom and Gomorrah
if “He” can’t find ten decent people.
Oy, they should be so lucky.

Back there they called me Sarai,
others called me Ishtar.
We had god-sex up in high places
on the pyramid of the moon.
None of this sordid swinging
what with slaves and pharaohs
and Abimelech!
Yech.

Behold, I was somebody back there!
High priestess of the moon
But now we have this I-AMbic god.
He, my husband insists we spell it He,
was over for dinner last night
with a couple of buddies.
I laughed them out of the tent.

I’m sure those three are thinking of
doing it again, but I’ve had enough
of this royal wife-swapping scene.
I’m getting too old for it anyway.
We’ll never settle down.
My husband should stick to sheep.

For behold, I was somebody back there,
But my father was a wandering Aramean
So was my husband, my brother
And they took me from those whom I loved,
More importantly
From those who loved me.


(“My Father Was a Wandering Aramean” was originally published in Perigee and is reprinted here today with permission from the poet.)


Lawrence Cronin: Ostensibly a practicing psychiatrist, Lawrence Cronin’s literary work is better described as that of a spiritual chiropractor working to achieve a better alignment of all our off-piste notions. Growing up in Detroit, Michigan, he dreamed of migrating out west. One day on the streets of San Francisco he met a Mexican girl from the town of old Tucson. Lawrence fathered all her children and is working on a series of novels based on the Book of Genesis.

Editor’s Note: Thanks to my mom, I am immensely interested in pre-monotheistic goddess worship, particularly that of the Jewish matriarchs. Today’s poem explores this idea, reflecting on a time when the goddess was turned away from in favor of the idea of one god. In today’s post, Cronin uses humor and wit to play around with these notions from the goddess’ perspective, a dance I know my mother will enjoy. This one’s for you mama; specially chosen for Mother’s Day. Love and light, and may the goddess(es) be with you!

Want to read more by and about Lawrence Cronin?
Lawrence’s work has appeared in the following publications:
– “My Muse” appeared in Sandcutters, 2008, Arizona State Poetry Society.
– “Alzheimer’s in Triptych” appeared in Harmony, A Humanities Magazine, University of Arizona, 2009.
– “My Father Was a Wandering Aramean” appeared in Perigee, an online literary journal.
– “Cutting Grass” appeared in Sandscript, Pima Community College, 2008.

Lawrence is currently working on a novel titled Edge Of Innocence (and its four sequels), in which Adam still walks the earth, Eden is a town in modern America, and God meanders into lives almost daily, shining new light on Biblical truth in surprising and shocking ways.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: NICOLAS DESTINO

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SATURDAY MORNING
by Nicolas Destino

When you live alone you can put thing s where you wish.
Alone, you can contaminate your own environment and spill
olive oil on an orange floating in the sink.
You can Sink where you want to, in your own part-icles,
part the water in your own sink, create miracles.
You can say things like excuse the mess. Would you like a drink?
When you live alone you are naked more often.
If another man is naked with you in bed, you can say welcome visitor.
If another man contaminates your environment, you can say
thanks for coming over,
and you can clean up after him with old rags
only you know where to find.


(“Saturday Morning” is printed here today with permission from the poet.)


Nicolas Destino’s work has appeared in The American Poetry Journal, The Bellevue Literary Review, Barge Journal, 580split, 322 Review, and others. He is a graduate of the MFA program at Goddard College, and his first full-length collection of poems, Heartwrecks, was released by Sibling Rivalry Press in 2013.

Editor’s Note: I have been a fan of Nicolas Destino since he was published in the Friday Poetry Series here on As It Ought To Be last year. There is a lulling quality to his work. A rise and fall of language like waves that either gently lap against wet sand or swell and crash as torrential surf. If his poems had arms, I feel as if they would wrap around me and rock me; comforting, familiar, gentle, but with intent.

Today’s poem is a snapshot of the familiar. Of the struggles one has as an individual. Self-perception of one’s own space, of one’s own independence and control. There is a beauty in Destino’s vision of what it is to live alone, and, yet, beneath the surface of that beauty is dissatisfaction with that lone existence, of an uncleanliness inherent within it.

Today’s post is dedicated to a special occasion in the poet’s life. Mazel tov and congratulations on your marriage, Nicolas. Here’s to having found love worth cohabitating for!

Want to read more by and about Nicolas Destino?
322 Review
Verse Daily

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: JAMES VALVIS

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THE LINES AT ST. PAUL’S
by James Valvis

The nuns lined up the boys on one side, girls on the other.
We lined up knowing God loved us and Jesus was God.
We lined up understanding our place in heaven was arranged.
We lined up as boys and girls, but that was all that separated us.
Not once did we line up according to appearance or wealth,
or according to size of our breasts, or the strength of our biceps.
We didn’t line up as Democrats and Republicans, blacks and whites.
Never lined up as fats and thins, prudes and sluts, gays and straights,
We didn’t line up as believers and doubters, saints and sinners.
To the nuns, we were all sinners who were trying to become saints.
To ourselves, we were all saints who would like to one day be sinners.
They lined us up and marched us to recess, lunch, the bathrooms.
They lined us up, all the girls pretty and smiling,
all the boys tough and smirking, like it would always be that way,
like those perfect rows would go on forever and ever and ever,
like if you simply followed the person in front of you
you would get to the place you needed to be,
and for a while you dreamed it possible,
maybe you all did, even the nuns,
until one kid stopped suddenly
and the pushing started.


(“The Lines at St. Paul’s” was originally published in First Class and is reprinted here today with permission from the poet.)

James Valvis lives in Washington State with his wife, daughter, and cat. His poems or stories have recently appeared in Arts & Letters, Atlanta Review, Crab Creek Review, Hanging Loose, LA Review, Nimrod, Pank, Rattle, River Styx, and are forthcoming in Daily Science Fiction, Fractured West, Kill Author, Midwest Quarterly, Night Train, New York Quarterly, Pinyon, Sierra Nevada Review, Verdad, and many others. In addition to being a multiple Pushcart and Best of the Web nominee, a novelette was a storySouth Million Writers Notable Story. A poetry collection, How to Say Goodbye, is due in 2011.

Editor’s Note: Ah, the allure of order! The ease of being just another member of the flock! When we have no choice, when we are told what to do, life is simpler. But the easy road is more often than not the wrong road. Today’s piece functions as a philosophical commentary as much as a poem. With brilliant moments like “To the nuns, we were all sinners who were trying to become saints. / To ourselves, we were all saints who would like to one day be sinners,” and “like if you simply followed the person in front of you / you would get to the place you needed to be,” this poem contemplates the human condition in modern times, within the framework built around us by religion and society. A huge topic deftly considered in a few swift clean lines.

Want to read more by and about James Valvis?
Poets & Writers
NYQ Poets

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: LISA ZARAN

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By Lisa Zaran:

RETICENCE

Never
does the world
not fall into my lap.

And if God
Himself
were to send me
a private message,
would I react?

Knowing,
possibly not knowing,
reluctant in every passing
thought.

Nor trusting,
holding the weight
of every word spoken
in the palm of my hand,
looking into the not-so-distant
future of every gesture
as if behind each
was a guise
or a secret.

There’s always
the thought
that something
might go terribly wrong.

Every day
the world falls
into my lap
and every day
I’m afraid to touch it
frightened of what it might bring.


FROM BRIDE TO BURIED

It is a chorus, her mother thought
when she was born, a fragile lilt
of voices singing rise rise rise
as if her daughter were already a myth.

She was a knowledgeable child,
too trusting perhaps but never flighty,
no never that. Her center could always
grasp what her mind could not.

She learned very early to trust
her body, its rhythms and advice.
She being an only child, grew with the speed
of those shown to know everything

in corresponding order.
This is your nose, see, touch it.
These are your feet. Soon you will walk.
Out there, beyond this window, is the world.

Which is also a perception.
See that tree over there? Could be
a madman standing in utter stillness
in the breach of night. Shhhhh.

The earth is tired now. The moon is up.
Lock the door, fasten the windows.
Sleep and dream of every possibility.
For beyond this childhood you will meet

a man and fall in love. He will ring you out
of yourself. He will convince you that
you are not yours but his and at the apex
of your dependency where hands and hammers

become one in the same blunt instrument,
he will strike you again and again and again.
To seek your remains, I will pass my fingertips
over your picture. I will try to remember

the scent of your breath, your intangible life.


(“Reticence” and “From Bride to Buried” were originally published in A Little Poetry. Both poems are reprinted here today with permission from the poet.)

Lisa Zaran was born in 1969 in Los Angeles, California. She is an American poet, essayist and the author of six collections including The Blondes Lay Content and the sometimes girl, the latter of which was the focus of a year long translation course in Germany. Subsequently published to German in 2006 under the title: das manchmal mädchen. Selections from her other books have been translated to Bangla, Hindi, Arabic, Chinese, German, Dutch, Persian and Serbian. Her poems have appeared in hundreds of literary journals, magazines, broadsides, anthologies and e-zines including: Juked, Ramshackle Review, Apparatus Magazine, Hudson Review, Black Dirt, Other Voices, Kritya, The Dande Review, Soul to Soul, Nomad’s Choir Poetry Journal, Not a Muse Anthology, Best of the Web 2010, Literature: an intro to Reading and Writing by Pearson as well as being performed in Glasgow’s Radio Theater Group and displayed in SONS, a museum in Kruishoutem, Belgium. Lisa is founder and editor of Contemporary American Voices, an online collection of poetry by American poets. She is also the author of Dear Bob Dylan, a collection of letters to her muse. She lives and writes in Arizona.

Editor’s Note: Today’s poems give the reader food for thought. The first is, in my reading, a contemplation of the idea of outside forces, who or what is in control of our lives, and the responsibility we as humans have to do what we can with the opportunities and responsibilities laid in our laps. The second is a darker piece, almost cryptic, following the life of a woman from girlhood and the protection of her family home to adulthood and the abusive relationship that ends her life. Both poems are highly successful in their ability to make the reader think, perhaps outside the box of the reader’s normal thinking, and contemplate ideas and worlds that may or may not be their own.

Want to read more by and about Lisa Zaran?
Lisa Zaran Official Website
Contemporary American Voices

http://contemporaryamericanvoices.com/

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: RUMJHUM BISWAS

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MARCH
by Rumjhum Biswas

This is not the season to be alone.
Elements in the air react against skin and heart.
Those soft inner parts that you hid all winter.
It is dangerous to be alone in March.
You can never tell what your eyes will reveal
to a complete stranger at the bus stop or bazaar. Or up the stairs
on your way to the solicitors’ office – what were you doing there
in the first place? This is not the season for lawsuits.
March is not even a season.

March is a licentious beast.
A surreptitious and stealthy time
in the name of such wild feasts
of colours and scents that within your heart
a frantic dove beats its wings and outside
the boney serrated walls, unchained ones caterwaul
calling out to all the unclenched spirits
rising up to kiss the full March Moon.

Intellect is brought down to its knobby knees.
Sagacity, caught brooding
between newly un-muffed ears, is doused.
There is much mischief afoot.

For who really knows what spirits will rule
over this flesh that lies fallen, like an over-ripe autumnal fruit?
Madness marches on scattering tidings as yellow as pollen.

Beware! Should you sniff that heady snuff, you will go
wandering. That timid dove within you will
to your surprise, let out a lusty cry.
Satin sheens of sunlit air will tear
scattering lucent dementia everywhere,
beating wild bacchanalian rhythm. Oh no!
Nothing does or ever will makes sense, in March!

Nothing at all, except the moth balls
that you have begun to tuck
inside quilts still smelling of eggnog and cake crumbs
and a whiff of that something that you
had promised yourself at the end of the year.
But, even that is not enough for March
in whose unrelenting grasp
your body becomes a chalice, overflowing.
Oh, so sweetly overflowing, in March!


(“March” was originally published in A Little Poetry and is reprinted here today with permission from the poet.)

Rumjhum Biswas has been published in countries in all the five continents in both online and print journals and anthologies. One of her poems was long listed in the Bridport Poetry Prize 2006 and is also a finalist in the 2010 Aesthetica Creative Arts Contest. She has won prizes in poetry contests in India. Her poem “March” was commended in the Writelinks’ Spring Fever Competition, 2008. Her story “Ahalya’s Valhalla” was among Story South’s Million Writers’ notable stories of 2007. Her poem “Bones” has been nominated for a 2010 Pushcart by Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. She was a participating poet in the 2008 Prakriti Foundation Poetry Festival in Chennai. She was a featured poet during the Poetry Slam organized jointly by the US Consul General, Chennai and The Prakriti Foundation in December 2009. In December 2010 she was a participating poet at the first Hyderabad Literary Festival organized by Osmania University and Muse India.

Editor’s Note: “March is not even a season. / March is a licentious beast.” It is evident to me that Rumjhum Biswas resides in a place that has seasons. Living out my first full year in New York, I am for the first time aware of the painful end of winter that is March. Here it is, officially spring, but the wind does not listen, the rain does not listen, the snow, sometimes, even, does not listen. There is no longer month than March; its 31 days dragging on achingly, the promise of warmth around a corner that is perpetually out of reach. Today’s poem caught my eye and my heart because the poet has captured the spirit of this dreadful month in the way only a poet can. This is the anthem of March! March, a month-long “unrelenting grasp” harsh against the “soft inner parts that you hid all winter.” Today, for Rumjhum Biswas and for my fellow New Yorkers I say Farewell March! Welcome April, welcome warmth and sun and life!

Want to read more by and about Rumjhum Biswas?
Rumjhum blogs at Writers & Writerisms (her official blog), Polyphagous, and has a monthly column (Rumjhum’s Ruminations) at Flash Fiction Chronicles.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: AMORAK HUEY

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DOROTHY VISITS THE CYCLONE IN THE CONVALESCENCE HOME FOR NATURAL DISASTERS
by Amorak Huey

“The cyclone had set the house down
very gently – for a cyclone – in the midst
of a country of marvelous beauty.”
– L. Frank Baum

I know you seek scarlet-toed memories,
small dogs, doorbell songs, but my stories
these days happen outside my apartment window:

rock quarry sparks & flares all night,
I watch dusk-smeared men holding hands,
if there’s no wind I hear them singing.

Our lives are littered with what we do not say,
unkempt promises. Do you ever
think things should have been different READ MORE

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: JAMES MEETZE

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from PHANTOM HOUR
by James Meetze

I want to be ferried from this world
to whatever beyond.
I will not pay the ferryman’s tax.
I want a tether to this life’s treasures,
to remember each name
and address, each ingot of gold worn on the finger.
This is not abstract thought.
A thing is or it isn’t.
A thing works or it doesn’t and if that is the case,
then it is of no use to me.
Man lets loose his complaint,
dissent among the unwashed ranks.
No bird in the bush,
no books in the bag, but what worthless words
these are when vapor.
I complain that memory squandered is worse
than memory lost.
What can one hold in empty hands?
There comes a demonstrative need to articulate
every significant totem,
then articulate the surprise in discovering totem’s existence.
I want to drink from the River Lethe.
I am waiting to cross.
I am thirsty. READ MORE

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: K. HOLDEN PUMPHREY

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ONE GOOD THING ABOUT YOU IS YOU’RE ALWAYS LOOKING FOR LIGHT REFRACTION
for Ryan Joseph
by K. Holden Pumphrey

1
Where I grew up, in thunderstorms
everyone comes in from the rain out of breath and says
Oh my God it’s like a WAR out there!
People in Chicago get prideful about surviving the weather
It’s fun, because you still feel like you survived.
Which is a good feeling to have.

You won’t remember this, because it was a dream,
but we descended from the bus
in some French-colonized place
and I didn’t know you
but I think we’d both given out some kind of war cry that day.
We cross the street together
as if we knew ourselves. READ MORE

“Blowfly” by Andrew Hudgins

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Blowfly

by Andrew Hudgins


Half awake, I was imagining
a friend’s young lover, her ash blonde hair, the smooth
taut skin of twenty. I imagined her
short legs and dimpled knees. The door scraped open,
but eyes closed, I saw nothing. The mattress sagged.
She laid her head on my chest, and murmured love
against my throat, almost humming, approaching song,
so palpable I could hold her only chastely,
if this was chaste. I couldn’t move my hand
even to caress her freckled shoulder.
So this is how imagination works, I thought,
sadly. And when at last she spoke,
she spoke with the amused voice of my wife,
my wife who was at work but also here,
pleased at the confusion she was causing.
This is a lesson about flesh, isn’t it?
I asked. Blowfly, she whispered on my throat
as we made tense, pensive love. Blowfly, blowfly. READ MORE

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: DAVID BLAIR

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AS ONE PUTTING THE PHONOGRAPH NEEDLE BACK ONE SONG AFTER FINDING A COVETED RECORDING
by David Blair

Most of the country is not hung up
on Rome as we are, a couple of yard pagans—
that was a wonderful smile
under that big Blonde Venus afro wig
that you stole from Marlene Dietrich
to shine at me in a dream
as reassuring as a rainbow
up near the lip of the Maelstrom.
There’s gladness at the heart of being a person
most of the time impervious
yet visible to our speculation,
as sorrow eats cake at happy weddings. READ MORE