Tag: American Poetry

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: RUTH DEBORAH REY

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CHANGE OF ADDRESS
by Ruth Deborah Rey

If it is true that only
five hundred thousand
people died in the camps
and that the others,
the other Jews, that is,
moved away to Israel,
the States, or to the East,
I do not understand why
not even one of them
sent a change of address
to those they left behind;
the ones that still, even
today, weep over the
loss of them and the horror
they were subjected to
that – supposedly – is not true.
I wonder why, if she was one
of those who simply moved
to the East and did not die,
my Mother … why my Mother
never even sent me a pretty
postcard from where she
is living now.

(“Change of Address” was originally published in Raving Dove. This poem is reprinted here today with permission from the poet.)

Ruth Deborah Rey, born in Amsterdam in 1938, has from the time she was a little girl worked in radio, (later) television, publicity and the theatre, as an actress, broadcaster, entertainer, scriptwriter, translator and editor in the Netherlands, Canada, and the USA. Today, retired, she finally has the time to be a full-time writer and editor. She lives at the French Atlantic coast with her husband, two dogs, and five cats. Rey is recognized by the Dutch Foundation 1940-1945 as a participant in the Resistance during the German occupation.

Editor’s Note: When I asked Ms. Rey’s permission to publish today’s poem she said she was glad to let me publish it, “even though the poem is one of the saddest I ever wrote.” I think this response says a lot about the kind of person, and poet, that Ms. Rey is. Living a life touched by the Holocaust, some might succumb to darkness, and their poetry might be reflective of such. But Ms. Rey lives a life of light, and her writing outshines any darkness that has touched her. She is quoted as saying “I speak my soul. I write.” I am inspired by Ms. Rey’s optimism, her shining light, and the adept way in which she speaks her soul.

Want to read more by and about Ruth Deborah Rey?
The Blue Blog
Raving Dove
Author’s Den
LitList

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: MAYA ELASHI

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IN A BIBLICAL GARDEN
by Maya Elashi

i saw the messiah this morning.
He was wearing a white kaffiya and riding a donkey
southeast, towards Jerusalem.

He didn’t look at me
though he knew i was there with two cameras: moving and still
He didn’t want any pictures taken
and i, in dissappointment, respected that it’s

not an everyday experience i said to myself as he faded into the multitude

now, my heart alone holds the image developing
still
i’ll keep walking the path they followed up and over the hill.


Maya Elashi is an Irish Jew. A Kabbalistic Hebrew Pagan Priestess to The Goddess. She is a gardener/herbalist, as well as a teacher of English and Hebrew. Maya plays and prays for peace in the Middle East (and worldwide).

Editor’s Note: Just in time for the Hanukkah holiday, and the holidays in general, comes this piece from Maya Elashi. A piece that, in both its brilliance and simplicity, captures both a moment in time and a spiritual experience. I recall seeing Maya read in a barn in Santa Cruz many years ago. She shared an exceptional long poem that was very well received by the audience and that ended with her singing a line from Tom Petty, “Oh my my, oh hell yes, honey, put on that party dress!” Maya has been one of the most influential people in my writing life, and was the first person to be completely thrilled that I was leaving the law to pursue a career as a poet and teacher. It is a true honor to share her work with you here today.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: NATHAN WISMAN

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Photo by Joshua Band.

BURRS
by Nathan Wisman

Your one, your only,
that grinning face.

For you, the cold dew
smears his arms.
The thickets of shivering weeds
part around his determined body.

Strips of cloudy sky traversed again and again
by the sun.
It is never warm enough.
Strips of pinpricked black tread upon again and again
by some moon.
The wait for an echo becoming impossibly long.

Burrs do not stick to wetness.
Turn your shivering back.
Because to burrs, wetness
means death.
Grasping for you, along the hedgerows.

Echelons of rings surrounded again and again
by echelons of rings.
All so artificial.
Squads of leaves piling upward again and again
by shoving winds.
The tree’s rocking impossibly slow.

Tendrils of steam rise from beneath steel lids.
Feel lumps beneath your skin.
Because to steam, rising
is all there is.
Reaching upwards to you, from limestone basins.

A soulmate, a lover,
your ultimate, your final,
those hands tangling endlessly.


Nathan Wisman lives in San Francisco, California where he writes in a number of mediums and imagines he has a cat named Fitzgerald. His favorite authors include Cormac McCarthy and Bret Easton Ellis, and he strongly encourages you to read Catch-22 and Eating Animals.

Editor’s Note: Sometimes there is an “it” factor in poetry. That inexplicable dust that shimmers over a poem. Natural raw talent apparent from the words and equally from between them. The work of today’s poet strikes me in such a way, and my personal poetic landscape has been forever altered by the words “to steam, rising is all there is.”

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: ALLYSON KWETT

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Two A.M.
by Allyson Kwett

But there’s no darkness, at least
No Country Darkness
No Fords on Highway One
No tires packing salt into pavement
No dim headlights shining back off yellow signs

But the glow is the same
                          Toxic orange
And the same weeping strings
             Cries of smoke and whiskey
Leech through headphones
Leech into the sky

Yellow streetlights and
Endlessly blinking neon
Bounces off slick wet pavement

             And the bay
Is white and yellow
With Atlantis sunk
Office buildings and sky-rise apartments
Bleeding to the shore

No stars, no moon
Under a ceiling of burnt fog
And the porch light is off
But still I wonder

Wonder if the smoldering ash
Faint red glow and
Release of gray smoke and flesh
Covers the stratus and cosmos of night
Behind sheets of melancholy

Fighting to bleed through the edges
With violent ferocity


Allyson Kwett is a San Francisco Bay Area native currently completing her BA in Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. She enjoys parlour games, trivia, crosswords, and cucumber-flavored soft drinks, and abhors people who say “for all intensive purposes”.

Editor’s Note: Allyson Kwett has a nice handle on the use of sound in poetry. Moments like “No tires packing salt into pavement” hit the ear in the same way the mind’s eye pictures the tires packing salt into the ground. Beginning the poem mid-moment, “But there’s no darkness, at least,” we as readers experience the poem as a scene carved from time. We are dropped in, a world opens up for us, we inhabit it in all its detail, and we exit “with violent ferocity.” It is a quick and intense experience, alive with images and sound along the way.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: JESSE LOREN

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CONSIDER ICARUS
by Jesse Loren

Consider Icarus as a woman pasting wings on
Testing her harness and the snugness over breasts
And think of that flawless moment before the yawn
When she tires of waiting for the rest.

Think of her there above obelisk and spruce
Coasting above the small men scything down below
Her latched bindings slip and become loose
Her internal timing races and then slows.

She is circling above the town picking out the strong
Glancing to the corners of every lawn
A trickle of blood spills out between thighs
The blind sun melts wax into her eyes

Consider Icarus as a woman pasting wings on
Consider the tedious boredom of kite string and tumbling down.



Jesse Loren is originally from East Los Angeles and is currently rooted near Davis, California with her family and chickens. Her poetry can be found in Exquisite Corpse, Yawp, New Virginia Review, and Screamin’ Meme, her first book of collected poems. Ms. Loren co-edited two anthologies of poetry; Mourning Sickness, a collection about miscarriage and infant death, and Bombshells: War Stories and Poems by Women on the Homefront, a collection of homefront tales spanning from WWII to the present. Loren is a graduate of UC Irvine, and MFA graduate of UNO, and is a frequent columnist at iPinion.


Editor’s Note: Typically I don’t go in for rhymed poetry, but when Ms. Loren sent me poems for consideration for As It Ought To Be, this poem struck a chord with me. In Judaism the term “midrash” is used to describe a story that is created by opening up an existing story. With this poem Loren creates a midrash of sorts – opening up the story of Icarus to allow for another new tale. The tale of Icarus as a woman, a story that has feminist undertones, that explores the trials and tribulations of being a woman under the lens of a beloved mythological tale. This poem is clear and imagistic, and takes us on a journey on the wings of one who both has the opportunity to fly, and learns what it is to fall.

Want to hear more by Jesse Loren?
Buy Screamin Meme at Amazon.com
Jesse Loren’s Blogspot
Exquisite Corpse

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: GEORGIA KREIGER

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By Georgia Kreiger:

HE COMES

For a time he lived between my legs
where our urgent collisions seemed more
than the common fuck, more like he wanted

to break through the boundaries of skin
and mind and dissolve himself in the depth
of a woman who, he insisted,

did not remind him of his mother. A woman
more pliant and yielding than the clumsy
young girls who offered themselves cocooned

in their own interests, a woman who knew
that his sickness drove him to seek
shelter on the inside of someone

who provided herself like an abandoned cabin,
whose heat was seasoned by distant fires,
hard nights, needs beaten to a sheen.

And when his breath caught
and he breached, almost, the sovereignty
between him and me, filling the space with sound,

my emptiness echoed his cry: the purr of wind
through loose windows, thrash of deer through brush,
the call of faraway trains at night.


POCKET KNIFE

What struck me most was how gently
his left hand cupped the elbow to steady
the arm and turn out the white expanse
near the wrist where the veins are visible.
And how slowly, tenderly, he positioned
it, held as one would when cutting a steak
for which one felt only the mildest hunger,
his thin wrist bent slightly over his work.
The almost translucent flesh dimpled
under the pressure and formed two plump
ridges on either side. I told him once
that I would be willing even

to bleed for him.
And when the flesh split, and the line
he drew down my arm turned scarlet
and welled up and ran thickly toward
my hand, I felt the bloodless despair
that cutters describe
rush out of me
and the room swirl almost
with the rhythm of his breath.
And weightless I rose
toward a beckoning twilight
as we sat leaning over
the slow flow that startled us awake.

(“He Comes” and “Pocket Knife” were originally published in The 2River View. These poems are reprinted here today with permission from the poet.)


Georgia Kreiger lives in Maryland and teaches creative writing. Her poems have appeared in The 2River View, poemmemoirstory, Literal Latté, Poet Lore, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Outerbridge, Backbone Mountain Review and others.

Editor’s Note: In truth I am at a loss for what to say about these striking poems. Thoughts fly through my head like cars on a freeway, crossing one another at record speeds. Of course I would love these poems. How brilliant, how honest, how raw. How painful, and how beautiful the pain. Kreiger wastes no time in cutting deep, in sticking her arms in up to her elbows as if midwifing or keeping a heart beating with her bare hands. Sex, violence, mental illness- there is no subject taboo, no aspect of the human/female/relationship experience that is off limits. I am inspired and humbled by Kreiger’s grasp on the art of the poem.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: NATHAN REICH

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SOMEWHERE IN COLORADO
by Nathan Reich

I see it here
In the way the leaves are moving
A hurricane will be coming
Though I don’t know how soon

I close the window and try
To get some sleep ’til the morning
While the clouds outside are forming
Will I ever feel prepared?

Somewhere in Colorado
I am drowning in a bottle
I see the sun
But I know it don’t see me
Somewhere in Colorado
I am drowning in a bottle
I see my home
But I know it don’t see me

A thousand miles
Could I make it any farther?
I don’t want to be a martyr
Is there something I could trade?

And there was a time
When I thought that we were something
But now we’re a little more than nothing
So can you blame me for my fears?

Somewhere in Colorado
I am drowning in a bottle
I see the sun
But I know it don’t see me
A thousand miles
From the edge of California
I see my home
But I know it don’t see me
Oh I know it don’t see me
Oh I know it don’t see me

Nathan Reich was born in the San Francisco Bay Area and began studying guitar in earnest at the age of 12. At the age of 22 Nathan was accepted at the Berklee College of Music as a guitar performance major, where his unique style of playing predominately with just his thumb earned him the nickname “Thumb Kid.” In 2006 Nathan began songwriting, and later that year wrote and recorded his first EP “Paper Planes.” Just before graduating in May of 2009 he released his first full length record entitled “Arms Around A Ghost.” He now lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Editor’s Note: Recently a friend of mine played me some songs on his iPod as we ambled through the streets of New York in search of a decent bar. Instantly I was taken with the music – singer/songwriter music that was guitar-centric and full of meaningful powerful lyrics – exactly my cup of tea. I was in love with Nathan Reich at first listen. A few days later my friend shared a YouTube video of a cover of Nathan Reich’s “Somewhere in Colorado,” and I’m pretty sure I haven’t listened to anything else since.

Today’s post continues our ongoing discussion on where the lines are blurred between poetry and music. For me, what makes a song fall within the realm of poetry is its lyrics, which is why most of the songs I love are lyric-based with lyrics that hold their own on paper. Today’s post is no exception. A story of heartbreak, of unrequited love and longing, the lyrics to this song fall square within the realm of those elements that, for me, make up a great poem. The lyric that kills me most in today’s post? “And there was a time / When I thought that we were something / But now we’re a little more than nothing / So can you blame me for my fears?” It’s moments like this that set Nathan Reich apart from the pack and earn him his reputation as not only a fantastic musician and songwriter, but as a talented poet. When it comes to lyrics of this caliber I think Mr. Reich says it best when he asks “Will I ever feel prepared?”

Want to hear more by Nathan Reich?
Nathan Reich’s Myspace page
Somewhere in Colorado (Nathan Reich cover)

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: BONNIE NADZAM

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By Bonnie Nadzam:

TATTOO

When she told the tattoo artist where she wanted it, he sat her down, pulled up a chair, and leaned in close. The alphabet was written across his chest like a talisman. She could read it through the open collar of his shirt.

“Listen,” he said. “Are you sure? That would really be permanent. And it’d hurt. A lot.”

“You listen,” she took him by the front of his shirt. “If I don’t have his name printed on my body, I’m going to die.”

“What about your arm? Your hip bone?”

“I’ve made up my mind.”

“What about the bottom of your foot?”

She sat down and unbuttoned her shirt. “Do it,” she said.

So he tied her ankles and wrists to the chair, opened up his pocketknife, and sliced a wet red line from the hollow of her throat to the smooth white plate of her sternum. Her body arched and she inhaled sharply.

“You’re open,” he said. “I’m going to use my tattoo gun to separate your ribs, okay? Just a little pressure,” he said. She felt her bones crack apart from the middle, then a long pause.

“What?” she asked. “What is it.”

“His name is already there.”

“I knew it,” she said. “Put it on again. Make sure you capitalize his first and last names.”

“You want it on there twice?”

“Yes. And don’t rush. I want to be able to picture it there very clearly. Be really careful with the vowels.”

So he bent over her and went to work with his needle and ink, carefully tracing each letter in fine and even print until it was stamped across her heart, twice. Like a question posed and confirmed. Like two quick punches to the chest. Like a stutter—a name she could scarcely utter out loud if she dared. So perfect a name that—as with all the beautiful things she’d seen in her short life: soft brown birds flying in cursive loops against a paper blue sky, a hundred thousand black ants crossing the blank sidewalk in a spill of broken words—it was compelled to repeat itself, to write itself in typescript again and again across the wet muscle of her heart, the word thoroughly inextricable from the flesh.

 

YOU TELL YOURSELF A STORY

Wet night,
One cold beer.
Ok—
Whiskey.
And ok.
One kiss.
Arches of my socked feet pushed
Against your hip bones.
Ok
ok

 

Bonnie Nadzam has published fiction in The Kenyon Review, Story Quarterly, The Alaska Quarterly Review, Callaloo, The Mississippi Review, and several others. Her first novel, “Lamb,” is forthcoming from The Other Press. Bonnie lives in a stone house on Melville Island with her beloved and their three horses, four pigs, one mule, six goats, twelve hens, and two German Shepherds. They farm primarily turnips and alfalfa in the short growing season.

Editor’s Note: I am a sucker for poetry that hits you “Like two quick punches to the chest.” Especially when that poetry is about love, and within that qualifier, particularly when that love poetry is about sex. Is there anything older, any instance where, to paraphrase Ms. Nadzam, the word is more thoroughly inextricable from the flesh?

Whether exploring this human connection through prose or through a poem quick and sharp as an incision, Ms. Nadzam is a spot on artist of the heart. A poet unafraid to paint us a picture of the inner workings of the female mind. Reading her poetry is a bit of a guilty pleasure, as if it were a forbidden magazine read behind my parents’ backs.

(“Tattoo” and “You Tell Yourself a Story” were originally published in The Loudest Voice Anthology, vol. 1 and in The Offending Adam. These poems are reprinted here today with permission from the poet.)

Want to read more by and about Bonnie Nadzam?
The Big Something
Storyglossia
The Offending Adam

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: CARL ADAMSHICK

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By Carl Adamshick:

HOME

You had been gone a few days.
The place went looking for you,

unaware you were returning.

I remained lonely in the evening
when the moon broadcasted

silence through the dust.

My love was once
a faint blue tear
of thin glass glowing
in my chest.

Now my love is you.

It must be three in the afternoon
and I am trying to sleep
on your side of the bed.

THE CONSECRATION OF AN APRICOT

It has become what was irrepressible
in its nature. It is the color of fire
suspended in a passion of green.
It is ordained the egg of the sun
and when the hull of the moon
rides through a whisper of stars
it is a fever, desirable for its sweet
ache on the tongue. It is the swell
and flesh of a flower, the lost
antecedent of an almond-stone
heart. One after another after another
fills its office and falls into death’s
inception, where it is observed
on the slope of a knoll, lucid,
laid open, and rotting in utter beauty.

“Home” first appeared in The Oregonian. “The Consecration of an Apricot” first appeared in the Mid-American Review. These poems are published here today with permission from the poet.

Carl Adamshick won the 2010 Walt Whitman Award. His book Curses and Wishes is to be published in March of 2011.

Editor’s Note: I came across Carl Adamshick’s work in the recent issue of Narrative Magazine and I just about died and went to poetry heaven. Letter, which appears in that issue, is a must-read for any lover of that genre of poetry that intersects with the sexual and the heart, of which I most definitely am one. With the help of Lezlie Mayers, editor of the Friday Poetry Series here on As It Ought To Be, I was able to track down this poet-on-the-forefront and obtain his permission to print the two poems featured today.

According to the poet Dorianne Laux, Adamshick “has not joined the ranks of the M.F.A./Ph.D.’s and has never attended a writer’s conference or residency.” His work speaks for itself, I believe, in showing where nature outshines nurture, and how one can maintain genius simplicity in poetry by remaining outside of the world of literary higher ed. With moments like “It is the swell and flesh of a flower, “My love was once a faint blue tear of thin glass glowing in my chest. Now my love is you,” and “desirable for its sweet ache on the tongue,” Adamshick’s choice of language is a delight to the senses and the heart, a combination that is pure delight to those who love great poetry.

Want to read more by and about Carl Adamshick?
Poets.org
Carl Adamshick Receives the 2010 Walt Whitman Award
The Olives of Oblivion

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: NATALIE LYALIN

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By Natalie Lyalin:

ELECTROCARDIOGRAM

I protect my heart when I perform, but the night is another thing.
It does not appear to care much, and I am weak.
Nightmare: my father is a bride. I lift the veil over his eager face.
His wife’s eyes are very dark suckling holes.
I fasten some pearls around his neck and send him off.
Grow well, little dad! Send me a postcard when you wake up.
I will have you over for a nice lunch.
We will make a toast with your new champagne glasses!
They will sizzle and froth over with our aggressive clinks.

SMALL AND PRIVATE TRAGEDIES

The cow was cold and yet I milked it. Under a dirty blanket
I found something warm, so I held it tightly. It was my own
hand, don’t worry. Under a slanted sky I cursed the cold and
kept on going. My mountain is called grief I say, and when
feeling toothed, that is, when teeth come into a conversation
I miss mine. I also miss my father and mother being married,
because that was when we did all this terrible work together.
Now this frost reflects my wounded mouth to me and in
the shower, under very hot water, I cackle at the thought of
things passed. I make a bird call and confuse the others. I set
the clocks back. My insanity is precious. It is a gem I smuggled
out and now it shines like a moon over this fortress.

These poems first appeared in The Offending Adam and are reprinted here with permission of the poet.

Natalie Lyalin is the author of Pink and Hot Pink Habitat (Coconut Books 2009) and Try A Little Time Travel (Ugly Duckling Presse 2010). She is an editor for GlitterPony Magazine and Agnes Fox Press. She lives in Philadelphia.

Editor’s Note: I have to thank our Editor and Webmaster Okla Elliot for pushing us to seek out lesser-known poets and turn to poetry journals to find new pieces for As It Ought To Be. That gentle pushing led me to today’s discovery, a “a gem I smuggled
out and now it shines like a moon over this fortress.”

Natalie Lyalin’s work is a disturbing breath of fresh air. Haunted with images and notions of family struggle and allusion to the darkness that lies just beneath the surface, the poet paints a picture in shades of gray as if sketched from the crumbling chalk of human suffering. All in all it is a severe understatement to say that Ms. Lyalin is the architect of well-crafted poems.

Want to read more by and about Natalie Lyalin?
Apples on Fire
Octopus Magazine
The Best American Poetry
Weird Deer