Celebratory Poetry – Page 3 – As It Ought To Be

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: MIRIAM’S SONG

Posted on April 4, 2015 by asitoughttobemagazine

“Miriam the prophetess” by Anselm Feuerbach. Public Domain image.

“Miriam the prophetess… took the tambourine in her hand; and all the women followed her with tambourines and dances. And Miriam called to them: Sing…” (Exodus 15:20-21)

Editor’s Note: The most important thing that has happened to Passover this year is the Notorious RBG’s decree that when we remember the Exodus, we need to remember the women. First and foremost among them, for me, is Miriam. The unsung hero of what is usually thought of as “Moses’ story,” Miriam is responsible for everything from Moses’ birth to his survival to providing water for the Israelites throughout their forty-year-sovereign in the desert. The first person in the Bible to be called a prophet, Miriam was beloved by her people but less-loved by her creator, who struck her down with leprosy to teach her the consequences of a woman voicing her opinion.

Song is one of the oldest forms of poetry, and the poetry of the Bible is one of the oldest written records of poetry we have. Sadly, all that remains of Miriam’s song in the Bible is a call to action: “And Miriam called to them: Sing…”

We are lucky, therefore, that Debbie Friedman (1951-2011) picked up this mantle. In “Miriam’s Song” she joins her voice with a new generation of women to remember and celebrate the heroine of the Passover story, responding to the prophetess’ call to action: “Sing.” Beloved by women and men alike all the world over, Debbie Friedman and “Miriam’s Song” are the kinds of modern Passover traditions we need. Inclusive and powerful, shedding new light on ancient traditions. For, as Debbie Friedman reminds us, “The more our voices are heard in song, the more we become our lyrics, our prayers, and our convictions.”

Want more Miriam, Debbie Friedman, and Feminist Passover?
Read the lyrics to “Miriam’s Song” by Debbie Friedman on Ritualwell
Debbie Friedman via the Jewish Women’s Archive
Miriam via the Jewish Women’s Archive
Buy The Journey Continues: The Ma’yan Passover Haggadah on Amazon

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: KAREN ALKALAY-GUT

Posted on February 21, 2015 by asitoughttobemagazine

By Karen Alkalay-Gut:

HER STORY

I have never been able to tell her story
Sometimes it escapes me, sometimes I am not sure
It could really have happened, sometimes I read
Different accounts of her demise, or a paragraph
From some testimony jogs my memory and the terrible days
When I first heard what happened to her return.

This much is in my blood:
I was conceived on the day she died.
This much is in my blood.
She blew up trains.
The courage came from her uplifted chin
And the two infants she watched
Dashed against the wall of their home.
Avram twelve months old and Masha two years.
My first cousins.
They too – in my blood – all that is left.

If I can write of these babies,
I can manage the rest –
Following her path as she escaped
The prison camp with her husband
And joined the Otrianski Otriade
Lenin Brigade, Lipinskana Forest.

I can feel her mouth, her narrow lips clamped
As she bends over the delicate mines,
Solemn as in the photo when as a child
She sat for with the rest of the choir
Unsmiling amid the festive singers
Unwilling perhaps to feel poetic joy
Perhaps destined for so much more.

There are at least three accounts of her death:
The partisan Abba Kovner told me she was caught
In a mission and hung. He looked away when he spoke,
Not piercing me as always with his tragic eyes,
And I knew there was more he would not say.

Another book says she lagged behind the platoon
Escaping an attack, perhaps pregnant,
And was imprisoned in Zhedtl.
The jail was ignited, perhaps by accident,
And she was just one of the victims.

When mother first told me the story
She had just heard at the hairdresser’s,
I must have been fifteen, and outraged
That she was weeping, tears
Rolling down her face. She knew
All I cared for was my own life,
And her latest discovery
Of the fate of her youngest sister
A disruption.
But who else could she tell?

The loft in the barn, she said,
They were hiding there – three women,
Her husband and her. They came
And set the barn afire. He helped
The women first, and his wife came last
But didn’t come, was burnt alive.

Malcah Malcah who saved all our lives
Malcah who was waiting for them
When the ship brought them back to Danzig
After they were barred from the Holy Land,
Who found them the agricultural visas to England
And saw them off the night that Hitler invaded.
But there is no real story.
All that remains is a faded snapshot
A few sentences in unread memorial tomes,
And me, who cannot tell any story for sure.

Today’s poem was originally published in Prairie Schooner and appears here with permission from the poet.

Karen Alkalay-Gut is now easing out of a fifty-year academic career at Tel Aviv University and beginning to concentrate on writing. Born in London during World War II, she was raised in Rochester, New York and moved to Israel in 1972. She has published almost 30 books in English, and Hebrew, Spanish, and Italian translation, and has collaborated on half a dozen music CDs.

Editor’s Note: Is it possible to read today’s poem without being moved to tears? To wax poetic (this is the place for that, after all), when I read today’s poem the first words that come to mind are “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” No, really. Let me.

1) Parallelism, as both an incantatory device and as a conversation between the poem and biblical poetry. “This much is in my blood: / I was conceived on the day she died. / This much is in my blood.” “Malcah Malcah who saved all our lives / Malcah who was waiting for them.” This parallelism is working on more levels than we might imagine. To echo the Bible in this way is a tradition that dates back to the earliest World War II and Holocaust poetry. But, in fact, it dates back to long before the Holocaust, finding rich roots among the varied history of all Jews in exile, and particularly those in Spain’s Golden Age and the time of the expulsion.

2) Vivid imagery that does not let us forget the many tragedies of “her story.” “[T]he two infants she watched / Dashed against the wall of their home,” “I can feel her mouth, her narrow lips clamped / As she bends over the delicate mines,” “He helped / The women first, and his wife came last / But didn’t come, was burnt alive.” This poem is rife with what Aristotle termed Pathos, the emotional connection to the audience. This is not a poem that you can read without feeling, deeply.

3) The poet herself shines through as a character, real and flawed and human. We know her struggles and her failings, and we experience them with her. “If I can write of these babies, / I can manage the rest,” “When mother first told me the story… I must have been fifteen, and outraged / That she was weeping… She knew / All I cared for was my own life, / And her latest discovery / Of the fate of her youngest sister / A disruption.”

4) Malcah, on the other hand, is made a hero through raw nostalgia. Malcah means “queen,” and while the poet did not invent her lost aunt’s name, bringing her name into the poem elevates the heroine to near-godly proportions. “She blew up trains. / The courage came from her uplifted chin,” “Malcah who saved all our lives / Malcah who was waiting for them / When the ship brought them back to Danzig / After they were barred from the Holy Land, / Who found them the agricultural visas to England / And saw them off the night that Hitler invaded.” Malcah the martyr, who did not die before first ensuring that the poet and her family would live.

5) “Her Story.” It is no secret that I am a big fan of herstory. I created a project to revive and celebrate it. But herstory, as today’s poem makes clear, is multi-faceted. It is women’s history, it is one woman’s history, it is women’s stories, and it is one woman’s story. But in today’s poem it is also the admission that there is no one story. (An idea I am incredibly interested in, as I spent the fall of 2013 researching my own family’s history through the lens of varying versions of the same story, much as today’s poem does.) In today’s poem we are given every known version of Malcah’s story, but the poet twins the telling of “her story” with the idea that “there is no real story” to tell. This is as true to an accurate historical retelling as anyone can come.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: STEVE MUESKE

Posted on January 24, 2015 by asitoughttobemagazine

By Steve Mueske:

TO ALL THE FROGS

who sleep in the mud,
who cling to the trees and sing me
to sleep each night: I confess
a love for your instrument.
Your throats fill like instant bellows
with enough air for those
profundo lows: quick clench
of muscle that needs
the whole body, the Baby,-
I’m-Your-Man muscle, the muscle
that coils all the way down
to your toes. Then gone:
a belching horn blast of a note
that blows across the pond.
I love to listen to your ethereal choir –
your basses and altos, tenors
and sopranos – through my window
after making love, when you sing
of all the world’s loneliness,
and I lie sweaty on the sheets,
nerves jangling like a hotwired Yes.
“I love that sound,” my wife says,
her voice dreamy and slow;
I listen to the flavor of the dark,
its mosses, its mud and still water –
the insects, the leaves breathing –
as my body cools, and I feel
the drowsy tendrils of sleep
bring me down easy, so easy.

“To All the Frogs” was originally published in Thrush Poetry Journal and appears here with permission from the poet.

Steve Mueske is an electronic musician and the author of a chapbook and two full collections of poetry, most recently Slower Than Stars. His poems have been published in The Massachusetts Review, Crazyhorse, Crab Orchard Review, Third Coast, Court Green, Hotel Amerika, CURA, Water-Stone Review, Best New Poets, and elsewhere, with work forthcoming in The Georgetown Review. His music is available on Bandcamp. He can be reached on Facebook or Twitter @SteveMueske.

Editor’s Note: Today’s poem pays homage to the wonder of the frog and the glory of its song. The appreciation is inspired: “I confess / a love for your instrument,” while the poem is humid, steamy, evoking earth and water, sweat and music. “I love to listen to your ethereal choir…through my window / after making love… I listen to the flavor of the dark, / its mosses, its mud and still water – / the insects, the leaves breathing.”

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: DES LIENS INVISIBLES, TENDUS / TAUT, INVISIBLE THREADS

Posted on January 3, 2015 by asitoughttobemagazine

From DES LIENS INVISIBLES, TENDUS / TAUT, INVISIBLE THREADS
Poems by Dara Barnat; Translations by Sabine Huynh:

A BRILLIANT FISH

We must choose each other
again and again.

The feeling is a brilliant fish
you catch a thousand times.

We must carry each other
like smooth stones
in the palms of our hands –

a familiar feel,
a roundness.

UN POISSON MOIRÉ

Un poisson moiré
Se choisir l’un l’autre, s’y reprendre
à plusieurs fois.

Cet émoi ressenti face à un poisson moiré
qu’on pourrait attraper des milliers de fois.

Transportons-nous
tels des galets lisses
dans le creux de la paume –

toucher familier,
rondeur.

GROWING VEGETABLES

Her wide hips remind me
that I was born,
because in photos at twenty
they are still narrow
and slim.

Bending over
and planting roses
she gathers immense joy
from the dirty pebbles
and the new petals.

I hold her basket
like a daughter should
and almost pretend
to smile and be grateful
for the fresh, ripened tomatoes.

Is it with age
that happiness can be found
in growing mint
and drinking ice water
that has collected tiny bugs?

My mother shares soap
with a man who is not my father
but a good man,
waiting inside
to make our sauce.

The basket is now full
and since her joy
takes up the whole garden
there is no room
for my joy.

But she says daughter,
you will have your own life,
and your own garden,
just pray for rain,
and grow your vegetables.

CULTIVER SON POTAGER

Ses hanches généreuses
me rappellent ma naissance
– dans des photos d’elle à vingt ans
elles sont encore étroites
elle est encore mince.

Penchée
sur les roses mises en terre
elle recueille une joie immense
des cailloux sales
et des jeunes pétales.

Je lui tiens son panier
telle une fille dévouée
et réussis presque
à sourire de gratitude
pour ces tomates mûres.

Est-ce avec l’âge
que l’on trouve du bonheur
à faire pousser de la menthe
à boire de l’eau glacée
où surnagent des petites bêtes?

Ma mère partage son savon
avec un homme qui n’est pas
mon père, un homme bon,
il attend à l’intérieur
de préparer notre sauce.

Le panier est plein
la joie de ma mère
remplit le jardin
plus de place
pour la mienne.

Alors elle me dit : tu sais ma fille,
tu auras ta propre vie
et ton propre jardin,
prie pour qu’il pleuve
et cultive ton potager.

PRAYER I DO NOT KNOW

No one is here, just me,
alone. I close

my eyes and try
to remember your face,

its light, your
fingers, their light

touch, your laugh,
the lightness. I recite a prayer

that is my own:
May we live

a thousand years together
in another life.

PRIÈRE OBSCURE

Comment prier
pour toi ? Personne

ici, moi
seule. Je ferme

les yeux, tente de voir
ton visage,

sa lumière, tes doigts,
l’affleurement,

ton rire,
la légèreté. Je récite une prière

qui est mienne:
Puissions-nous vivre

mille ans ensemble
dans une autre vie.

Today’s poems are from Des liens invisibles, tendus / Taut, Invisible Threads, published by Recours au poème éditeurs (2014), and appear here today with permission from the poet.

Des liens invisibles, tendus / Taut, Invisible Threads is a bilingual collection of poems by the American poet Dara Barnat, translated to French by Sabine Huynh. Dara Barnat explores migration (between New York, where she was raised, and Tel Aviv, her adopted city), the experience of being an English-language poet in Tel Aviv, intimate familial relationships, her father’s long illness and passing, as well as secrets, history, and memory. Loss is certainly at the core of the poems; although she succeeds in guiding her readers to comfort, even joy, with wisdom she has learned from enduring grief. In the last poem of the book, the speaker addresses her father in the afterlife, and they are both happy to be “alive.” This exhilarating vision demonstrates how Walt Whitman informs the poet’s elegies. She imagines herself walking down the street with Whitman. It is also not surprising to encounter Emily Dickinson or Robert Frost, since the power of Dara Barnat’s poetry resides in its capacity to observe our solitude with grace and honesty.

Dara Barnat was born in 1979. Her poetry appears widely in journals in the United States and Israel. She is the author of the chapbook Headwind Migration (2009), as well as poetry translations and scholarly essays. Dara holds a Ph.D. from the School of Cultural Studies at Tel Aviv University. Her dissertation explored Walt Whitman’s influence on Jewish American poetics. She teaches poetry and creative writing.

Sabine Huynh was born in 1972. She holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), has authored poetry and prose books (novel, short stories, academic book, literary essay, diary), and has edited an anthology of modern French poetry, which were published by Galaade Editions, Voix d’encre, La Porte, éditions publie.net, Recours au poème éditeurs, E-Fractions Editions, among other French publishers. She writes in English and French, translates daily, occasionally teaches creative writing classes, and regularly contributes to the French literary journals Terre à ciel, Terres de femmes, and Recours au poème. Her website: http://www.sabinehuynh.com

Editor’s Note: The opening poem in Dara Barnat’s debut collection begins, “Please know that taut, / invisible threads / tethered us / to those years.” Threads that bind the speaker to mother and home, to father and illness, to time, to what comes into being and what inevitably slips away. And so Des liens invisibles, tendus / Taut, Invisible Threads invites us into a deeply personal yet resonant world of life and death, love and loss, relationship and the human experience.

Nestled within the honest, reflective, beautiful lyric of these poems are the moments poetry was made for: “maybe / we should part now, because oceans / dry up in time, / even the whitest bones / turn to ash.” Equally powerful are so many of the poems’ closing stanzas and end-lines: “daughter, / you will have your own life, / and your own garden, / just pray for rain, and grow your vegetables;” “May we live // a thousand years together / in another life.”

Throughout the book we are welcomed into a private, sacred space. Into kitchens and gardens, hospitals and homelands. We are invited to bake bread and receive intimate moments like sacrament. Crossing the wide span between memory and horizon, Taut, Invisible Threads is like a migrating bird that “fights the seasons, / and lands wherever / there are seeds, / water, and soft earth, // until it arrives.”

I wish that I were well-versed in French and thereby able to comment on the translations by Sabine Huynh housed within this moving bilingual collection. Falling far short of that wish, I can only say that I have had the pleasure of hearing the translator read some of her poetry translations aloud in French, and it was a transformative experience. Her voice is emboldened by its quiet humility, and the passion she has for translation is well-known amongst the numerous writers who seek to have their work translated by this gifted writer and translator.

I have had the pleasure of featuring both Dara Barnat and Sabine Huynh on this series, and am thrilled to see these two incredibly talented writers and translators brought together in one stunning collection. This book—and this collaboration—is a gift to the poetry world that should be read, shared, and celebrated.

Want to see more by Dara Barnat?
Buy Des liens invisibles, tendus / Taut, Invisible Threads from Recours au poème éditeurs
Dara Barnat’s Official Website
Dara Barnat’s Official Blog
“At Least Forward Now” in Haaretz

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: MOTHER NIGHT

Posted on December 27, 2014 by asitoughttobemagazine

MOTHER NIGHT
By James Weldon Johnson

Eternities before the first-born day,
Or ere the first sun fledged his wings of flame,
Calm Night, the everlasting and the same,
A brooding mother over chaos lay.
And whirling suns shall blaze and then decay,
Shall run their fiery courses and then claim
The haven of the darkness whence they came;
Back to Nirvanic peace shall grope their way.

So when my feeble sun of life burns out,
And sounded is the hour for my long sleep,
I shall, full weary of the feverish light,
Welcome the darkness without fear or doubt,
And heavy-lidded, I shall softly creep
Into the quiet bosom of the Night.

(Today’s poem is in the public domain, belongs to the masses, and appears here today accordingly.)

James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) was an American author, educator, lawyer, diplomat, songwriter, and civil rights activist. In addition to being known for his leadership of the NAACP, Johnson was known during the Harlem Renaissance for his poems, novels, and anthologies collecting both poems and spirituals of black culture. (Annotated biography of James Weldon Johnson courtesy of Wikipedia, with edits.)

Editor’s Note: This Yuletide season I have been thinking—and writing—about ancient holiday traditions that we still practice, and how we received them. So when I came across today’s poem I was struck by the homage it seems to pay to the ancient festival of Mothers’ Night. This winter celebration was held on the eve of Yule, and celebrated The Mothers (goddesses) giving birth to the sun and the new year.

Beyond its title, today’s poem is rich with images of this ancient holiday: the night of labor, the birth of the sun, and the cycle of a year, when “whirling suns shall blaze and then decay.” Yet just as winter is a kind of death, in the second stanza the poet turns “Mother Night” into a metaphor for his own eventual death, imagining that when his time comes he will “Welcome the darkness without fear or doubt” and “softly creep / Into the quiet bosom of the Night.”

Want to see more by and about James Weldon Johnson?
The Poetry Foundation
Poets.org

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: LESLIE CONTRERAS SCHWARTZ

Posted on December 6, 2014 by asitoughttobemagazine

By Leslie Contreras Schwartz:

LABOR PANTOUM

We climb, all legs and hands
clutching for each other’s
eyes that we cannot see.
Before I see you, I have met you.

Clutching for each other’s eyes
& faces, your moon-shape up to my swollen one.
There is Green’s Bayou meeting thick vines,
plastic bags scuttling across the water.

Where I rode up and down the shore, swelling
with solid loneliness, clay and sand repeating.
Click and hum from houselights, grasshoppers rasping on water
the evening when my father was on his way

home, the twitch of his fingers a solid loneliness repeating
as he played piano on top of my fingers.
He picked up my mother’s hand on his way to some place
in the backseat of his car. She climbed out of her house for good.

She watches her shows, I hold onto her fingers
when she says to the television I always wanted to do that,
to a woman climbing out of sequins
dancing across the stage, face drowned out by light.

I always wanted to do this,
to ride my bike beside the wildness, the surge
& the bayou where drowning is so close to surviving
& my mother’s face as she washes the dishes by hand.

Baby, now you are born into this surge, a wild
search of dirt paths and bayous. You are a signal
sent back to the world, the hand
I held in the air, the shadow it made in the dusk

as I held onto the handlebar, a signal to myself
that I can conjure something out of barely.
Shadows and dusk.
Climbing, all my legs, your hands.

“Labour Pantoum” appears here with permission from the poet.

Leslie Contreras Schwartz has an MFA from Warren Wilson College in poetry, and her work has appeared in Pebble Lake Review, Southern Women’s Review, and the anthology Improbable Worlds, an Anthology of Texas and Louisiana Poets, edited by Martha Serpas and published by Mutabilis Press in 2012. She also writes personal essays and fiction. She lives in Houston.

Editor’s Note: There are few poetic forms as subtle and lulling as the pantoum. A skilled hand knows how to manipulate the repetition, creating ripples and echoes as lines reemerge in new contexts. Leslie Contreras Schwartz has just such a hand. Through the mists of the form a story emerges, elliptical and swaying. A story of what was and what was unrequited, “a solid loneliness repeating” in a world where “drowning is so close to surviving.” But also a story of what is and how it came to be. A world where the poet “can conjure something out of barely,” out of “Shadows and dusk.”

Want more from Leslie Contreras Schwartz?
Build the School – Leslie Contreras Schwartz’s Official Blog

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: NICOLE ROLLENDER

Posted on November 29, 2014 by asitoughttobemagazine

THE FORMS OF SEEKING
By Nicole Rollender

Behind my father’s house, the lake is stained
with floating water lilies, where deep marsh grass smells

like want. Where we’re always returning. Swan wings extended,
a flash of white and water. My father, now blind in one eye,

doesn’t know what chartless world he’ll enter tomorrow.
These flowers, here now, will die by week’s end. I understand why at night

they close so slowly, sinking under moon drift and leaf fall. He watches
a snapping turtle cross the lake, a slow, even trailing – its weighted body

knows how to cross waters, unsinking. Yet, my father’s journey
still ripens. Unmoored, he walks the yard, seeking the self

who has already walked up the mountain path toward a village,
its gate festooned with red flags and bells. And a woman holding a wash

basin filled with oil and flowers, a bread basket. He creates and creates
these streets, hung with paper lanterns, windows open, fountains flowing

with the passage of time. From the gates, what man will emerge?
Will he always wonder how his life was chosen for him?

Underwater, the lilies’ stalks will curl up, submerging and holding
the pollinated flower heads. As something beautiful dies,

it makes another kind of rapture: From bees’ flight, the flower petals
browning into thick seed pods (oh, the memory of their fragrance) will burst

into the lake, the old lily falling apart and drifting. His chance
for survival is remembered joy: Live your life as if pulling from a well

inside yourself. For you are alone, and within you is all of your past
and all of what will come. Live your depths over and over with gratitude.

Behind the shed, he finds a deer skull resting on moss, stippled
with evening light, and then rain. Here now, he’s swept away,

swept away.

“The Forms of Seeking” appears here with permission from the poet.

Nicole Rollender is the author of the poetry chapbooks Absence of Stars (forthcoming July 2015, dancing girl press & studio), Little Deaths (forthcoming November 2015, ELJ Publications) and Arrangement of Desire (Pudding House Publications). She is the recipient of CALYX Journal’s 2014 Lois Cranston Memorial Prize, the 2012 Princemere Journal Poetry Prize, and Ruminate Magazine’s 2012 Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize for her Pushcart Prize-nominated poem “Necessary Work,” chosen by Li-Young Lee. Her poetry, nonfiction and projects have been published or are forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Alaska Quarterly Review, Creative Nonfiction, Radar Poetry, Ruminate Magazine, PANK, Salt Hill Journal and THRUSH Poetry Journal, among others. She received her MFA from The Pennsylvania State University, and currently serves as media director for Minerva Rising Literary Journal and editor of Stitches Magazine, which recently won a Jesse H. Neal Award.

Editor’s Note: I suggest you curl up with today’s poem as you would with a good book. Read and reread until its thick layers enfold you. Read once for sound. For music and alliteration. Read once for story. For the father and the momentary windows that open into his life. Read once for structure. For form. Then read several times for beauty. Because “As something beautiful dies, // it makes another kind of rapture.” Because this poem wants you to “Live your life as if pulling from a well // inside yourself.” Give this poem enough of yourself to discover all that it offers in return. Then go forth and “Live your depths over and over with gratitude.”

Want more from Nicole Rollender?
Nicole Rolldener’s Official Website
CALYX
Heron Tree
Thrush
Quail Bell Magazine
Hermeneutic Chaos

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: ALEXIS KIENLEN

Posted on November 22, 2014 by asitoughttobemagazine

By Alexis Kienlen:

HOW TO PICK AN APPLE

find a ripe specimen,

gaze at its perfection,

cup it in your hand,

turn the bottom star to the sky.

show the end of the apple to heaven,

let it fall.

“How to Pick an Apple” appears here today with permission from the poet.

Alexis Kienlen is the author of two collections of poetry, 13 and She Dreams in Red. She’s also the author of a biography of a Sikh civil rights activist called Truth, love, non-violence; The story of Gurcharan Singh Bhatia. Alexis lives in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada where she works as an agricultural reporter for a newspaper called Alberta Farmer. From 2001-2006, she was the Literary Editor for Ricepaper magazine, a Vancouver based Asian Canadian arts and culture magazine. She currently writes a weekly literary column for The Grande Prairie Daily Herald Tribune. Her poetry, fiction and journalism pieces have appeared in numerous publications across Canada and online. She’s currently working on a novel and a new collection of poetry.

Editor’s Note: Today’s poem is vivid and whimsical and whisks the reader away on a brief yet epic journey. Placing us, at first, in the everyday pleasure of picking an apple, the poem turns on the word “turn” in the fourth line. From there we are shifted upward, toward the stars and the sky and the heavens, and are transported from the orchard into the realm of the spiritual, the mystical, the otherworldly. The last line echoes what has been biblically ingrained in the western apple, the fall.

Today’s poem is dedicated to my friend Luis, a faithful reader of this series and a man who knows and loves a good apple.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: KAREN PAUL HOLMES

Posted on November 15, 2014 by asitoughttobemagazine

By Karen Paul Holmes:

DRAWN INTO CIRCLES

Last evening, I placed fresh towels on both dog beds
heard scratching and rearranging in the night.
This morning, each dog lay curled
into a circle of towel
like a bird’s nest.

How life loves
a circle:
the sun
cups of tea
pizza, roses, embraces
wedding rings, cathedral domes, bells
with notes radiating like ripples from skipped stones
the egg, the womb, the opening, downy heads
suckling mouths, breasts, eyes filled
with delight for bubbles
and bouncing balls.

Why do we box ourselves into corners
put our babies into rectangular cribs
build square houses and boxy buildings
drive cars to perpendicular crossroads
stare at newspapers, monitors, dollars
go to our rest in hard-edged coffins
slowly lowered into matching graves?

It’s a comfort
to imagine our rounded bones
becoming round bits of the globe
our spirits rising to orbit among spiral galaxies
joining those who completed the circle before us.

TEACHING MOZART IN STONE MOUNTAIN PRISON

I didn’t know what crimes they committed,
didn’t want to: those 12 guys glaring at me,
wondering what I had in store.

No female had taught there before
so I wore a calf-length, shapeless dress;
no make up; tortoise shell glasses instead of contacts.

Twice a week, iron gates banged behind me,
paperwork shuffled, an armed guard took me down
a warren of halls. He stationed himself by my door.

I needn’t have worried–soon knew, just as told,
if one prisoner caused trouble, he’d be jumped
by the others grateful for the chance of a college degree.

This was music appreciation. None knew the classics,
but one had played William Tell Overture in band.
All began to embrace opera, symphony, sonata—

I think the music transported them, comforted
even as they struggled to study in noisy rows of bunks.
One evaluation stays with me 30 years later,

Thanks be to God for blessing us with Mrs. Holmes.
But I felt blessed early in the semester:
We arrived at Mozart Piano Concerto Number 21.

Their books covered just the first movement, yet
I left the record playing into the second, saying,
You’ve got to hear a bit of the andante.

Muted violins conjured the ethereal melody while
repeated notes in the violas mesmerized.
After the pianist took up the solo for several bars,

I reached out to lift the needle… Twelve students
—no longer thief, mugger, murderer—
sang out in unison, No, leave it on!

“Drawn into Circles” was first published in Poetry East and appears in the collection Untying the Knot (Aldrich Press, 2014), and “Teaching Mozart in Stone Mountain Prison” was first published in POEM. These poems appear here today with permission from the poet.

Karen Paul Holmes is the author of the poetry collection, Untying the Knot (Aldrich Press, 2014), which tells a story of loss and healing “with grace, humor, self-awareness and without a dollop of self-pity,” according to Poet Thomas Lux. Karen received an Elizabeth George Foundation emerging writer grant in 2012. Publishing credits include Poetry East, Atlanta Review, Caesura, POEM, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Every Day Poems, The Southern Poetry Anthology Vol 5: Georgia, and the forthcoming anthology of Georgia poets from Negative Capability Press.

Editor’s Note: Today’s poems shed new light on existence, demanding that we reconsider our human condition. “Drawn into Circles” deftly considers both the concept of the ‘circle of life’ and the roundness of nature versus the right angles of the man-made world. “How life loves / a circle: / the sun… the egg, the womb, the opening.” So “[w]hy do we box ourselves into corners / put our babies into rectangular cribs / build square houses and boxy buildings”? “It’s a comfort / to imagine our rounded bones… joining those who completed the circle before us.” While “Teaching Mozart in Stone Mountain Prison” engrosses us in a moving narrative that forces us to forfeit our assumptions and accept the beauty of being human. Both poems demand a second read, and a third, and neither poem leaves us quite the same as we were before we encountered them.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: ALLIE MARINI BATTS

Posted on September 13, 2014 by asitoughttobemagazine

By Allie Marini Batts:

breeding, trumpet flowers out of the dead ash

a cautious unfurling, petals, these fragile fingers,

extended through layers of silt and salt,

the battle-blown lands where once a city stood.

these vines, they labor furiously,

expanding and dividing beneath the dust of nations

nightshades in mitosis, their toxins lovely, bright and narrow

set against a land destroyed.

likewise myself and my skin,

a playground for dead things

and invasive plants to rise from,

a phoenix, in botany.

the mythology of the night skies

you were once a man

square but bright

incense in the dark

your story, told by Greeks

naïve, the way we

lit sticks of incense and prayed

wantonly to false hopes and square gods

and stars, naïve offerings

and devotions meant to keep us safe

protections and punishments

remembered in the

rotations of the planet

naïve, how we thought

you loved us

and would keep us safe

“breeding, trumpet flowers out of the dead ash” previously appeared in quarter after and “the mythology of the night skies” previously appeared in Symmetry Pebbles. These poems appear here today with permission from the poet.

Allie Marini Batts holds degrees from both Antioch University of Los Angeles and New College of Florida, meaning she can explain deconstructionism, but cannot perform simple math. Her work has been a finalist for Best of the Net and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She is managing editor for the NonBinary Review and Zoetic Press, and has previously served on the masthead for Lunch Ticket, Spry Literary Journal, The Weekenders Magazine, Mojave River Review & Press, and The Bookshelf Bombshells. Allie is the author of the poetry chapbooks, You Might Curse Before You Bless (ELJ Publications, 2013) Unmade & Other Poems, (Beautysleep Press, 2013) and This Is How We End (forthcoming 2014, Bitterzoet.)

Editor’s Note: “breeding, trumpet flowers out of the dead ash” is so stunning that the poem speaks for itself. I am loathe to feature a favorite line in the face of so many beautifully wrought images emerging one after another. The subject matter is as rich as the soil the poem’s flowers rise from. The world revealed is post apocalyptic, brimming with nature’s resilience and with death nurturing new life, “a phoenix, in botany.”

“the mythology of the night skies” turns our eyes upward to the heavens and our minds to the gods. While pressing against the idea of worship in antiquity, the poem’s echo seems to question deity worship altogether. “naïve, how we thought / you loved us / and would keep us safe.”

Want more from Allie Marini Batts?
Find her on the web
Follow her on Twitter @kiddeternity

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