Occasional Poetry – Page 6 – As It Ought To Be

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: THE BURDEN OF LIGHT

Posted on May 31, 2014 by asitoughttobemagazine

from THE BURDEN OF LIGHT: POEMS ON ILLNESS AND LOSS
Edited by Tanya Chernov
Selected Poems From the Anthology By Sivan Butler-Rotholz:

ELEGY FOR THE STILL LIVING:
FATHER CANNOT STAND STILL

[My father taught me] every time you breathe in,
say thank you. Every time you breathe out, say goodbye.
—Li-Young Lee

The thing about my father is I wear my sadness like the inside of a jar.
How can you not see inside of it? How the slightest bit of air destroys me.
How I love him so much I struggle

to love him

at all.

GENESIS

i. The thing is, XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX and in this way the world was created.

ii. Definitions

“Wife”: The person I love most
in the world.

“Death”:         He is not here
                         in this hole
                         in the ground
                         piled with dirt
                         and seashells.

“Mother”: Inlaid tongue.

“Wedding”: When I was young I liked to play ‘wedding’ and my father would walk me down the aisle and it’s a good thing he did then because
Flowers are like that.

“How”: We go on

“Flowers”: Are not stones.

“One God”: Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us.

Today’s poems are from The Burden of Light: Poems on Illness and Loss, available by donation on Smashwords and Amazon. These poems appear here today with permission from the poet.

The Burden of Light: Part poetry anthology, part field guide, part multimedia art collection, The Burden of Light offers its readers companionship through the darkest days. With work by artists who have confronted serious illness or grief in their own lives, the poems and artwork in these pages hold the power to touch the heart, stir the mind, and heal the spirit, each in its own way. These pieces illuminate the vital force of our humanity, while encouraging us to reach out to others in need.

With 100% of the proceeds benefiting the National Colorectal Cancer Research Alliance, even a small donation from one has the power to affect change when added to the contributions of others. Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in America, yet this cancer is largely preventable when detected early. By supporting the groundbreaking work of the NCCRA, we’re all helping to promote regular medical screening and fund the research needed to develop better tests, treatments, and ultimately, a cure. Just as The Burden of Light is designed to help readers move forward from trauma, so too will donations help those currently experiencing serious illness.

Editor’s Note: Yes, yes, today’s poems are a first here on the Saturday Poetry Series in that they are written by your faithful editor. I am honored to be featured in this anthology alongside a plethora of talented artists, including SPS-beloved poet Peggy Shumaker. But beyond sharing a little of my own work with you here for the first time, I wanted to share with you this important collection.

Whether you purchase it for your Kindle or download it as a PDF, you get to decide how much you want to pay for this anthology, and 100% of the proceeds benefit the National Colorectal Cancer Research Alliance. Via the Kindle edition or PDF you will find links to listen to the poets read their poems aloud, for an added layer of experience and immersion. This is a thoughtful, powerful, philanthropic endeavor with the power to both move the reader and effectuate change.

Check out the full anthology for more poems by yours truly and many more talented poets writing through their own experiences with illness and grief. Please donate what you can, and then go forth and read!

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: SPRING!

Posted on April 12, 2014 by asitoughttobemagazine

Spring’s first flowers spotted this week in New York’s Jefferson Market Garden.

WITH A BUNCH OF SPRING FLOWERS
By Kate Seymour Maclean

In the spring-time, out of the dew,
From my garden, sweet friend, I gather,
A garland of verses, or rather
A poem of blossoms for you.

There are pansies, purple and white,
That hold in their velvet splendour,
Sweet thoughts as fragrant and tender,
And rarer than poets can write.

The Iris her pennon unfurls,
My unspoken message to carry,
A flower-poem writ by a fairy,
And Buttercups rounder than pearls.

And Snowdrops starry and sweet,
Turn toward thee their pale pure faces
And Crocus, and Cowslips, and Daisies
The song of the spring-time repeat.

So merry and full of cheer,
With the warble of birds overflowing,
The wind through the fresh grass blowing
And the blackbirds whistle so dear.

These songs without words are true,
All sung in the April weather–
Music and blossoms together–
I gather and weave them for you.

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

Kate Seymour Maclean (1829-1916): Born in Fulton, New York, seemingly as “Chloe Ann Seymour” and educated at the Falley Seminary, Kate Seymour moved to Canada a few years after her 1857 marriage to Allan MacLean of Ingersoll, Ontario. She was well known as a poet in her day, producing three volumes of verse and publishing frequently in Canadian and American magazines. Her first book, The Coming of the Princess, And Other Poems (1881), is prefaced by Graeme Mercer Adam, then editor of the Canadian Monthly. Loyal to her adopted country, MacLean became a strong advocate of the “Canada First” movement. She died in Toronto at the age of 86. (Biography courtesy of The Simon Fraser University Library.)

Editor’s Note: If you are an avid reader of this series, you have faithfully read along as I lamented this year’s winter and dared Mother Nature to bring on the spring. This week, spring has finally arrived. The cherry blossoms are bursting in all their glory in Washington D.C., and here in New York City there is warm weather and sunshine, the first cherry blossoms have been spotted on the trees, and spring flowers can finally be seen lining the streets and blooming in the parks.

If you read this series, you know how we on the East Coast have suffered this long winter, and you know how anxiously your faithful Editor has awaited spring. Today I am happy to report that SPRING IS HERE, and in its honor I offer you “A flower-poem writ by a fairy,” “sung in the April weather,” “Music and blossoms together.” To celebrate spring’s arrival, here is a poem in the form of a bouquet, “gather[ed] and weave[d] … for you.”

Want to see more by Kate Seymour Maclean?
All Poetry
Public Domain Poetry

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: LIZZIE LAWSON ON SPRING

Posted on March 22, 2014 by asitoughttobemagazine

Photo by Lydia Polimeni.

SPRING
By Lizzie Lawson

The tiny crocus is so bold
           It peeps its head above the mould,
           Before the flowers awaken,
To say that spring is coming, dear,
With sunshine and that winter drear
           Will soon be overtaken.

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

Lizzie Lawson (circa 1867–1902 OR 1858-1905) appears to have been a poet and children’s visual artist. This is a rare instance in which I was able to find many poems by the poet, but almost no biographical information whatsoever. The woman appears to have been lost to us, while her artistic creations remain. If anyone knows about the biography of this enigmatic artist, please share with us in the comments below!

Editor’s Note: Crocuses have been spotted on the east coast, “To say that spring is coming.” (See photographic evidence from photographer Lydia Polimeni above.) In fact, the first day of spring has come and gone. But… we here in the northeast expect snow next week, and are facing record lows for the beginning of spring. So, today’s entry is a kind of a rain dance, or, rather, a spring dance. A call to the powers that be: Bring on the spring! Bring on the sunshine! Bring on the—dare I say it?—warmth!!! Let the crocuses be the sign “that winter drear / Will soon be overtaken.” For we have had our fill of winter drear, thank you very much.

Want to see more by Lizzie Lawson?
Public Domain Poetry
Visual Art

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: GUILLERMO FILICE CASTRO

Posted on March 8, 2014 by asitoughttobemagazine

RITUAL
By Guillermo Filice Castro

into a hole
something of the self

always
disappears

light mother

tongue

into
mouths

and this morning

that
bunch
of hairs

peeled off
the drain

and dropped into the toilet

almost
as mournful a gesture

as a wreath
laid

in the ocean

(Today’s poem was originally published in Fogged Clarity and appears here today with permission from the poet.)

Guillermo Filice Castro is a recipient of the 2013 “Emerge-Surface-Be” fellowship from the Poetry Project. His work appears in Assaracus, Barrow Street, The Bellevue Literary Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Court Green, Ducts.org, Fogged Clarity, LaFovea.org, Quarterly West, among others, as well as the anthologies Rabbit Ears, Flicker and Spark, Divining Divas, Saints of Hysteria, and more. His translations of Olga Orozco, in collaboration with Ron Drummond, are featured in Guernica, Terra Incognita, U.S. Latino Review, and Visions. In 2012 he was a finalist for the Andrés Montoya prize. He lives in New York City.

Editor’s Note: Into the abyss of grief, of loss, something always disappears. And in the absence that follows it is the little things that remain, reminding us that one day they too will disappear. Those little bits left behind, as they too depart, become “almost / as mournful a gesture // as a wreath / laid // in the ocean.” Death is universal, yet it is the specificity with which today’s poet mourns and pays homage that allows us to feel his unique loss as if it were our own.

Want to read more by and about Guillermo Filice Castro?
“Ritual” in Fogged Clarity (with audio)
“Jones Beach” in Fogged Clarity (with audio)
LaFovea.org
Assaracus
The Bellevue Literary Review

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: FRANCESCA BELL

Posted on December 28, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

By Francesca Bell:

I LONG TO HOLD THE POETRY EDITOR’S PENIS IN MY HAND

and tell him personally,
I’m sorry, but I’m going
to have to pass on this.
Though your piece
held my attention through
the first few screenings,
I don’t feel it is a good fit
for me at this time.
Please know it received
my careful consideration.
I thank you for allowing
me to have a look,
and I wish you
the very best of luck
placing it elsewhere.

(Today’s poem originally appeared in Rattle and appears here today with permission from the poet.)

Francesca Bell’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in many journals, including burntdistrict, North American Review, River Styx, Poetry Northwest, Crab Creek Review, and Tar River Poetry. She has been nominated six times for the Pushcart Prize. Her full-length manuscript was a finalist in the Poetry Foundation’s 2012 Emily Dickinson First Book Award competition and a semi-finalist for the 2012 Philip Levine Poetry Prize.

Editor’s Note: Ha! That is really all that need be said regarding today’s poem. Ha! But I will say a bit more. That today’s poem is dedicated to all of my poet and writer friends, to everyone who has ever braved the submission process and the rejection inherent within it. We all thank you, Francesca Bell, for turning our collective suffering on its head and for giving us a way to laugh about it. I, for one, will never look at a rejection letter the same way again.

Want to read more by and about Francesca Bell?
Francesca Bell’s Official Website
phantom limb
River Styx
Women’s Voices for Change
Spark Wheel Press

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: FRANK MATAGRANO

Posted on December 21, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

AUDITING THE HEART
By Frank Matagrano

One mother who owned
the sea, one father who walked

on water, and in a row boat,
one brother who believed

marriage meant becoming
the roof over a woman’s head.

A room for the night with a view
of the water, the moon a quarter

less than it should have been,
the shape of my wife drawn

into the empty bed one memory
at a time. There were too many

stars to count, a registry
of old gifts and receipts strewn

across the sky, a mess
of things that died getting here.

(Today’s poem originally appeared in Rattle and appears here today with permission from the poet.)

Frank Matagrano is the author of I Can Only Go As Fast As the Guy in Front of Me (Black Lawrence Press). His poems have appeared in Rhino, Cimarron Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Gargoyle and Ninth Letter, among others. He lives and works in Chicago, Illinois.

Editor’s Note: Today’s poem makes a promise with its title. And yet, when the goods are delivered, the reader is surprised to receive them. We enter the poem via a personal worldview in macro, looking to the marriages that shape the poet’s expectations of marriage. And yet, when the poet turns toward his own marriage, when he moves to deliver on the title’s promise, there is something startling in the way we turn toward his loss. How lovely, simple, and devastating to consider “the shape of my wife drawn // into the empty bed one memory / at a time.”

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: PAUL NEMSER

Posted on August 10, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

MEETING YOU AFTER CHERNOBYL
By Paul Nemser

The last frozen day had come and gone, and we were
sleeping in the elbows of trees in the elbow of a town,
our sutures all sunken together as if we shared one wound,
as if we had climbed from a single pit

like a race of dinosaurs grown from a fused lump of eggs
that had slept in valley ice for three shifts of the North Star,
as the leaves undecorated the last few branches
which were skinny as bat bones or the bones of a squirrel.

There were cattle blotched with waning alphabets.
And there were eyes that had seen too many lights,
so we didn’t recognize the wells
we had drunk from all our lives, nor

the creek that flowed with clothes and flesh,
nor the seeds brought from all over the countryside,
from knived sacks in waterlogged barns, from pods
trembling on grotesque grasses.

We talked to each other until we could not talk.
It was gobbledygook, was joy, nothing to remember:
We would not be overrun like ants by a larger horde of ants.
The darkness would not come closer.

A dog would lift its howl to where the wind left
the tablecloths—crumpled, clawed up, drying in the sun.
A phalanx of trucks that had jostled our vertebrae
would sound like bubbles in a bottle.

I never missed you so much as waking from that sleep.
And I dream of you now lingering barely below ground,
all your twenty fingers warbling together as on flutes.
My pores open to you as to rain.

Years give way to lakes of white dust, to unyielding dirt-land.
The snouts of oxen stain pale as marble
when the beasts haul blades through the hardness that remains
of what decades ago had been garden.

(Today’s poem originally appeared in AGNI, and appears here today with permission from the poet.)

Paul Nemser’s book, Taurus, chosen by Andrew Hudgins as winner of the 2011 New American Poetry Prize, will be published by New American Press in November, 2013. His chapbook, Tales of the Tetragrammaton, will be published by Mayapple Press in summer, 2014. Nemser’s poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in AGNI, Blackbird, Fulcrum, Per Contra, Raritan, Third Coast, and elsewhere. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his wife Rebecca and practices law in Boston. Some of his family came from Chernobyl.

Editor’s Note: Today’s poem is one of those thoughtful, emotive, beautiful lyric poems that better expresses itself than I ever could. Some days the poems just speak for themselves. Are you listening?

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: THE BAAL SHEM TOV

Posted on July 27, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

TWO SOULS
By the Baal Shem Tov

From every human being
there rises a light
that reaches straight to heaven.
And when two souls
that are destined to be together
find each other,
their streams of light flow together,
and a single brighter light goes forth
from their united being.

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

The Baal Shem Tov: Rabbi Yisroel (Israel) ben Eliezer (d.1760), often called the Baal Shem Tov, was a Jewish mystical rabbi. He is considered to be the founder of Hasidic Judaism. (Annotated biography of the Baal Shem Tov courtesy of Wikipedia, with edits.)

Editor’s Note: Today’s poem is a quote from the Baal Shem Tov that gives rise to the age old question: What is poetry? If poetry is beautiful lyric that speaks to the human condition, that considers love with eloquence and a care for words and ideas, today’s quote is most certainly that. Today’s post is dedicated to my husband, with whom I am beginning a journey as a “united being.” May we shine brightly together from our single light.

Want to read more by and about the Baal Shem Tov?
Wikipedia
Jewish Virtual Library

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: SPRING!

Posted on May 4, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

New York’s Jefferson Market Garden in full spring bloom; the editor enjoying the same.
Flower photos by Sivan Butler-Rotholz. Editor photo by Frank Ortega.

Poems & Excerpts For Spring:

For winter’s rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

– Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909)
Atalanta in Calydon (1865)

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough.

– A.E. Housman (1859–1936)
A Shropshire Lad (1896)

The month of May was come,
when every lusty heart beginneth
to blossom, and to bring forth fruit;
for like as herbs and trees bring
forth fruit and flourish in May,
in likewise every lusty heart
that is in any manner a lover,
springeth and flourisheth in lusty deeds.
For it giveth unto all lovers courage,
that lusty month of May.

– Sir Thomas Malory (d. 1471)
Le Morte d’Arthur (1485)

A little Madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King.

– Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
No. 1333 (c.1875)

(Today’s poems are in the public domain, belong to the masses, and appear here today accordingly.)

Editor’s Note: Why? “For winter’s rains and ruins are over,” and the trees are “hung with bloom[s] along the bough.” Because “that lusty month of May” is here, and there is “[a] little Madness in the Spring.” Because everywhere I turn there are bright colors, sweet sights and smells of spring blossoms, and new life overtaking what was once the winter earth. Because it is spring! Nature is putting on her party dress and blessing us with glorious, beautiful spring. And what better way to welcome this lovely season than with poetry?

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