Poetry – Page 101 – As It Ought To Be

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: TOUCAN NEST BY PEGGY SHUMAKER

Posted on August 17, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

FROM TOUCAN NEST
Poems of Costa Rica
By Peggy Shumaker

STRANGLER FIG

Cousins, then,
the myriad orchids
of the mist forest
and this towering
strangler fig.

Both start
tenuous life
as stowaways
tossed aside
by wind or wing

dropped
without anyone’s
noticing
high above
the forest floor.

Air plants,
epiphytes, bromeliads
plastered so heavy
some branches
crack, tumble.

But the fig’s patient.
It settles in,
sucks what it can
from leaf rot, from
breaks in bark,

drinks deep
from fine mist.
Then into air
fig tentacles
unfurl, aiming

toward the host’s
small patch of soil.
Fig leaves above
cover all else.
Not out of modesty.

Each fig takes its own
special wasp
to carry on,
wasp that swaps
pollen for protection.

Nearly gone,
the host lingers
within the fig
like the memory
of a difficult parent

who never knew
what she was taking on
when she got you,
mother who resented
being tied down,

mother whose face
you can’t quite
picture, mother
who changed so much
those last years

you barely knew her,
broken mother
asthmatic, wheezy,
who gave her all
so you might live.

HOWLER MONKEYS

The parents, like most parents, yell.
A lot. But little ones hang
by the tips of their tails,

sail off into space, misjudge
the next branch,
crash through

limbs and leaves,
catch
themselves,

carry on
as if they’ve got a lifetime
maybe more.

Mangoes ripe
right now
drip down their elbows.

Tomorrow
has yet
to occur to them.

Río Sarapiquí

ANHINGA DRYING HER WINGS

Purely practical, we know,
her need to hold herself open

to let what sun she can catch
ease the river from her wings.

And yet. And yet.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

See Peggy Shumaker Read in New York 8/20/2013:
Tuesday, August 20th
Word for Word Poetry welcomes Red Hen Press
Bryant Park Reading Room
7:00pm – 8:30pm | Bryant Park Reading Room, 41 W. 40th St.
42nd Street & 6th Avenue, New York, NY 10110
Featuring Peggy Shumaker, Ron Carlson, Evie Shockley, and Tess Taylor

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Today’s poems are from Toucan Nest (Red Hen Press, 2013), and appear here today with permission from the poet.

Praise for Toucan Nest: “This is a book of burnished, lapidary attention. Its poems—vibrant with seeing, quickened with soundwork, subtled by insight—peel open landscapes both outer and inner. The costs of our human presence and extractions are in these pages, but also the radiant return of human awareness. Toucan Nest is a unique account of encounter, imaginative inquiry, and expansion.” — Jane Hirshfield, author of After and Given Sugar, Given Salt

Peggy Shumaker is Alaska State Writer Laureate. Her most recent book of poems is Gnawed Bones. Her lyrical memoir is Just Breathe Normally. Toucan Nest grew from an eco-arts writing workshop in Costa Rica. Professor emerita from University of Alaska Fairbanks, Shumaker teaches in the Rainier Writing Workshop. She is founding editor of Boreal Books, publishers of fine art and literature from Alaska. She edits the Alaska Literary Series at University of Alaska Press. Please visit her website at www.peggyshumaker.com.

Editor’s Note: Having had the pleasure of both sharing Peggy Shumaker’s work on the series before and seeing her read, I could not pass up an opportunity to both feature some pieces from Shumaker’s latest collection and to strongly encourage those of you who are in the New York area to go see her read on Tuesday. Red Hen Press is a fantastic publisher renowned for the quality of the women writers they publish, and Shumaker’s reading on Tuesday promises to be both powerful and moving while taking you, as Toucan Nest does, on a vibrant journey.

Want to see more by Peggy Shumaker?
Come see the poet read this Tuesday, August 20th, in Bryant Park
Poet’s Official Website
Author Page at Red Hen Press

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: RAUL GUTIERREZ

Posted on August 3, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

LIES I’VE TOLD MY 3 YEAR OLD LATELY
By Raul Gutierrez

Trees talk to each other at night.

All fish are named either Lorna or Jack.

Before your eyeballs fall out from watching too much TV, they get very loose.

Tiny bears live in drain pipes.

If you are very very quiet you can hear the clouds rub against the sky.

The moon and the sun had a fight a long time ago.

Everyone knows at least one secret language.

When nobody is looking, I can fly.

We are all held together by invisible threads.

Books get lonely too.

Sadness can be eaten.

I will always be there.

(Today’s poem originally appeared on Heading East, and appears here today with permission from the poet.)

Raul Gutierrez, Founder and CEO of Tinybop, is an entrepreneur with a 20-year history in technology and the arts. Tinybop was born out of a belief that all kids are explorers. His hope is to build a company where ideas, design, and engineering come together to delight, inspire, and educate children. Raul was born in Monterrey, Mexico, grew up in Lufkin, Texas, and now lives in Brooklyn, with his wife and two young boys.

Editor’s Note: Today’s poem has universal appeal. It captures the magic of imagination, and of love, before ending with a turn that both surprises and speaks to the heart. It is the kind of work that one reads, and shares, until it takes on a life of its own. It has been translated into over ten languages; just this week it was translated into German! (Check it out below.)

Today’s post is dedicated to my husband, who found and shared it with me, and to Natasha and Darren Brown. It is your inspired parenting that Matt and I both thought of when we first read this piece.

Want to read more by and about Raul Gutierrez?
Heading East – Mexican Pictures
Read today’s poem in Deutsch (German)!
Follow Raul Gutierrez on Twitter

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

Three Poems by Karen Carissimo

Posted on July 25, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

Quarantine

Kahului, Maui, 1900

At the edge of an island, shore
shave to bedrock, bulwarked

by tide, sweat clouded our eyes,
our bodies disguised in the markings

of plague. Gauze of darkened fog
uncurled a taste of sweet rot

from burning cane. We heard wind
splitting stalks across fields,

heard hard-breathing horses dragging
wooden wheels over sand and gravel

as we lay in sheds like spent animals.
Inside this other island, one voice

among us spoke of God and the devil
as one faultless being, spoke of dawn

gathering light from great distances,
from each border we crossed,

the single body of us yet to rise
past these walls into a lowering sky.

***

Serenade

If I could invent anything with words,
with music, I would be with you.
It’s Christmas, and the rains are chilled
by gusts from icy shores. I think
of places where war has taken our world

into fire. God turns from such agonies,
human, desperate. I ask only you, will you
take my hand, leave your home? I don’t have
much time. Soon I’ll be sent to another island,
or to a city in Europe where snow falls on starving

men. I offer very little. I’ve worn the same shoes
for seven years. Damp cold is always lifting
through the soles of my feet. I walk past
your window, shuttered. Your father refuses
the sight of me. If this war ends, wait for me

at the cove where we met, where waves
roar in with courage, recede in fear. Wait
on the hot sands during summer where you never
wear your white ruffled dresses. Kiss me
there, or glimpse my dark form passing you, gone.

***

Swipe Wine

Kahului Camp, Maui, 1924

Molasses, water, and yeast turned
clear as gin bottled and buried
in dirt floors of quonsets under cots.
In this wine, a numbed delay
of pain to the backs of field hands
from black snake whips of lunas.
Songs of blood thirst rang, drunken
rage in the camps rose as workers
circled in revenge, one blow given
for each bear mark on torso, on limb.
Weeks without rain, cane brittle
as kindling, they pulled the luna
off his horse as shade deepened
toward evening, beat him through
drifts of dust, ten pounds
of stalks dropped on the body,
flame lit in the coming night, winds
carrying thick smoke muffling the cry
of a man gone missing, the singing
drowning the sound of the sea:
Watch me flee, I am done,
I am done cutting cane.

***

Karen Carissimo was born in Berkeley, California, and educated at Mills College and The University of Southern California. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including North American Review, Notre Dame Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Western Humanities Review, American Literary Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Puerto del Sol. Her fiction has appeared in Green Mountains Review, and her nonfiction in The San Francisco Chronicle. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, and is currently at work on a novel and a second collection of poems. The above poems appear in her debut collection, Dream City.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: LET’S GET LUCKY!

Posted on July 20, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

MANUELA

In the bleak hours of an afternoon in Spain,
I sprung free from my grandpa’s kitchen,
the smells of peppermints and pears, and headed
to town for an afternoon of people watching.
The streets were hand-cut paper forests, flush
with tawny kids in flat sandals and psychedelic
friendship bracelets. Feminine footwear obsessives
in custom-made minis smoothed on rice vapor
lotion, delicate contessas fit for a summer wedding,
see-through and filigreed. I dreamed of leaving home
for an evening at the Tropicana, sexy and dazzling
in a glamorous dress—understated, ethnic girl
plucked from an under-the-radar haven; someone’s
graceful holy grail, soft ephemera on his fingers.

SUMMER

I could write a paper on the topic of lip balms,
groovy grandma that I am. With ’60s playfulness
and a flapper’s flounce, I stick to the Great Gatsby,
intensive scalp treatments, and statement-making
tchotchkes. Cat boxes and flea markets don’t
satisfy me; I roll around in sea foam suede, take my
Rolls Royce on an unexpected trek around Morocco.
I’m more of a jump-or-you’ll-miss-it haute hippie,
a sucker for patent trim and embroidered-in-Bali
sequined corsets. I’m looking for a biker-gone-boho
grandpa—rugged but genteel, with an air of London
street-cool—for stomping through exotic gardens,
splurging on tie-dyed wedding cake. Two spicy,
rock-and-roll piglets rubbing bohemian noses.

VANESSA

How often can you wear a bleeding heart
and get away with it? I spend most of my time
getting calls from complete strangers who want
to run around with a Fitzgerald heroine, architectural
and sweet, unbearably twee—or an unstoppable
rock star, a morbid candy-colored centerpiece,
loose and right at home in a disheveled bed.
I step into another world and feel like nothing;
off-hours, I’m a timid violet with a limp handshake
that peeks out of my coat sleeves. No one ever
detects the potential of a wispy girl lost in her clothes,
so I audition for drama, slip on some sugar. The line
between adorable and alarming gets thin, thin, thin.
I slouch and watch the layers flutter, lit from within.

Today’s poems are from the forthcoming Getting Lucky (Spooky Girlfriend Press, Fall, 2013), and appear here today with permission from the poet and the press.

About the Book: Getting Lucky is a collection of sonnets culled from the editorial copy of Lucky, a newsstand publication about shopping and style. By adopting the magazine’s gendered and glossy language, Nicole’s poems explore contemporary ideals of beauty and femininity, as well as female-specific narratives we see in media, culture, and everyday life.

Editor’s Note: Let’s Get Lucky! It’s a beautiful love story. A small press dedicated to publishing women poets meets the kind of witty, thoughtful, cheeky gal whose poems literally step out of the pages of a fashion magazine. Both are determined to give voice to the underrepresented. In seeking out a luminary to spearhead today’s female poetry contingent, the publisher finds a poetess who brings the cultural misogyny inherent in today’s society to its knees. While wearing a fabulous pair of heels.

The arts, in America today, are in grave peril. Poetry in particular is under-read and scathingly underrated. A Corporatocracy is on the rise, and the core of humanity is being marginalized. There is no money in art, and less money for the arts. Those of us who write poetry, who publish poetry, do so out of pure love and unwavering passion. We depend on our community for support—to read our work and to enable its very existence.

Getting Lucky is a fantastic, cutting-edge book that critiques the culture of fashion and shallow materialism by giving feminism a whole new meaning. Spooky Girlfriend Press is a self-described “tiny two-person operation” with huge vision and an impressive track record of publishing forward-thinking, critically-acclaimed works. The two have come together to make magic, to make dreams come true, and they need your help.

Via Indiegogo, a crowdfunding platform that empowers ideas, Spooky Girlfriend Press has started a campaign to fund the making of Getting Lucky. Take a stand for art today. Show the world that poetry matters. Help the voiceless sing from the rooftops. Our government is not going to do it. Big corporations are not going to do it. It is you—readers of poetry, writers of poetry, lovers of the underdog, believers in vision and heart—who are going to make the difference. Donate to this campaign today and let’s Get Lucky!

Nicole Steinberg is the author the forthcoming collection Getting Lucky (Spooky Girlfriend Press, 2013) and Birds of Tokyo (dancing girl press, 2011), and the editor of Forgotten Borough: Writers Come to Terms with Queens (SUNY Press, 2011). She is also the founder and former curator of Earshot, a New York reading series for emerging writers. She hails from Queens, New York and currently lives in Philadelphia.

Help Nicole Steinberg and Spooky Girlfriend Press Get Lucky!
Donate to Getting Lucky‘s Indiegogo Campaign

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: AMANDA AUCHTER

Posted on July 13, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

THE PINK CHANEL SUIT
By Amanda Auchter

She said
don’t wash it, when asked

if she wanted to change, to take off

the wool skirt, the blue

lined jacket. I want them to see,

she said. Kid gloves, a blood bloom

on her wrist,
stockings. Swipe of hair

across her mouth.
In the car, she remembers

a scatter of yellow

roses, black birds rising
from the Live Oak. How the children

ran alongside as they drove past, waving.

The open windows. A man with a camera,

an umbrella
that opened. A raincoat. In the car,

her body covered with bone,

hair. The bright pink suit against the gray
November. And all that red inside her hands.

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

Amanda Auchter is the founding editor of Pebble Lake Review and the author of The Wishing Tomb, winner of the 2012 Perugia Press Award, and of The Glass Crib, winner of the 2010 Zone 3 Press First Book Award for Poetry. She holds an MFA from Bennington College and teaches creative writing and literature at Lone Star College. She is currently at work on a memoir about adoption and the foster care system, What Took You So Long.

Editor’s Note: There is a certain ease in the presentation of today’s subject matter that makes the devastation somehow more powerful. A softness in the notion of “The bright pink suit against the gray / November” that at once heightens and dulls the impact of the poem’s final blow. It is as if the poem is a grenade exploding flowers.

Want to read more by and about Amanda Auchter?
Author Website
Author Blog
Pebble Lake Review

I Dreamt I Was an Alligator

Posted on July 11, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

I Dreamt I Was an Alligator

Jessica Dawson

all teeth and hot,
wet breath stomping about
on my new-found squatness.
My body was torpid, outward elbows
moving skyscrapers, that
scene in a nightmare
where the director Slows. Everything. Down.
for effect.

But then, everything
was vibrant, crashing

and I was alive
mud-yellow ivories snapping shut
on the rubber tent stake
of a flamingo leg,

feathers muffling the splintering noises,
crumpling pink and red on my tongue.

***

Jessica Dawson is a modern-day Wendy. She lives in California with Peter Pan, a baby bear, and a future Supreme Court justice. She’s ecstatic to see her first book of poetry now e-published by Verve Bath Press/ Words Dance.

She has had poems published in Thunder Sandwich, The Hold, Passenger May, killpoet, Words Dance, remark., The Seed, MEAT, Triptyph Haiku, Lit Vision, Mastodon Dentist, Nefarious Ballerina, The Montucky Review, Red Fez and Slurve Magazine. Download your copy of her book here.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: LYNNE KNIGHT

Posted on July 6, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

Photo by Matt Phillips

AGAINST ORDER
By Lynne Knight

Tear the line into pieces.
                                                                                                    Open it out:
                          Let silence be
                                                       part of all that must be
said.
I can’t.                                                                                   I can’t.
It looks so disorganized. I want
to move it like furniture
back into place.
It’s a curse, your obsession for order,
my lover says, wanting me
                                                                                             wild—

So, to justify myself, I point out
that light in the night sky
may be traveling, but the stars stay
where they are.

Or do they?
What if some night Cassiopeia
fell apart,
splashed down like water?

What use the well-appointed bed,
the vacuumed rug,
the alphabetically arranged books
if a star came splashing down
like water, fiery water,
burning everything in its path?

All my molecules about to scatter—

just the thought of it makes me clutch
the sheets, press myself into the mattress—

but ah, the wonder of it, to be
moving inside my lover’s
arms then, any second bound
to explode—

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

Lynn Knight‘s fourth collection, Again, was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2009. Her previous collections are Dissolving Borders (Quarterly Review of Literature), The Book of Common Betrayals (Bear Star Press), and Night in the Shape of a Mirror (David Robert Books), plus three award-winning chapbooks. A cycle of poems on Impressionist winter paintings, Snow Effects (Small Poetry Press), has been translated into French by Nicole Courtet. Knight’s awards include a Theodore Roethke Award from Poetry Northwest, a Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, an NEA grant, and the 2009 RATTLE Poetry Prize. She lives in Berkeley, California.

Editor’s Note: The desire for order and the need to control. So tempting. And yet, what control have we in the face of nature? In the face of love? We can try to keep this life as tidy as we like, but what use are our efforts in the face of a falling star? From the macro to the meta, today’s poem takes us on a wild journey through the mind of a poet who struggles against the wild, only to succumb to the wonder of what is beyond her control.

Want to read more by and about Lynne Knight?
Official Website
Sixteen Rivers Press Author Page
Poetry Society of America
Verse Daily
Connotation Press Author Page

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: LYTTON BELL

Posted on June 29, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

Photo by Robert Sanders

JANE’S HEARTBREAK YARD SALE
By Lytton Bell

Who sells used sex toys at a garage sale?
I knew I had to pull over
as soon as I saw that table full of dildos
just to hear this woman’s story

A whole bed was for sale
and a claw-footed bathtub
a motorcycle, a large stack of books
lingerie and ten photo albums
Photo albums?
Leafing through, I could see that they were all
happy couple love photos:
their trip to Hawaii
backpacking through Europe
mountain climbing in Tibet

And I shouldn’t forget to mention all of the love notes
three huge cardboard boxes full of them. I picked one up:
I stood outside your window for hours last night
while you were sleeping
hoping you would feel me there, and pull open the curtain

I approached her as she sat by the cash box
wearing a pair of oversized pink sunglasses
So, this is everything he ever gave you? I asked her, trying to be nonchalant
She nodded
I was going to light it all on fire, she told me
But what’s the point?
True, I replied, not sure what else to say
She seemed so peaceful about it. Almost happy

Just then I noticed a pile of cds:
Jane’s Joy Ride Mix
Jane’s Taking a Bath Mix
Mix for Jane for When She’s Feeling a Little Blue
And one called
In Case of an Emergency, I LOVE YOU
It was sealed with yellow CAUTION tape
and had obviously never been opened

Can I buy this? I asked her
$3.50, she said
I gave her the money and put the cd in my car
and cried and could not open it

(Today’s poem originally appeared in Rattle , where it was a 2012 Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist, and appears here today with permission from the poet.)

Lytton Bell has published five books, won six poetry contests and performed at many California literary venues. Her work has appeared in over three dozen journals, web sites and e-zines. She lives in Sacramento, California. Lytton earned a poetry scholarship to the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for the Arts in 1988, where she studied with Deb Burnham and poet Len Roberts. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Bryn Mawr College in 1993. Feel free to send Lytton an email at lytton_bell@hotmail.com.

Editor’s Note: Clear, narrative, and heartbreaking. Lytton Bell has a knack for relaying the real. What a fascinating moment, the intersection of these two lives, and how breathtaking the way their shared story speaks to us all.

Want to read more by and about Lytton Bell?
Poetica Erotica
Buy Nectar as an eBook from Amazon
Buy Body Image from Amazon

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Quarantine

Serenade

Swipe Wine

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I Dreamt I Was an Alligator

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