Month: June 2018

Poem of the Week 6/26/18

Stuart Leonard

Mr. Blue

She painted the car
with a brush of her own.

Went and named it, Mr. Blue.

Could’ve been just another blue Chevy,
and I never thought she named it Mr. Blue
just because the car was blue,
or because her eyes were blue,

or her heart,
or a blue moon over Jersey,
or her dad strumming the blues,

or the blue captain’s uniform
her first step-father wore
when he visited her at night.

It was all of that,
a Who song,
a sky to fall from,

a blue ’72 Impala,
Turbo-Jet 400, four-barrel carb,
and Deluxe features.

Hit 150 on the turnpike, four in the morning,
near the Pulaski Skyway,
and we laughed as the world
was torn into shreds.

Mr. Blue wasn’t dragging along any baggage.

Took us way uptown, to the bag-lands,
gun to your head, didn’t mean shit,
knew how to throw a party,
only let the blue-eyed girl pick the music.

Sometimes when we were cruising,
stoned and silent,
her blue eyes fixed on nothing ahead,
she just started to cry.

Mr. Blue would hand her a tissue
and play “Angels Wanna Wear My Red Shoes.”

I would keep driving,
usually nowhere,
usually find somewhere
to pull over,
get in the back,
sweat up the seats,
get Mr. Blue jealous,
take that urge out on each other
as if we were being forced.

 

 

Poem of the Week 6/19/18

Grand Canyon

Mary Ma

You’re in the Grand Canyon,
you always said you’d go.

You try to absorb
what is before you,
but the vastness overwhelms.

Instead,
the words are left alone in your head,
“Grand Canyon, Grand Canyon, Grand Canyon.”

You’re interrupted by
the sound of your childhood nickname.

Hearing this, you think
“Who is here that I love?”
because only the people you love
call you this.

Because hearing this name
means you are seen.

For this, you turn away from the vastness,
to find the voice
and embrace.

I’m at the grocery store.
I always pick a basket instead of a cart,
so I’m shifting the weight
from arm to arm,
relieved to arrive at checkout.

The clerk calls me “sir”
when he hands me my change.

Suddenly I am
you
hearing your name
in the Grand Canyon.

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Poem of the Week 6/12/18

The Third Day
(for Neil and Blair)

Mark Fogarty

Tipperary is inland a bit, off the beaten track
Of the tourbas, that ancient Gaelic word.
West of Thurles a few miles there are no cars,
No houses, no telephone poles, no sign of man
But the road. We stopped for our bearings,
And I smelled a flavor I never had before—
The absence of any trace of humans.

If I had to guess, I’d say that air
Was the same as it was on the third day,
When the land was separated from the water.

There was a hall of trees, and wide brushes of green
Squeezed from the greenest tube in the palette.
The green ran up a hill to a meadow above.
Ireland is full of flowers. It rains most of the time,
And there are long lawns of land they never use.

There was a sun that day like the one on your finer days.

We couldn’t find the place we’re from.
A woman walked by with a pram,
Eva and her fussing son Conor.
“Oh, you’re heading in the wrong direction entirely!” she said.

Eventually, we found the spot, in a ruined church,
Sat on the groundstone my ancestors are buried under.
Hundreds of years beneath a common stone,
But they were not thrown in willy nilly.
Each was in his place. Each was in her place.

I’m thinking my asthma would do well
In that spot west of Thurles, if I could find it again.

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Poem of the Week 06/05/18

Lolo

Janet Kolstein

She told me she was attracted to a boy on our blanket,
a solid, dark-haired, dark-eyed, easy-going Armenian-American,

but my eyes would drift
over to her blanket
which held the dreamy Lolo.

Just for the sake of this poem,
try to remember a crush on the beach
and see him again
in my mind’s corrupt eye.

And try to hear the cawing of seagulls
muffled by waves
and a breeze that dried sea-wet skin,
and attempt to re-create Lolo
lolling like a minor Apollo
with his slender torso,
his insouciant smile.

Sand on concrete sidewalks
ending in the ocean,
dull thud of bare feet on wooden boardwalks,
a hazy horizon seen through sunglasses
filmy with salt,
friends frozen in time as teens,
no great opinions about life in general,
no judgments;
the past, in summer,
polished to perfidy.

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