Author: Wayne L. Miller

Poem of the Week 05/1/18

HERE IS LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE

Mark Fogarty

There is a saying, that we shall doe to all men
like as we will be done ourselves;
making no difference of what generation, descent or colour
they are. And those who steal or robb men,
and those who buy or purchase them,
are they not all alike?

Here is liberty of conscience, ^wch is right and reasonable;
here ought to be likewise liberty of ^ye body,
except of evil-doers, ^wch is an other case.
But to bring men hither, or to rob and sell them against their will,
we stand against.

Pray, what thing in the world
can be done worse towards us,
than if men should rob or steal us away,
and sell us for slaves to strange countries;
separating housbands from their wives and children.
Being now this is not done in the manner
we would be done at
therefore we contradict and are against
this traffic of men-body.

• from “Germantown Friends’ Protest Against Slavery,” 1688

First protest against slavery in the British colonies, 92 years before the abolition of slavery in Pennsylvania. Signed by Garret henderich, derick up de graeff, Francis daniell Pastorius and Abraham up Den graef.

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Poems of the Week 04/24/18

Agriculture Aggregated

Bill Moreland

Little Bear said,
Cut me open, climb inside,
let me keep you warm.
Dunce cap tee-pees,
more ‘had’ than fooled
for repeated lessons
never learned.
Ranges and treaties
far-reaching but broken.
Gold grain woven
with staggered gray piping.
Totem poles and refinery columns.
Mud packed adobes
and stalactite ceilings.
The swallows are nesting
in the barbed wire.
The fires are smoldering
in the fallows.
The farmers’ sons cut through them
with a shallow plow.
Sparks crisscross
the crossed-out lower forty.
The perverted profit yielding
a zero sum’s gaming
propped up soy prices
with shortages.
There’s a Xerox in the barn,
the cows are multiplying,
extra buckets are required.
Manure boots
and three-piece overalls.
Aching bunions call for a drop in the market.
The Wall Street Journal predicts a calf by half spring.
Dawn on the farm,
like automatic garage doors,
crows.

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Careening

Arthur Russell

I don’t want to write a poem to you
or to the dark mole on your arm,
to your affection threading a finger under my shirt cuff,
or your octopus-ink-in-the-water soul.

I don’t want to meet the onrush of your love with words
that may deflect and send it away at an angle
I can only watch with regret, or use my verbal facility to suggest
that I am anyway the master of this rowboat.

But I will write a poem to you in the shape of a couch,
with the sound of the people talking out in the hall
and the smell of a store you haven’t been to in years
where discount dungarees were stacked on rough tables,

and the owner’s mother stopped you from pawing through the piles
by asking, in the nicest way, what you were looking for.

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Poem of the Week 04/17/18

At His House

Arthur Russell

She slept in the car,
under two coats,
half woke cold wondering
whether to go in,
hiding from him and the chill
with reasons banked like drifts
and snow clumping on the window
next to her face.

He saw the car
from the second floor
bedded down in snow,
no footprints, and she wasn’t
in the spare room, the windshield
covered; he stubbed
his cigarette and went down.

Snow on the window screens
made the square grid show;
she opened the car door and blinked.

He opened the door, waited
for her to come, rehearsing,
by slight movements
how he would open his arms
to her.

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Poem of the Week 04/10/18

Maggie Amanda Jones at 104

John Barrale

She remembers Nantucket Island when it was the true heart
of her clipper ship captain, his ways set and weathered,
like the gray boards and red brick of the house they shared.

She misses him, still keeps his oil-skinned slicker on the hook
where he hung it to dry, a bulky thing— yellow-colored,
blonde like him.

He is in the small things: his meerschaum pipe
with the carved, bearded face waiting
like the doily on the parlor chair— its weave finer
than the best net, something she crocheted
as if to catch the Bay Rum smell from his hair.

Their house is a maze now, become so in a matter of fact way
when last year’s confusion struck— her stroke a slap
that said sit down.

She is slow. Her pride, like her chair’s wheels,
stubborn as oxen and often stuck in the rug’s pile,
or the floor’s warp—places where she, deer-like,
had once stepped lightly.

Maggie still remembers the hero uncles lost at sea,
each a tale told at midnight by dead aunts
who stare from painted portraits,
their whispers sea swells and dark knots
scattered along the parlor’s pine panels.

The aunts wear bright bonnets in morning sunlight,
and beg a smile when she passes, dear sister friends
who sit with her for breakfast tea by the fire.

She smiles, runs her hand through thinning hair.
She is old, very old, older than they once were.
Her ways simple —Sunday afternoons
one sherry glass set on the table not two.

But she is still alive, quietly enduring,
like her neighbor’s promise kept for sixty years—
not to cut the shared yard’s oak.

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Poem of the Week 04/03/18

Love me

Claudia Serea

With gusts of wind through lace curtains
and white bed sheets,

love me with water,
endless spring rain,

love me with chocolate
and champagne,
fill bathtubs, tunnels, and pipes,

love me like fire,
blindfolded and light,

like a rock concert
in a burning library,

like a bullet train leaving the station
with cellos and violins—

love me like ghosts in the old palace,
with hammers and swords,

love me
like war,
with dust, tanks, and humvees,

crunch me between your teeth
like a rose stem,

love me like a bargain,

like barter, give me your heart
and I’ll give you rice
and a chicken for it,

love me like the sun loves the moon,
and soup the spoon,

love me like a breeze in your hair,
love me like your breath,

like all life
and all death.

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Poem of the Week 03/27/18

Condo Pool

Janet Kolstein

Leaning back in the hot, bubbling water,
he looks at me with steamy eyes,
his face flushed, his hair wild
and curled like Gabinius.
“I admire you,” he says,
“So many people don’t come down
to the pool, but you do.”
“You are an inspiration.”

Really?, I murmur.

Thank
you.

Thank you for nothing. Thank you
for lacking the facts. Thank you
for ignoring my questions regarding
the locker room renovation. Thank you
for replying to my email with
WHO ARE YOU?
Thanks for doing the little scuttle dance
when I try to speak to you,
for your condescension
wrapped in bonhomie.

I turn to walk away
over the perforated plastic mats
at the edge of the indoor pool,
the sun barely making it out
of the scrim of winter clouds,
and I wonder if the lifeguard
is going to open the door for me.

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Poem of the Week 03/20/18

Speedy Motherfucking Gonzales

Claudia Serea

Rung like rags,
we climb aboard,

little life left
in these body carcasses,

juiceless lemons
after making lemonade
all day.

But this driver was bit
by the bat from Hell.

Hunched over the wheel,
he’s the hawk
of the highway.

If I weren’t so tired,
I’d let out an Arriba, arriba,
ándale arriba!

when the bus flies
onto Route 3,

away—away—away
from the city in flames.

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