Category: Poems

RWB Workshop Poem of the Week – Aug 17

Red Wheelbarrow Poets
Poem of the Week 8/17/2016

Arthur Russell

Summer Solstice, 1974

On West 36th Street,
in the strange, back apartment
over the wholesale button shop
you took me home to,
and pissed with the bathroom door open,
and returned to bed when we
should have been dressing to go,
the dirty window blurred
the crazy view up the air shaft
to the top of the Empire State Building,
while the radio insisted
that its love was like a ship on the ocean,
and my cheek lay on your thigh.

Blog – http://redwheelbarrowpoets.org (187 followers)
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/RWBPoets (323 likes)
Twitter – https://twitter.com/RWBPoets (80 followers)

RWB Workshop Poem of the Week – Aug 10

Red Wheelbarrow Poets
Poem of the Week 8/10/2016

Janet Kolstein

Zarafa

In captivity, she sailed down the Nile
far, far away from her home
and across the Mediterranean Sea,
Africa behind her, Marseille ahead,
the first giraffe ever seen in France.

A sight of wonder and delight
the moment her hooves touched land,
she walked to Paris to be
another jeune fille
in the king’s menagerie
in the Jardin des Plantes.

A star, an oddity, an obsession,
alone in her sphere,
she would live out her life
in solitude
among the hundreds of thousands
who came to stare
and buy wares with her likeness.

Was there a man, woman, or child
who pitied her plight,
looked into her unguarded gaze and wondered
if giraffes can dream of herds on savannas
and other long necks to nibble
and twine?

(A gift from Muhammed Ali Pasha to King Charles X, Zarafa (“lovely one”) landed in Marseille on October 1826 and inspired “giraffemania” until becoming passe. She died in 1845.)

Blog – http://redwheelbarrowpoets.org (187 followers)
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/RWBPoets (322 likes)
Twitter – https://twitter.com/RWBPoets (78 followers)

WCW & National Translation Month – Carmen-Francesca Banciu

Wednesday, September 7, 2016, 7 p.m.

Williams Center for the Arts
Cinema 3

Plus the words of William Carlos Williams
and open readings from the floor

Free

Carmen-Francesca Banciu was born in Romania and studied religious painting and foreign trade in Bucharest. As a result of being awarded the International Short Story Award of the City of Arnsberg for the story “Das strahlende Ghetto” (“The Radiant Ghetto,” 1985), she was banned from publishing her work in Romania. In 1991, she accepted an invitation extended by the DAAD Berlin Artists-in-Residence program and came to Germany. She was a writer-in-Residence at Rutgers University (2004-2005) and at the University of Bath in 2009. Banciu currently lives in Berlin and works as a freelance author and co-editor of the multilingual e-magazine Levure Littéraire. She is the author of four novels and four collections of short stories. Her work draws from the experience of writing under Communist dictatorship and from geographic and linguistic migrations. Her new books, the poetry collection Leichter Wind im Paradies and Mother´s Day—Song of a Sad Mother, were both published in 2015 by PalmArtPress.

Homesick

Last night I forgot to close the lid of the rubbish bin.
The ants appeared in front of me.
They have built an ant road. They crawl up to
the rubbish in a thin line.
Still no road below.
I close the lid and break the road.
Some ants are locked inside. They
will be taken to the rubbish dump. On the other side
of the village. Where the rubbish containers sit.
Far away from here.
Will they find their way back to the house?
Will they create a new home?
Will other ants accept them?
Adopt them?
Or will they be lost in foreign lands?
I keep the lid closed.

Contact: John Barrale – john.barrale@gmail.com

RWB Workshop Poem of the Week – Jul 27

Return to Eastern Europe

Claudia Serea

Come to Baba, little girl,
says the old hag

and spreads her flabby thighs,
revealing her vagina

equipped with three rows
of sharp teeth.

Blog – http://redwheelbarrowpoets.org (185 followers)
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/RWBPoets (317 likes)
Twitter – https://twitter.com/RWBPoets (78 followers)

GV – Anton Yakovlev and Pete McCullough


EIGHTH POETRY/MUSIC YEAR AT GAINVILLE!

The Magic Circle returns to GainVille Café on Friday, July 29 at 7 PM as we continue our eighth year of great poetry and music. Exciting news: Rutherford’s own PETE McCULLOUGH will be bringing his standup bass to perform. Also exciting news: ANTON YAKOVLEV will be our featured poet and will debut his latest chapbook! Open mic follows.

Gainville Cafe
17 Ames Ave., Rutherford. 7 PM
$8 donation at the door includes coffee/tea and dessert
(201) 507-1800

RWB Workshop Poem of the Week – July 20

Smells
John Barrale

I remember the bittersweet smell
of my mother’s lipstick
melting in its gold cartridge
when we went to Coney Island,

and how the glossy burst of sun was like a poster
when we walked out of the subway station—

and how, riding home, I slept
in her suntan-oiled arms,

and the smell of the sea,
so old and fertile,
rose like a ghost
from the sand-wet bottom of my pail,

and how after she died,
the lonely cigarette and onion sweat
of my father
would wake me
for school in the morning.

Blog – http://redwheelbarrowpoets.org (160 followers)
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/RWBPoets (307 likes)
Twitter – https://twitter.com/RWBPoets (74 followers)

RWB Workshop Poem of the Week – July 10

Hospice
Janet Kolstein

Long ago, in another shelter,
I had raised the shade
in my father’s dying room
to present the backyard’s branches
stripped for winter —
but he was done with nature,

so I pulled the shade back down
as he closed his eyes against the outside,
and his ragged breath
was all that was left.

WCW—Cathy Cavallone

photo

Wednesday, July 6, 2016, 7 p.m.

Williams Center for the Arts
Cinema 3
One Williams Plaza, Rutherford NJ

Plus the words of William Carlos Williams & open readings from the floor

Cathy Cavallone has been a resident of Bergen County for much of her life and studied at Montclair State University. She has been writing for decades, but began pursuing it seriously in 2014. Her last feature was at the Classic Quiche in Teaneck, New Jersey. She has been published in The Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow, The New Verse News, Turk’s Head Review, Rose Red Review, Nerve Lantern, and elsewhere. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and teaches English to middle school students.

Releasing the Burka

First, she will feel the caked earth
under mud huts seeping through
her blistered toes.
Then, the winds will wrap about her ankles
and coil up her splintered calves.
Next, her knees, like desert rocks,
will buckle and shake as she exposes
her heaving midriff to the flagrant sunlight.
Then, her breasts, like two ashen husks,
will quiver in the stagnant air. And finally, her eyes,
like landmines about to detonate onto the world,
will gaze upon the adumbration of where
a woman once stood.

RWB Workshop Poem of the Week – June 12

The Fence of My Indifference

Arthur Russell

When your difficulties jump the fence of my indifference
and I awaken to thoughts of you in dirty bedclothes;
when I look at my fork of food and cannot eat it

and draw ballpoint hash marks on the breakfast paper,
and say your name out loud in the shower,
and later pull weeds as if to clear a landing place for you,

but you don’t come, I recall how we ran down the ramp
to the lower level of Grand Central, and I drew your shadow
in pencil on the whispering wall, but none of that reaches you.

Today, I write the word “hand,” and a hand grows from the paper.
I draw a picture of a hand, and a hand rises from my shading.
I say the word “hand,” and my hand comes down on your shoulder

in the hospital room, and you turn from your silence to see that
I have jumped the fence of my indifference into your difficulties.

 

Blog – http://redwheelbarrowpoets.org (160 followers)
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/RWBPoets (307 likes)
Twitter – https://twitter.com/RWBPoets (74 followers)

RWB Workshop Poem of the Week – June 5

Eulogy for Eleanor

John Barrale

 

I was twelve; she was eight.

My mother forced me to go— her funeral mass

was a sad storybook on a Sunday morning.

The night before her coffin floated

in a forest of flowers and ribbons.

Under its closed lid, I imagined her head

resting on a satin pillow—

jewel-like, exact

and delicate.