Category: Poetry

Poem of the Week 2/28/2017

Michael Mandzik

Molten Pools

World peace contested, every place infested, clichés amiss,
armed forces distracted, filthy masses disinfected.
Welcome to Hideous City, home of the Most Heinous Anus,
whose elemental wholeness and eye weakness news
draw uncrossed vision to interpret the Lost Keys.

Place the SKELETON under the overpass
next to the CHURCH.
Open the GARAGE
without the CODE.
Wander amidst the mangrove swamps.
Wait for, then watch, the sunset.

Move, then remove, your collected phone books.
List numeric landlines as they cloud supremely
the world’s lost judgment.

Seriously, cloth is not clothes.
Close is not closed.
Tree shadows on Garret Mountain
drip silkworms into paddies east
of eaten at the Hot Grill.

Ingot we trust.

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Poem of the Week 2/21/2017

Jennifer Poteet

Flame

—– What makes the engine go? Desire, desire, desire. “Touch Me” – Stanley Kunitz

I don’t remember the name of the first boy I kissed
in the year of our nation’s bicentennial—
just his sour smell—like firewood,
and that he lived in North Arlington, New Jersey,
a town I had never seen, but thought was beneath me.
He was available, eager
and, indeed, a faint spark passed between us
as I met the tinder of his lips.
I was at summer camp, and twelve.

Later that night, Eric Gruber strolled his way
down to me, past a line of girls,
white tee shirt sleeves rolled.
Eric smoked. He was from many towns.
We kissed and caressed
on the assenting grass by the lake
until our lips and hands burned.
We were thirsty with lust; it was late August.

And now, October, some forty years later.
In my backyard, blanketed under the elms.
I don’t know what happened
to either of those boys, but I am still
that open-mouthed girl.
The leaves careen; I listen as the wind picks up.
It teases; it promises: Yes.

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Poem of the Week 2/14/2017

Zorida Mohammed

Vegetable Anyone?

Sumaria settles her tray on her head calmly
like one of her cows swishing flies
off her hind quarters and heads out to sell.

In the carefree quiet after school hour,
when the day is turing in on itself
morning glory like,
my sister and I are dawdling on Back Street
on our way to Mactab
when we run into her.

We ask to see what is on her tray.
When she resists,
we tug
until she lowers it.

Something about her with that tray
on her head, a girl my own age,
bare feet like me,
with old tomatoes, squingy eggplants,
and other bruised things
caused such a mixed-up primal feeling
to rise up in me
I didn’t know if to cry or hit her.

Instead, I said something mean
and ran off with my sister.

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Poem of the Week 1/31/2017

Claudia Serea

You won’t know this love

You won’t know this love
until you’ll know each mole,
each constellation
on her skin,

until you’ll recognize her skin scent
and crave it at night.

You’ll feel the need to touch,
to carry
your little monkey
on your back.

The urge of milk,
eyes closed.

You won’t know this love
until you’ll feel your rib
missing her rib,

the ocean of your blood
seeking her ship.

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Red Wheelbarrow Poets
Poem of the Week 1/24/2017

Arthur Russell

The Third River In the Rain

I love the rain when the rain fills the river,
when the rain fills the river, and the river starts to run,
and the willow branches read the braille of raindrops on the surface,
and ducks, defying type, hide underneath the roadway bridge,
and silent geese glide slantwise to their landing on the river,
and the island in the river sits down lower in the water,
and the tree roots hold the riverbanks,
and the empty branches lift the lowered sky
whose thickened clouds glow weirdly in the nearby city lights.

I love the rain when the rain fills the river,
and the river swells with meaning, and its meaning is to run
past the dam at Kingsland Manor, past the strip mall
on the highway that was once a marsh,
but now has a Chipotle, and the river that would fill that marsh
runs black behind the cars that park for dinner,
in a concrete quarantine that drains the rain that falls on Garret Mountain
through Essex towns and golf courses
to broaden where it joins the fouled Passaic.

I love the rain when I walk beside the river,
when I walk beside the river on my way home from the city,
from the bus stop on the highway, on a pathway
through the darkened park, my raincoat soaked,
my wide-brimmed hat with raindrops dripping from the brim,
whose felt I smell, whose smell I feel, whose beaver eaves
I walk beneath like the ducks beneath the roadway bridge
who see me walking past them to my house a few blocks further,
a man between his job and home, a home between its innocence

and what is yet to come.

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