Category: Poets

RWB Workshop Poem of the Week—September 18

Mark Fogarty

FOR LORI PIESTEWA, WHO LOVED AMERICA

To give her credit, Jessica Lynch said what all survivors
Say: If you’re looking for a hero, don’t look at me.
The Humvee driver, Lori Piestewa, there’s your hero.

Jessica Lynch got all the flash when we raided the hospital
To bust her out: pretty, blonde, fighting for Uncle Sam.
A little polish off the apple when the topless photos came out.
But I think someone who was captured can be a hero, too.
All soldiers take their shirts off on hot days.

I hate wars, but I don’t hate soldiers.

Technically the Hopi, where Piestewa’s people are from,
Doesn’t touch the United States. It is totally surrounded
By the Navajo Nation, both sovereign countries,
Though also part of the U.S. But Indian people
Are touched by something, some fierce love,
That makes them volunteer for our wars in huge numbers.

In the fog of war her convoy got lost. Piestewa drove the Humvee
At high speed, evading murdering fire
Until it was hit by a rocket grenade. Dying,
She was taken prisoner by the Iraqis,
Who declined to operate,
Buried her in a guilty grave behind the hospital.

Piestewa volunteered to serve after 9/11; she left two small children.
America must be great to be loved so well.

2.

Lori Piestewa didn’t make the TV news much,
But she has never been forgotten.
The Hopi and the Navajo, unfriendly neighbors,
Came together to grieve her.

The Hopi is a high place.
I drove there once, from Tuba City on the Navajo,
Where Piestewa grew up in a trailer park, and now is honorably buried.
It is like riding into the sky.
Thin, dry air. Lots of sunshine. Old ways.
Their holy men are consulted on the important things.

So naming a high place after her makes sense.
Piestewa Peak used to be known as Squaw Peak.
Ugly word, it squawks and smears.
Its definition, close as I can tell, is cunt.
We name things Cunt Mountain in our ignorance.

Instead, there is something holy there,
Something more important than a bad desert war.
Lori Piestewa soldiers on against ugliness.

—Piestewa Peak is located within the city limits of Phoenix. The latest remembrance of Lori Piestewa came at the 2018 Lori Piestewa Native American Games July 20-22 in Phoenix. Its honorary chair was Jessica Lynch, who frequently comes to events where Piestewa is honored.

GV – It’s Here! Red Wheelbarrow 11 Launching

Front cover_2018-RGB

The Red Wheelbarrow 11 is launching at GainVille Café on Friday, September 28, 2018, an event hosted by Mark Fogarty. Mark hosts the GainVille Cafe reading series and is one of The Red Wheelbarrow’ three managing editors.

The feature at both launches is all the poets we are publishing. As your work is in The Red Wheelbarrow # 11, we would be delighted if you join us and read from your poems that we’ve published.

Each year’s Red Wheelbarrow spotlights and presents an in-depth look at the poetry of one of our community’s members. We are very excited and happy to announce that The Red Wheelbarrow # 11’s featured poet is Jim Klein. It is a delight and a true honor to showcase Jim’s work this year. Jim is a true poetry hero, the father of our Red Wheelbarrow community, and a master poet at the top of his game.

An $9 cover includes coffee/tea, dessert.

7 PM, GainVille Café
17 Ames Avenue
Rutherford
201-507-1800

RWB Workshop Poem of the Week— September 11

John Barrale

The August Moon—

I am an old man
with old man eyes
and a flashlight.

I point the beam
on the tall grass

hoping to see
where the grasshopper sits
and plays.

I’d give all my nickels
to find him.

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Blog – http://redwheelbarrowpoets.org (263 followers)
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/RWBPoets (432 likes)
Twitter – https://twitter.com/RWBPoets (108 followers)

RWB Workshop Poem of the Week—September 4

Poem of the Week 09/04/18

God Give Me Strength!

Janet Kolstein

Sometimes, my mother stood
in the gap
between the counter and the cabinets,
pulling the sun-dried laundry
in through the window.

The pulley and the clothesline
chirped like the birds in our fold.

Before my double-paned glass,
I face a wider scene.

But, high above the telephone poles,
the trees, the pools,
and the flat tops of roofs,
I hear no birdsong.

I see my mother rolling dough for a pie,
standing at the stove, a wooden spoon in her hand,
and through the chaos of five kids,
surviving the wild years.

In defense against the siege,
she implored the Lord,
God give me strength!

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Blog – http://redwheelbarrowpoets.org (263 followers)
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/RWBPoets (432 likes)
Twitter – https://twitter.com/RWBPoets (108 followers)

WCW-Roger Sedarat

Williams Readings-Sept2018.indd

September is National Translation Month! Join us at the Williams Center to celebrate. Our feature this month is the Iranian-American poet and translator Roger Sedarat who will present a dramatic performance based on his recent poetry collection Haji as Puppet: an Orientalist Burlesque, which interrogates and challenges the western gaze toward the Middle East.

For over 15 years, Sedarat has been performing poetry and translation as Haji, a Persian punk persona based on the 19th century stereotypical picaresque British novel The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan by J.J. Morier. The translation backstory of this novel has real relevance to Sedarat’s Haji project. The first translator to bring this novel into Persian actually re-appropriated some of the Orientalist depictions. To this end, with Haji, Sedarat attempts to expose American assumptions of Iran and the Middle East. This promises to be a fun and memorable show not to be missed!

Reviews:

“Not since Ali Hakim, the Persian peddler in Oklahoma!has a minor Middle Eastern character lit up the grand stage.
—Roger Ailes, Former Fox News Chief

“Heh heh heh. Heck of a show!”—George W. Bush, Former American President

“O, O, O, that Rumi rag. It’s so erotic. So exotic!”—Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran

“With so much trouble in the region, it’s great to let go and laugh at it all.”—Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State

Join us on Wednesday, September 5, 2018, 7:00 PM at the William Carlos Williams Center, One Williams Plaza in Rutherford NJ.

Admission is free and there is an open mic with generous reading times.

RWB Workshop Poem of the Week – July 31

Poem of the Week 7/31/18

Francisco and Eva

Bobbie O’Connor

Francisco and Eva
just left the U.S.
for the third and last time.

After growing some friendships
and getting
needed treatments and meds
here,
they had to go home
to Honduras
where Eva can’t get those meds.

We became quite close,
in spite of the fact
that they can’t speak English,
and I can’t speak Spanish.

Now I hope,
with the help
of bi-lingual friends,
we can email each other.

They insisted I visit them
in Honduras,
and I hope it can happen.

And, most of all, I hope
Eva’s cancer
will be healed.

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Blog – http://redwheelbarrowpoets.org (267 followers)
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Twitter – https://twitter.com/RWBPoets (108 followers)

RWB Workshop Poem of the Week—July 24

Poem of the Week 7/24/18

Della Rowland


Teterboro           

A plane bound for Teterboro airport may someday crash into my backyard,
onto my house, onto me and the cat,
onto the dense line of trees that forms the back property line
and the north-east corner where the picnic table and grill sit on the patio,
onto the side porch of the house, with steps
going down either side to both front and back yards,

which on that day will be in flames.

The white plastic fences, guaranteed for a lifetime, no painting required ever,
will melt,
curve concavely, coquettishly into my yard,
fold neatly into the burning fuselage,
which will blaze brightly,
as suddenly splendid as lighter fluid on charcoal
when a wooden strike-anywhere match
swiped across patio slate is thrown into the barbeque grill.

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Poem of the Week email subscription
https://zc1.maillist-manage.com/ua/optin…

Blog – http://redwheelbarrowpoets.org (263 followers)
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/RWBPoets (432 likes)
Twitter – https://twitter.com/RWBPoets (108 followers)

RWB Workshop Poem of the Week—July 17

Poem of the Week   7/17/2018

Don Zirilli

A Message from Me and My Care Provider to All the Romeos

Dear broken jar of honey,
I’m writing from the savage sting
reflected in your cracking glass.

Dear desperate bugs

lighting up July,
my fireworks are all prescribed.

Dear love-starved wanderer,
I wrote the recipe for your tears.
I made them taste like ocean.

Dear empty room with slashing light,
I’ve got no space for cribs,
no paint for rainbows.

I’m a doctor of remaining.
My bedside manner
burned the beds.

Dear hands-on Casanova,
when you find out what it really means
to walk on air,

you’ll hold me as tightly as I hold you.

RWB Workshop Poem of the Week—July 10

Poem of the Week 7/10/18

Gabriel Milton

Icon

He standing alone, apart.
Not yet statuary,
No more than old.
No less a part of that
Coppered dullness beaten cold
Against the dawn,
After the death of childhood,
Before the building storm.

WCW—Julie Hart

2016-08-11 08.58.03

Wednesday, July 11, 2018, 7 p.m.

Williams Center for the Arts

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

Free

Originally from Minnesota, JULIE HART has lived in London, Zurich, and Tokyo, and now in Brooklyn Heights. Her work can be found in Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The Brooklyn Poets Anthology, Anti-Herion Chic, Beautiful Losers, Juniper and at juliehartwrites.com. She is a founder, with Mirielle Clifford and Emily Blair, of the poetry collective “Sweet Action.”

Memento Mori

I see you’ve noticed the skull–it was his
idea. After donating the brain
to Princeton, it was picked clean by beetles
at the Science Museum, sawn in half,
hinged, fitted with this hook. I could keep things
in it—old keys, rubber bands, paper clips,
worn erasers—but I won’t. Yes, I talk
to it. The teeth still seem to be him, the rest—
not so much. Some people find it creepy,
but to me it’s comforting, this part of him
that thought and ate and talked—above all, talked.
I’m still honing my thoughts against his head
as a whetstone, imagining his jaw
dropping, his eye sockets thrown to the sky,
his laugh filling the whole room, any room.

 

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