Category: Poets

RWB Workshop Poem of the Week – Oct 25

Red Wheelbarrow Poets
Poem of the Week 10/25/2016

Susanna Lee

Unspoiled

That doe, living in the woods behind my house, teaches her children:
how to lie perfectly still until she returns to nurse them;
how quick one must leap at the smell of wolf,
and how to trust one’s instinct to find the right direction to run away;
how to nudge aside the snow with the snout,
to nibble at the promise of moss beneath;
to believe that when the moss runs out,
the barren trees
will sustain life;
how to eat bark in the dead of winter,
and how long one must chew
before swallowing;
to trust in Nature,
to remain unspoiled.

I, too, am unspoiled, yet no wiser than the doe.

Her eldest,
this deer, lying on the far side of the road;
now mangled, twitching, splayed limbs akimbo;
gashes in his throat spewing, gushing red;
now stilling;
knew nothing of the factory wherein those headlights were manufactured.

I, too, am unspoiled, and no wiser than the doe.
I do not read what’s been written.
I say,
the view from atop the shoulders of giants
is directly above the spot where, once, they had decided it was the perfect place to firmly plant their feet.
They’ve now been rooted for thousands of years.

Those who’ve read all of what’s been written take this treasure trove seriously
and attempt to sequester it in an ark floating in gray matter.

However, that boat’s already leaking:
favorite recipes for chocolate chip cookies,
manuals for repairing Mac trucks,
guidebooks for traveling the Appalachian Trail,
poems sensing there are frays along the hems of bell-bottomed blue jeans;
all, stories we tell ourselves, over and over.

The better and better wars they, the learned, convince one another to create
are simply the bubbling over,
so much scum hovering atop the floating bits of ham in split pea soup.

I’m unlearned, fresh, unspoiled;
hoping to remain outside the box and discover why boxes are blinding.

I refuse to cede my innocent wholeness.
Like the doe, I retain the ideas I was born with,
those that sustained my forbears
when even the potatoes wouldn’t maintain their integrity.

In my poems, I do not make reference to ancient Greeks,
whose wisdom is said to be as yet unsurpassed.
I don’t read them.
I do not deny them their experiences. I take their word for it.
Or, rather, the word of those who’ve read them, studied them, recited by rote their verse,
then inevitably anguished over those ancient explorers’ deep voyages into meaning.

I do adore writers who cannot write an English line
without discovering the patterns of the shadows of Icarus’s wings
darkening their pages.
I enjoy imagining their privileged lives,
seeing how their curiosity led them to prowl through crumbling intellectual ruins.
I delight in finding evidence that dwelling on past writings has eviscerated their hearts.

I, on the other hand, will explore literary scholarship no further.
Unacquainted with history, science, mind-travelers, I’m untainted.
I cherish my own guile.

I will persevere.
I’ll never give up.
I will seek and discover the reason why
only the tears of dolphins and not elephants heal unicorns.

I will learn
how to move each of my own atoms independently of the others,
using nothing but the force of gluons.

Yes, and I will spend my free time in knitting,
out of the resounding echoes of the midnight howls of just seven coyotes,
enough joy and peace to blanket all the world.

This deer, lying on the far side of the road;
now mangled, twitching, splayed limbs akimbo;
gashes in her throat spewing, gushing red;
now stilling;
knew nothing of the factory wherein those headlights were manufactured.

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GV – John J. Trause and Mark Fogarty

TREASON POETRY AT GAINVILLE CAFE!

JOHN J. TRAUSE will be the featured poet at the Red Wheelbarrow Poets’ monthly reading on Friday, Oct. 28 at 7pm. John will be launching his seriously seditious new book of poetry, Exercises in High Treason.

MARK FOGARTY will start us off with a salute to our Nobel laureate and a few songs and poems from his new chapbook, A Prayer for Jordan. The RWP Open Mic follows.

$8 cover includes coffee/tea, dessert

GainVille Café
17 Ames Avenue
Rutherford
201-507-1800

WCW – Emilia Phillips

Wednesday, November 2, 2016, 7 p.m.

Williams Center for the Arts

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

Free

Emilia Phillips is the author of two poetry collections from the University of Akron Press, Groundspeed (2016) and Signaletics (2013). Her poetry appears in Boston Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the 2015 Nonfiction Prize from StoryQuarterly, the 2012 Poetry Prize from The Journal, and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, The Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop, among other places. She’s the Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Centenary University.

Pastoral (Radio)

Out of range the stations’ signals confuse—
like grasses, crossing. Over the fields,
a field of waves. I have thrown my voice into
the future. I’ve called after
it to return. Like the radio,
I’m waiting for something to come, flickering
meanwhile with half-songs.

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

RWB Workshop Poem of the Week – Oct 11

Red Wheelbarrow Poets
Poem of the Week 10/11/2016

Janet Kolstein

A Stream of Alluring Things That Don’t Really Exist

Something raw and natural whirls
around the bedroom walls,
veined with deep blue, baby blue,
the blue of Naples Bay,
the blue of a jay.

There is no curse
in the fevered dreams of marble and alabaster,
timeless as light that streams though a rainbow.

Austin’s sleek young physique,
leather and wood smoke,
knit together crazy talk about matchups
and fans who smile louder
and play ball with punch.

They were all magically turned on —
drunken jet-lagged dancers in cowboy boots
ready to service every piece of art.

Couples were mirrors of desire,
buttery objects that slid
up and down against each other
into pools on the floor.

Such behavior is a form of surveillance
when just trust us isn’t enough,
and dubious passion,
a totem stained black,
ensures an absence of questions.

Walking such a fine line,
you have to live here to understand
their playground is a giant round bowl of music
open to the sky,

and contenders, hot or cold,
are sparkly, leopard-covered runners
twirling ritual above their heads.

—————————————————————-
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The Red Wheelbarrow #9 Launch at the Meadowlands Museum

Join us for the Red Wheelbarrow #9 launch at the Meadowlands Museum in Rutherford, NJ, on Saturday, October 22nd, at 1 p.m. Contributors will read their poems and celebrate the legacy of Dr. William Carlos Williams in the unique atmosphere of the permanent exhibit dedicated to the Pulitzer-winning poet and hometown physician.

The Red Wheelbarrow Poets will present the Meadowlands Museum with the complete collection of The Red Wheelbarrow journal.

Free admission and surprise musical guest! We hope to see you there.

When: Saturday, October 22nd, 1 p.m.
Where: The Meadowlands Museum
91 Crane Ave, Rutherford, NJ 07070
Tel: (201) 935-1175

Please Note: you can follow everything about the Red Wheelbarrow, its events and poets at the following sites:

Blog – https://redwheelbarrowpoets.wordpress.com
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RWB Workshop Poem of the Week – Oct 04

Red Wheelbarrow Poets
Poem of the Week 10/04/2016

Arthur Russell

Faces

He was the brother to whom it fell
to sell his parents’ house, travelling down
to Charlottesville all those years, to visit
both, then one of them, then just the house.
In the room where he’d read books as a child,
other than the oxygen tank beside the recliner
that replaced the wing chair he liked,
very little had changed.

The innocence and scent had long since drained
from the dried hydrangeas and lilacs
in Roycroft vases on the glass front bookcase.
Floor-length brocade drapes hung shut, as always.
Light from leaded glass sconces above the mantle,
the same lamps he’d read by, lit an oil painting
of a clipper ship, square rigged, lunging forward
under a white sky and a chopped, green sea.

There were secret faces in the abstract pattern
of the wallpaper. He saw the first one
when he was seven, partial as the moon
behind a scrim of trees. He froze,
pretended to ignore, then peeked again, and saw
a whole tribe of faces around the room,
with crayon jaws and heavy eyes,

most somewhat obscured by drapes or chairs;
but the first one, over the radiator,
like an Easter Island moai, was his man,
the one he stared down, the one he reckoned
and then parlayed with, his counterpart,
the general and chief of the faces,
and though they never spoke, they did confer,
with eyes, on the articles of his leaving.

When, married, divorced and married again,
with a stepson playing football for State,
he returned to empty and sell the house,
he made his phone calls from the chair
beside the oxygen tank across from the chief
of the faces, who had a scarred cheek
from a raised seam in the paper after
years of darkening heat from the radiator.

This is how life found him that November,
talking to his sister in New York, to a broker
from Weichert and to Goodwill for a pickup date,
and gazing at the moai on the walls,
a sort of a class photograph.

The books he’d read were safe within him,
although dispersed by time.

—————————————————————-
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RWB Workshop Poem of the Week – Sep 27

Red Wheelbarrow Poets
Poem of the Week 9/27/2016

Mark Fogarty

Waiting to Cross the Water near the San Juan Islands

At Port Townshend, Washington,
I saw the best sunset there ever was.
Fire red, rippled by clouds
That made the reds dance like northern lights.

Now I’m ready to die.

But the skin doctor has taken a divot
From my hand, and I’d like to see it heal.
So, maybe not just yet.

There was time, waiting for the ferry,
To eat a meal by the waterside,
Scan the margins of the bay for riprap.

Georgia went ahead
To see about the car. We’d driven
Around the whole peninsula,
Seen the rain clouds in the rain forest,
Dipped a toe into the Pacific like Lewis and Clark.

I wish I’d valued her as much as she deserved.

There was time to see the sunset
Amid the riprap of bouncing thoughts
As we waited, becalmed, in the line of cars.

The San Juan Islands, bruited as
The loveliest on earth,
Do not start there, but they’re not far.

Georgia was killed by a drunk driver,
Some riffraff who walked away untouched.
I never think anyone will die.

If you take a divot from the land,
You must replace it. That’s the rule.

So I’d like to return to the bay,
Add a stone or two
To buttress the wall that holds back the sea.

Most times the most beautiful islands on earth
Are right where you are.

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GV – Red Wheelbarrow #9 & The Electric Poets Gathering


RED WHEELBARROW 9 IS HERE!

The Red Wheelbarrow Poets will launch their ninth anthology at GainVille Café in Rutherford on Friday, Sept. 30. Copies of the book will be available for sale. Musical feature: The Electric Poets Gathering featuring George Pereny. Poetry feature: Poets will read from their work published in RWB9.

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 – Sep 14

Red Wheelbarrow Poets
Poem of the Week 9/14/2016

Janet Kolstein

Pound of Poems

I wish the piano
could gun the engine
under the hood,
and the choir could
raise the roof on
a fortress of words.

I wish the drums
could pound out
a pound of poems
without spilling
a drop of blood.

Let the theremin
quiver in my hands,
shaping a heart
with a dagger
written in it.

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