The Red Wheelbarrow Poets

Poem of the Week 6/20/2017

Mark Fogarty

Visible Satellites

The New York Times didn’t have comics,
But anything else you wanted to know was there.
As a kid I pored over the “agate” pages (small type)
To see which ocean liners were docking in New York,
Or where they were going, and a little box
Informed you which satellites were visible in the sky,
And when, and on what course through the heavens.
I looked and looked, and saw Echo 1, Echo 2
Crossing space. I wasn’t so far from space!
I could cross the oceans and the oceans of the moon
If I read the New York Times.

The cops and the night owls waited for their copies
Of the Jersey Journal when the presses cranked at dawn,
Loud as Cream with Hendrix sitting in.
The skeins of paper ran along the ceiling,
Black and white birds sailing like kites
Before they would knot together and bang and fall
Onto rollers. I got 50 copies for the newsroom
And the ink would smear if you touched it.
You can read all day long in a newsroom.
My elbows had patches of ink and I knew more stuff
Than Ken from Jeopardy. The press men were deaf
And would curse you loudly if you approached.
I stopped the presses many times with mistakes
But never had the nerve to shout it. The deafies
Had no feel for the romance of the presses
Stacked high as Jimi’s Marshalls in my memory.

I worked for the sheets for forty years
And never ceased to kvell at my name on a page.
I still read the agate pages, which would solemnly report
The results of every rigged wrestling match
(Hogan d. Savage, Madison Square Garden, World Wrestling Federation)
As well as the track reports from St. Benedict’s,
And Pogo’s latest musings and the “woman’s” page
With its legendary (probably mythic) headline
For debutantes this year it’s balls, balls, balls.
I had instructions from five editors
To bring them Royko’s column the minute
It moved on the wires, when I wasn’t trying to puzzle out
The blurry words on the newly-invented fax machine
Or how the purple ink from UPI got carried to my underwear.

There’s a dock somewhere where I can still
Board those solemn liners in the inky night.

I wonder if Echo I and II still loop the world in flight?
My elbows aren’t black anymore and the stink of the pulp plants
Is reduced, I guess that’s a good thing.
The prints are slowly stopping their presses
Except when the newsreaders say, “Breaking news
From the Washington Post! This just in
From the New York Times!”

The red stuff was fake at those wrestling matches,
But the sheets can still bloody the nose of a President.

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Echo 1 was originally loosely estimated to survive until soon after its fourth dip into the atmosphere in July 1963, but it ended up living much longer than these estimates and reentered Earth’s atmosphere, burning up on May 24, 1968. (Wikipedia)

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Poem of the Week 6/13/2017

Susanna Lee

Camping for One

This year, I’ll be alone with the crickets
under the rising moon of my misery.
I’ll mourn outside my empty tent,
pretending, as I did when I was single,
my silver flute is a steel-stringed guitar.
In my best Joan Baez,
I’ll croon cowboy songs and nursery rhymes
and tunes of sad and happy times.
In evening’s cicadas and midnight’s owls,
I’ll hear echoes of the past.
I’ll fear spiders and snakes.
Raccoons might take to rustling under my tent.
I’ll make peace with a hint of bears,
and enjoy the setting sun.

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Poem of the Week 5/30/2017

Janet Kolstein

Who Are You Wearing?

Click!….Click!……Click!….Click!
….Click!……Click!….Click!
Click!……Click!Click!….Click!….Click!
Can you get more love than this?

Blown-out blond hair in a blunt cut
swings around her golden head
with every pivot.

To the cry of her name,
she twirls
towards and away
from nameless mortals
like me
watching on tv.

Her hand-spangled gown
shimmers
with every swish and sway
of her Cannes camera-ready corps,

and, I wanna
feel le tapis rouge under my feet,
to soak up what was meant to be
mine,
to toast the week-end gross
from a thousand screens
launched in my honor,
my face a shrine,
bankable!
riding high on flash
and flesh,
Valium to calm the riptide.

Kiss-kiss,
(don’t touch my air-brushed lips)
before the bling
goes back
in the box.

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Poem of the Week 5/23/2017

John Barrale

Her Cat in the Window Blue With Rain

I remember
her cat
in the window
blue
with rain,

and slow April mornings,

the pages
of her
favorite books
turning
on the table,

breakfast scant

like her robe
printed
with flowers,

the taste of cigarettes,
and black coffee,
sharp,

the sugar brown
and stirred in
with a white
plastic spoon.

I remember
her legs
dangling
over the edge
of the bed,

and the small
whisker sound
of nylons
pulled off
and on,

and the shyness

when she showed me
the broken china
she collected
and kept
in a box.

I remember
making love
on her
November-colored
rug,

her lace
and oyster
taste,

and the moon
coming through
the window

with its light

pale

on her belly.

I remember
Rue St. Denis
in December
covered in ice
and snow,

and the café
like a shiny miracle

open

at the bottom
of the hill,

the thin stems
of the wine glasses
twirling,

the bottles of wine
lined up in rows
so formal
and French.

I remember
her happy face
sitting across from me

and the bowl
of onion soup
we shared,

she closing
around
her pleasure
like the petals
of a flower,

she simple,
and there,

her face like her life,
creased with dreams.

Fifty years later, and old dogs
loose in the heart
still sniff
at memory.

I wonder

does she ever think
of me?

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Poem of the Week 5/9/2017

Mark Fogarty

Dame Edith

On the night of November 15, 1971, a fashion show at the Santa Barbara (Calif.) Museum included a segment filmed for the first reality television show, An American Family. Ironically, an icon and one of the founders of reality on film happened to be there, on the last night of her life.

There were cameras at the evening do:
A new type of thing, following people around
Hoping they will rise above the fondue.
There in the corner is an old young woman,
Heiress, socialite, muse, hanging around,
Forgotten dreamgirl now loved by the hour:
Edith Minturn Sedgwick, scion to everything
Bad in the American character from the Mayflower
To the droolings the idle rich plan.

It is the start of something new:
Reality television and the terror of the mundane.
Dame Edith was rarely mundane. This stew
Should have been hers, more than the girls
With the bubble asses or the society girls
Who kept the cameras rolling during sex:
Dame Edith for all her daring was proper, prim,
Mysterious, needy, wondering what’s next.
She’d tried her best to escape an American family
And did it as well as any fuckup could.
We fuckups must admire her disdain.
It was her last night on earth, though:
Behind the Music ending grim.
Time to drape a rose on her final flow
Via drugs and booze and questionable sanity.
I dare to think I wouldn’t have given her
The downs that ended up killing her,
Would have prodded her to one last
Ride on the chrome horse, one last
Chance to dazzle with her vanity.

She chatted briefly with Lance Loud,
Passing the torch on her last night on earth.
Pity selfies hadn’t been invented yet.
All men loved Edie, loved her from birth.
She was lively, pretty, sexy, proud,
With fat raccoon eyes that stab me yet,
A skinny Marilyn. Men tried to capture her
In her leopardskin pillbox hat, in her
Glittering image on a film, in her seedy moonturn
As a goddess in the Chelsea Hotel. I am sorry
It was always capture and release, and release.
Still her life was a triumph not ceasing to cease
Of catch me if you can while I carry
My loony lamp brightly, brightest, watch it burn.

Edie had a talent for ten-second happiness
The rest of us mad ones aspire to, a feel
For the brief caesuras there to be had,
The gift of gab to document it whole.
The abyss is there all the time, might as well
Skip over it this time, hey look, there’s the empress.
Yes, she was a waif, yes, her time was gamine.
But Edie made twenty unscripted films
In her seven years in charge of Pharaoh’s grain.
She was the queen of reality and its whims,
The American Family for good and bad,
Brilliantly free of it for her time of freefall,
Never a nebbish naked on some isle,
Trotting through the director’s taunts,
Her own creation, and you can hold the light:
Do you hear that siren, it’s mine,
You haunts have me on loan from the gods,
So take a good look while it shines.
The poets are writing about me tonight,
My glory’s like the moon, pale and bright.
America fucked me over, but I won’t feel it
If you give me a spike, oh honey boo boo,
There will be time for sadness in a bit
If that’s what it comes to, but for now
You’ll light my cigarette and wish you knew
My throaty laugh, and how I can plan to debut
The next thing to know about the night.

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Songs inspired by Edie Sedgwick:

Femme Fatale (Lou Reed)
Just Like a Woman (Bob Dylan)
Leopardskin Pillbox Hat (Bob Dylan)
Please Crawl Out Your Window (Bob Dylan)
Like a Rolling Stone (Bob Dylan)

It’s a riff poem, a manic run where my voice turns into hers. many of the rhymes I changed later on, figuring that you get the cliche words first so the rhyme words are better. and sometimes that gives you a line. I wanted to rhyme “gamine” and Edie’s film career spanned 7 years so I made her in charge of Pharaoh’s grain to get grain and gamine for a half rhyme. Plus there are royalty words in there, queen and empress and so on, so why not throw in pharaoh as well lol? in the same vein I used the word “caesura” to refer to Caesar as well as the idea of this fruitful dividing of 7 years she had from the misery of the start and end of her life.

If you are interested in Edie there’s a bio called “Edie: American Girl,” and a film called “Factory Girl” that comes on the cable channels.

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Poem of the Week 5/2/2017

Janet Kolstein

Target, Starbucks and Three Madeleines

Into my misto, I dip a madeleine
and taste vanilla and coffee,
a hint of lemon,
wet on my tongue,
and I remember — what?

That madeleines are fattening?
That my car needs service?
That it’s tax time?

I dip again
and Kenneth Noland’s target paintings
spin into view,
some with a bull’s-eye pulsing red,
some an empty space, most
like an alien’s pupil,
and I circle back to his Soho loft
rocking a wall of sound with Karen and Ahmet,
and Ken, taking my hand,
and placing a pre-Columbian effigy
in my palm,

when I used to imagine
interesting things
would visit my sphere.

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