JULY-AUGUST 2009

ELIZABETH COHEN

Lo and Behold

Look at this:
a red leafed Japanese maple
filled with small blue birds
of an unknown genus.
A whole society of azure life
descended here.

Red tree. Blue birds.
The branches blossoming
with patter and preen,
something like an office full
of similarly clad secretaries,
each one set upon
some undefinable task.

There is not enough bandwidth in the world
to record such loveliness.
At least a 7.5 on the Richter scale of beauty,
it hurts the heart, really,
and nobody else here to whisper it to:

"check it out!"

Just me, this tree, and this phenomenon of birds.

Elizabeth Cohen is the author of two books of poetry and two books of non fiction. She lives with her family in Port Crane, NY and near Danbury, CT, where she teaches creative writing and journalism.

SKIP KITTREDGE

Worst Case Scenarios

Worst case scenarios
Unprecedented challenges
Disastrous consequences
Ruinous difficulties
Dwindling resources
Deep-seated problems
Crippling disparities
Wild gyrations
Sudden reversals
Serious repercussions
Unreasonable demands
Sweeping generalizations
Drastic reductions
Loathsome necessities
Irreconcilable differences
Devastating results
Rampant inequalities
Hidden agendas
Nightmarish situations
Vast public lavatories

Skip Kittredge, aka Jack Land, collaborates with Carmela Cohen at http://www.qedpoetry.com/forum.asp?FORUM_ID=27. 

"I met Carmela via email ten or eleven years ago when she was
in Israel speaking Hebrew on the street.  Her native language is
Spanish.  She was hacking the web in English.  When I met her
on the street in Portland, Oregon recently, we spoke English,
which is now her native tongue."

JUNE-JULY 2009

HAL SIROWITZ

Making Out In a Sports Context

She blocked my kiss

with her left hand.

There was no telling

what she could have done

with her right one,

since she was a rightie.

She might have blocked

all my kisses. But since

I was on her weak side

she blocked only one.

Pardon Me For A Minute

I thought sex was going to be

a big part of the evening. But

it made only a brief appearance,

She went in her bedroom to change

into something more comfortable.

But she came back wearing something

that looked just as uncomfortable.

In fact, it looked more complicated to take off.

Hal Sirowitz has written six volumes of poetry including Mother Said, My Therapist Said and Father Said. He is the former Poet Laureate of Queens, New York. He is married to the write Mary Minter Krotzer.

PAUL HAMILL

DREAM PLOTS 

Dream plots progress, but slowly. Or do they only seem to

because I torture fragments at waking’s border,

dream-remembered and real

Slipping past arm in arm? I waken desperate, convinced

that a great implication has escaped, again.

If that is mere dream,

It is the last to yield to morning’s census of facts, nagging

into the light like news that an urgent message

was sent but never arrived.

If even one dream unfolded over many dreamings — a new

coherence — What might it not mean? Are not my dreams

more mine than the days I live out?

Night after night for a week, then not for months, Nazis

chase me through vineyards, firing. I despair at the waste

of my dying until my thrashing

Wakes me. Other nights I lope along a high ridge

to a camp where someone waits. I fill with expectation

and a deep peace but as I descend

The place fades. Some nights, Ben Franklin is having his way

with a plump maid in Paris, urbanely wheedling her

out of her linen, coaxing so wittily

It is as if he has two lusts that seduce each other. And sometimes,

after I have feasted, Fat and Thin wander a desert

under empty speech balloons.

They near some verge, these running dreams: I feel it.

If I could dodge the Lugers for just a few more sleeps

my betrayer would be revealed.

Lately the cabin glows in sunset, a shadow steps

to the doorway. Old Ben is so close to his prize

I wake up laughing. If only

I could shunt to their alternate track, accelerate

to their destinations! But always they break off,

start over like obsessions,

Clog with the randomness of the day until panic

returns. Only hunger and fullness, those pilgrims lost

in their own desert, never change.

THE SIMPLE FAITHFUL

I hate the simple faithful

They tempt the other kinds.

Children have no choice

But to be simple believers:

In my heart I forgive them

But not the elders who say

/A priest would never corrupt…/

/The President would not lie…/

/Don’t question, the experts know…/

/We see the mayor at church…./

I want all grownups to swallow

A little pill of evil

Feel it roil their gut

Let its poison rise

Like jaundice to their eyes.

Let them learn to stand

Downwind from loyalty

To smell which words are false,

Credit the child who tells

Of a wrong touching, lay

Last year’s Official Lie

Alongside this year’s slogan

To take the new word’s measure.

That pill will make an ulcer

That pulses when they eat

Truth from common table;

The taste of simple faith,

So tempting, will be sour.

ACADEMIC INTRODUCTION TO PINK

Baby sleepers, doll parades, Barbie’s favorite blouse,

the mother of the bride’s plump acreage in silk: all pink.

A cabal like manners, but more about sex, forbids us to see

that pink, the color of the trembling edge,

is both the natural flag of revolutions

/the dust cloud in the dawn the ululating throats /

/the tear filled eyes the urgency that waits for no excuse/

and dawnlight of intimate invasions,

blushes, giggling come-ons, carnival nightglow.

Fruit tree buds, cherries just swelling, apples streaked

as redness floods them, purple plums before they darken:

Vintages are welcome but the excitement

of coming attractions? Pink.

So too the flesh of greeting, smile or snarl,

And ears and noses bright in cold open air.

So the skin of the sole that meets the honest earth,

And also the open palm saying peace help trust.

House windows on cold nights cast hearthglow,

And bodies in that warmth find the sweet erectness

of nipples, men’s and women’s, the flush of arousal,

of kisses, of lips beaded with light sweat panting

or smiling in the sleep of repletion.

Death is white but life is pink: serious inner-organ purples,

airy pink in the lungs, the brain’s gray-pink,

the pinkish birth waters, the prick-head and vulva.

Careful ladies have camouflaged the anarchic swell

and intimate nuance of pink: it is in purdah.

They know by their own flesh reasons

for swaddling in the lace of sentiment,

in baby-girl confections. Maybe wisely,

veiling to preserve, for innocence

to survive letdowns, girlish and even sexy

beneath chores: Persephone still soft

in an underworld of monotony.

A tactic out of Poe, hiding secrets

in plain sight, using our blindness

to the familiar.

What do the matrons fear?

Perhaps the pinkness of Tongue, which tastes

whatever comes to it without shame,

rolls and curls like an undisciplined child,

gives away tactless feelings like boredom,

teases, pleases in passing or speaks

a lifetime of hurt in seconds. Tongue

is the worm within the breath,

the tempter-seducer no one ever called

pretty or handsome, the first searcher

following birth, the snake at the dry hole

of the last fever. Fumbler for names

and the right saying of names, herald-greeter

and go-between, Tongue is never

the final home of a word or a droplet.

Nunneried! That urgent body-memory color,

that hotter-than-fashion, coin-of-intimate-realms

off-color! Masked in the banal until I showed you. .

Pink!

Paul Hamill was named poet laureate of Tompkins County, N.Y., 
in 2007. He is director of academic funding and sponsored programs at Ithaca College.

ANDREI GURUIANU

SUN FIELDS

I take the edge of knife,

scoop the brown bruise spreading

beneath the orange skin of a sun swollen peach.

The fruit is heavy in my palm, soft.

I give a firm squeeze, imagine brown hands

grabbing the ripe sphere from dipping branches

in green California fields.

Brown hands careful not to stain the fruit

with a rough touch, print their thumbs

into sores festering under the surface.

I work the blade in a tight funnel,

excise the bad part, discard it to the side,

close my eyes and bite down,

taste only beauty and sun.

Andrei Guruianu was named poet laureate of Broome County, N.Y., in 2009. He is founder and editor of The Broome Review, a literary magazine, and is completing his Ph.D. in English at Binghamton University.

Voice, Amherst , MA

Outside Amherst

crossing Amethyst Brook

I remember Catskills

clamber up mountain laurel bank

white

and silent

near town named for general who ordered

soldiers to take smallpox-ridden blankets to Indians

What winter was it

when their gentle voices died

snow blew across the crying stars

Far away

my ancestors run to hide

in mountains

Far away

I am a small Indian girl

floating in Willowemoc River

below wild mountain laurel

A brother keeps asking me

why I have such a little voice

This is why

And this is why I choose instead of violence

to offer up a prayer in the forest today

remembering our gentle ones

the mountain laurel voices

Red Bird (for Trace & Herb)

When my sister and I drove far back

in Catskills, she spotted a red bird

perched on grey rock jutted up

from a mountain bank.  She stopped,

we watched vivid bird flame

from bush to bush, unafraid.

I read once about a red bird

of Cherokee legend, told

my sister maybe the bird

was that magical creation bird. 

Funny.  I couldn’t even recall

the legend.  Or was it I never

knew the story to begin with?

I slid quietly from car, half

kneeling approached the bird,

opened fingers to its fire

and it didn’t mind.  That day was

beautiful altogether, a May Saturday,

apple trees and wild cherry in full bloom,

warm with some sun, some rain bursts.

At last the red bird flew off.  We were

near a farmstead where friends once

lived.  House had burned, barn

still stood.  My sister drove us on,

we did not speak of any old and happy days.

After all, we had seen that bird and it was spring.

Later I learned the bird’s name, scarlet tanager.

Only then did I feel some regret.

Susan Deer Cloud grew up in the Catskill Mountain region of New York. She received her BA in General Literature and Creative Writing and MA in English Literature and Creative Writing from Binghamton University. She is pursuing an MFA in Fiction at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She was the recipient of an NEA Fellowship in Poetry, 2007.