Poets Respond

December 22, 2024

“Crowded Heavens Over New Jersey” by Dan RosenbergPosted by

Dan Rosenberg

CROWDED HEAVENS OVER NEW JERSEY

Even when we drag the trash cans
to the curb, we look up. A nightlife
in the sky. We heard it’s al-Qaeda,
 
we heard it’s the government.
Or China, or a pack of creeps all acting
alone. We have concerns. We have these
 
ammunition bases beside our homes.
We look up even when we walk
our dogs. They come in from the ocean,
 
they follow some logic, they are, we are
sure, many instances of a single thing.
Airplanes don’t hover, stars don’t
 
flash in reds and whites and greens.
We haven’t seen exactly that ourselves,
but the videos! But who can trust
 
the videos anymore? We heard it’s
AI, we heard it’s hobbyists looking
for themselves. Even when we have
 
our neighbors over, we look up. Lights
are lurking in the sky. Surely cameras.
Surely a swarm of mechanical eyes.
 
We hold up our kids, think maybe
we will be famous. What’s strange
must have a single explanation. We heard
 
it’s aliens, Iran, its mothership floating
over the horizon. We are dizzy, our necks
ache. We demand answers we won’t believe.
 
On our crowded beaches, we will not get
used to these crowded heavens. We are used to
nothing being up there when we look.
 

—from Poets Respond

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Dan Rosenberg: “The current panic over drones seems connected, somehow, to the loss of a shared reality in our country, to the skepticism of expertise that is justified just often enough to leave so many Americans adrift. In the past, when confronted with questions and insecurity, we might have found answers collectively—through community leaders, the government, the local newspaper. How do we make a ‘we’ now, really, with all our institutions in tatters, with so many of us believing in and trusting very little beyond ourselves?” (web)

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December 15, 2024

“Big Head” by Stuart WatsonPosted by

Stuart Watson

BIG HEAD

They carried the big head
through the streets, detached
from its neck and its body
but spilling all its evil
everywhere they carried it,
puddles for the people
to splash their happy feet, its jaw
flopping open as they adjusted
the angle of the big head
and its weight, the tongue
lolling out (what tongues do)
and then retracting between
teeth stained brown by too much
smoking or lack of scrubbing
with Ajax like the bottom
of the toilet bowl, people
growing tired of putting up
with the big head one more
second, and falling away
and new people joining
the people working so hard
to keep the big head up above
their own heads, to keep it
where other people could see
what a truly big head it was
and how it was no longer
attached to heart and lungs
and any of the many cruelties
that lived inside what it was.
 

—from Poets Respond

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Stuart Watson: “This poem was inspired by the image of joyous citizens of Damascus carrying the severed sculptural head of what I assume was once part of a statue of Bashar al-Assad. Nothing in all the coverage captured for me the essence of the story.”

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December 8, 2024

“Spotify Wrapped Comes Out as” by Ziqr PeehuPosted by

Ziqr Peehu

SPOTIFY WRAPPED COMES OUT AS

Spotify Wrapped drops like a priest’s robe,
a holy unveiling: you are 97% melancholy,
a top listener of rainstorms recorded in tin buckets.
 
Somewhere in Seoul, the President scrawls martial law
like a toddler with crayons, blunt and trembling.
The streets answer in pitchforks and foghorns,
a symphony of breathless mothers and students
with gasoline hearts. For three hours, the nation
is a mouthful of broken teeth, until the people
swallow the law whole, chew it down to pulp.
 
At dawn, the decree retreats like a wet dog,
tail between its legs, the ink on the paper
still drying, still reeking of ash. On my phone,
Spotify chirps: Your favorite genre is destruction.
 
Meanwhile, in New York, a healthcare CEO
is unstitched by a bullet. His chest opens
like a Velcro wallet, and inside, nothing but receipts.
 
On the streets, the people rejoice—
not with candles, but with fireworks:
sparks caught in the teeth of the night.
 
Spotify suggests a playlist for the mood:
Songs to Mourn Corrupt Billionaires.
I imagine the algorithm is sentient,
and somewhere in its digital brain,
it’s weeping—over us, over itself,
over the world’s tendency to bite its own tail.
 
I listen to the sound of glass being swept,
of cities exhaling, of monuments crumbling
like sugar cubes in coffee.
 
By evening, the headlines are a Picasso painting,
shattered bodies, crooked timelines,
colors bleeding into each other.
 
The President releases a public apology;
the people remix it into a club anthem.
The CEO’s obituary reads like the back
of a cereal box: Ingredients: greed, neglect,
a pinch of humanity.
 
At midnight, I watch my Wrapped one last time.
It tells me nothing about the year except
that I am human, that I prefer crescendos
to silence, that sometimes the most-played song
isn’t a song at all, but the sound of the people
dragging themselves through the wreckage,
singing off-key, but still singing.
 

—from Poets Respond

__________

Ziqr Peehu: “I wrote the first version of this poem titled ‘Spotify Wrapped Comes Out As Danny Materson’s Jury Rules Not Guilty’ last year, also for Rattle’s Poets Respond around the same time in an almost helpless fashion talking about how people don’t care about things that are truly important and are happy being in their little corner talking about their favourite artists and nothing else. This year, South Korea’s martial law was declared then taken back within hours on the day Wrapped was released and Brian Thompson was also shot and killed, both invoked the same kinds of reactions from the people, mass collectivisation and joy, and it’s brought back a level of certainty in my life that I have not had in so long, a sort of faith in the way this world works and hopefully will continue to work. That’s it, I think. That’s all there is to it. I feel safe about the world for now, however next year may be.”

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December 1, 2024

“Somewhere It’s Always Thanksgiving” by Al OrtolaniPosted by

Al Ortolani

SOMEWHERE IT’S ALWAYS THANKSGIVING

Last night when I crawled into bed and switched off the light,
too tired to read, too tired for an audio book on low volume even,
I said what I called my evening prayer, which is more of a recap
 
of the day and a short run down of all I should be thankful for.
I recalled how the day had blown by; more wind and chaff
than wheat spread on a sheet at my knees. I made a vow that
 
tomorrow I’d take a moment to put the rush of the day on hold,
pause for even a moment to scratch the dog’s ears, the two of us
in the backyard below the wet moon in the still dripping rain.
 
This would be the exact minute that I suck the air into my lungs.
We’re alive my boy, I say to him, and he nuzzles me with his
great nose and searches my face with his honey eyes.
 
We’ve only got a moment I say to him, and then tomorrow
it’s someone else in this same backyard with the same dogwood
we planted, drawing in its sap for the winter, protecting
 
the heartwood for another someone’s spring. But he already
understands all this. It’s why his eyes are so warm, so completely
given over to the one wish that matters. Ok, my boy, it’s ok.
 

—from Poets Respond

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Al Ortolani: “I write a lot of poems about my dog. Some are mushy if not downright maudlin. Maybe it’s a flaw in my character, one I can attribute to my age. As a kid, I never cared much for Thanksgiving. Except for apple pie, I considered it boring. The holiday means more to me today. I still don’t care much for turkey, and no one has mastered grandmother’s apple pie recipe, but that’s not the point. Is it?”

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November 24, 2024

“The Most Beautiful Word” by Alicia Rebecca MyersPosted by

Alicia Rebecca Myers

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WORD

To me the most beautiful word in the dictionary is tariff.
—Donald Trump

Terrible and terrific come from the same root:
terror. Most days I assume difference
means divergence. Most nights my horizontal
body lies down next to my son’s to ensure
he grows up to be a tender-hearted vertical
citizen. Last night, it snowed up the hill
from here, over a foot, but only rain
where we are. It is a failure of empathy
to not recognize how another person’s weather
might turn before yours. For years, graupel
was my favorite word, the term for soft
hail that forms on falling snow and makes
a rimed crystal. I love the idea of gently adding
to something already moving. Bishop
wrote that Florida is the state with the prettiest name
but the ugliest politics. We collaborated
on that last part. I think madre lactante might be
the most beautiful word, although technically it’s two.
I can’t understand why so many elected officials
want to impose a high price on love. The root
of the issue, as I see it, is a fear of stepping outside
of themselves for fear of seeing themselves more
clearly. Do not be afraid is the most repeated
command in the Bible, which, to be honest,
is protesting a bit too much. On the same page
as tariff in my childhood dictionary is tarboosh.
The stressed whoosh of that melodic second syllable
gets me every time. This morning, I buried
a mouse that had crawled inside a toy farmhouse
and died, one tiny paw on a cloth window, no way
of seeing the other side.
 

—from Poets Respond

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Alicia Rebecca Myers: “Reading about Trump’s proposed high tariffs made me reflect on the high stakes of this election. It still astounds me that what one person finds beautiful is at the root of another person’s fear.” (web)

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November 19, 2024

“Indemnity” by Timothy LiuPosted by

Timothy Liu

INDEMNITY

Mudslides aren’t covered.
Nor jewelry over fifteen-hundred dollars
 
unless you have a rider.
 
A live tree taken down by a storm
and falling through your master bedroom?
 
Covered. But a dead one?
 
Not. You’ll have to give the assessor
access in order to make a full
 
determination. Mice chewing up
 
old wiring underneath the floorboards
and ushering in a pity party
 
of epic proportions? Tots!
 
Walls of flame on the next ridge over?
Nope. Tell me. Is an angry voter
 
flicking a cigarette butt
 
out of a Range Rover just an idiot
or are they a bona fide
 
act of God—adept at doing the Lord’s
 
mysterious work? I haven’t
cracked open John’s overblown account
 
on the island of Patmos
 
for quite some time, but I miss
that mildewed smell seeping through
 
our family Bible. It gets me
 
thinking about all the things I can’t
control. Flood insurance
 
more retro than Noah going off
 
the grid. Grandpa’s vintage
porno stash but a conflagration on VHS
 
no one can bear to watch.
 

—from Poets Respond

__________

Timothy Liu: “Looks like the wildfires on the West Coast and Southwest have now made it to the East Coast where we’re in the middle of a flash drought.” (web)

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November 17, 2024

“Hello, I Am Not a Soldier” by Abby E. MurrayPosted by

Abby E. Murray

HELLO, I AM NOT A SOLDIER

And yet I wear caution like a uniform
now, pulling myself into its rough sleeves
 
and old boots each morning
before I even think of coffee or how
 
the me who returns to this bed will not be
the me who left it. There is no flag,
 
mark, pattern or pin I can carry to convince
a person of what I will or will not do,
 
who I love or what I care about.
If I am kind, I must prove it by risking
 
kindness. I ration false comfort by knowing
it has never not been this way:
 
each day armed with infinite opportunities
to fail, and the chance of failure’s alternative
 
always racked like an ordinary bullet
within tens of thousands of identical seconds.
 
Wherever I go, I cling to my hope
like a weapon I have been trained to love.
 

—from Poets Respond

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Abby E. Murray: “As the next administration unveiled its picks for senior leadership and cabinet positions this week, I was especially struck by the terrible choice for a defense secretary: a man who has a history of demonizing any life that doesn’t closely mirror his own. Most of my daily work involves examining and bridging the canyons that divide military & civilian populations, and I am imagining how much harder it’s going to be next year. I wrote this poem as a way to connect my pacifist life to the lives of service members in danger. Happy veterans day indeed.” (web)

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