Poets Respond

October 20, 2024

“Ghazal of Bones” by Ebuka StephenPosted by

Ebuka Stephen

GHAZAL OF BONES

Who can love me better than the ligaments love my bones?
 
I’m fragile now, my heart can’t bear the weight of brokenness, those pains from fractured bones.
 
I heard the night feels lonely, too, when the birds choose to leave their nests. I feel the same way but only skin cuddles my bones.
 
One morning, I lifted up my veil. I saw a Bible, opened it & it showed me a valley of dry bones.
 
Perhaps I’ve opened a lonely verse different from the psalms that sang of rising dry bones.
 
I need these miracles but nobody to go these extra miles for me. I only soak my beads for God to strengthen my bones.
 
Who can calcify me from envy of those who never chew the ripe fruit of forlornness? Those who never dreamt of lonely bones.
 
& dreaming is always real until it’s not. In a cadaver room, I saw my twin me being loved by formalinated bodies. They showed me skeletons that were made with their bones.
 
All night, every bone in my body tells me to get a deep sleep. They said I’m Adam, that one day a bone will be made from my bones.
 

—from Poets Respond

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Ebuka Stephen: “Poetry is a way I reflect on life. It allows me to explore my feelings and enjoy it. I’m attracted to ghazals, so I hue mine with elegy. I’m currently studying human anatomy at College of Health Sciences, Nnewi in Nigeria. I dedicate this ghazal to the dead bodies and bones in every cadaver room, and in commemoration of World Anatomy Day, celebrated every October 15th.”

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October 13, 2024

“How to Tell a Right-Trunked Elephant from a Lefty” by Lexi PellePosted by

Lexi Pelle

HOW TO TELL A RIGHT-TRUNKED ELEPHANT FROM A LEFTY

check for the side with ruffled whiskers
and wrinkles, elephants tend to tilt
their trunks to scoop fruit so one half’s
always a bit shabbier than the other. The end
of my husband’s left eyebrow is sparse
because of the direction he faces
while sleeping. All those beat-up tractors
heaving diesel across our fields,
the fluorescent smirk of strip malls
I see as I speed down Route 22,
the Canada geese—those trucker swans,
those bootlegged angels—if god’s
got a rumpled, favored side
we’re it. We’re the word
that’s been written with a dominant
hand. Is it because we longed for more
legible script? A world we’d slide
our sorrows down as long as it was written
in smooth cursive. We’re ready
to unknow now. When we place Bibles
in roadside motel rooms, slide
flowers into the spokes of white bikes,
when a woman calls the cops
and orders half pepperoni half
mushroom while her husband goes to
give her daughter a goodnight kiss,
we aren’t asking for answers
we’re asking god to switch hands.
 

—from Poets Respond

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Lexi Pelle: “Frank X. Gaspar wrote, ‘It’s never the aboutness of anything but the wailing underneath it.’ This poem, although based on a relatively uncharged article, was a slow settling into that wailing.” (web)

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October 8, 2024

“When My Student Who Wants to Be a Writer Says They Do Not Read” by Frances KleinPosted by

Frances Klein

WHEN MY STUDENT WHO WANTS TO BE A WRITER SAYS THEY DO NOT READ

Why would you build a house with no nails?
 
Why plant, till, harvest a crop
in whose taste you find no savor?
 
The bees of the field scan the dances of their sisters
before penning a path to the lavender patch—
 
The forest produces a new body
of work only after absorbing volumes of cedar trees,
each bear bread and blueberry bush in the Tongass
standing on the shoulders of giants—
 
The incoming waves read each stone and shell
on the shore as they sketch the high tide line—
 
Inside you is a curled fern yearning for light.
 
Inside you is a fire lit beneath a capped chimney.
 
Smoke fills your rooms; there are no doors
or windows to air them out.
 

—from Poets Respond

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Frances Klein: “There has been a lot of online discourse this week about an article in The Atlantic lamenting that students no longer come to college prepared to read full books. Although I disagree with the author’s chosen villain (she blames high school teachers) I related to the experience of having students enter creative writing classes with an expressed distaste for reading. I have been teaching creative writing to high school students for many years, and in the last five years or so I have noticed a major shift in the ‘influences’ students identify for their writing. More and more, kids who claim they want to be writers are open about disliking reading. When asked to talk about the influences on their writing, they identify TV shows, musicians, and online influencers. In real life, I try to be patient and understanding, to help guide students to texts that sparks their interest and draw them in to loving reading. This poem, however, was written from my knee jerk reaction of frustration, from the ‘what I wish I could say,’ point of view.” (web)

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October 6, 2024

“When the Hundred-Year Flood Hits Home” by Christiana DoucettePosted by

Christiana Doucette

WHEN THE HUNDRED-YEAR FLOOD HITS HOME

There is a gapping
in the chest when the water
outside pours indoors.
 
A continental
shift shuts down the panic that
will only drown me.
 
As the first tree gives
with a rush of wind and that
ground-shaking thunder
 
and then another
and another pound the house
next door. The roar as
 
oak folds shed like its
an old slice of bread around
raw celery spear.
 
There is clarity
of who must do what
to get where safely.
 
A laser focus
on further up and further
in gathering speed.
 
The wind whips razor
blade sheets of rain sideways as
everything roars. Doors
 
slam. My youngest’s hand
holds tight, as I urge older
sisters not to stare
 
but to move move move
to the house up the hill with
no trees and no creek
 
where yellow light pours
from storm-fogged windows like
freshly buttered toast.
 
Then the door opens.
We’re pulled inside where it’s warm.
Where it’s dry. Where it’s
 
safe. I look back home
just as the storm plants a tree
on my bedroom roof.
 

—from Poets Respond

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Christiana Doucette: “This poem was written as my phone battery depleted last night. We are on day four of no power, post-Helene. And I am so very grateful for good neighbors and bodily safety. I think we of the South Carolina upstate, and Western North Carolina will be carrying the terror of this storm for a long long time.” (web)

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September 29, 2024

“[his smile]” by Joshua St. ClairePosted by

Joshua St. Claire

HAIKU

 
 
 
 
his smile
as he signs the bomb
Guernica
 
 
 
 

—from Poets Respond

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Joshua St. Claire: “I was born during the Cold War. I remember talking about nuclear war with my mom when I was a tiny child. I lived through Desert Storm, Bosnia, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Endless unrest in the Middle East. Escalation with China. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I’m tired of it. What reasonable, normal person wants war? It’s the worst thing we humans do. Now, we have this latest, indelible image of my governor signing munitions—killing machines to keep the war raging. Will we ever have peace?”

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September 22, 2024

“Ode to the New York Lanternfly” by Kirsten Shu-ying ChenPosted by

Kirsten Shu-ying Chen

ODE TO THE NEW YORK LANTERNFLY

I can’t stop admiring the dead.
They cover my every direction
leaving behind the spectacular
carnage of their significant
and insignificant lives.
Is it when we gather
and with whom
that stamps us into memory?
Is it the streets devouring
the daily pandemonium
and a late warmth rising
against our indifference
to the surrounding miracle?
First we take flight
then the loose ends of our lives
fray into thinner stories
until only the dog is sated
only the ceaseless gaze
of here and now
is turned to you in prayer—
the air filled with ideas
you have spent your life
escaping. The footsteps
of any family curse.
The learning of your own
desire
to annihilate
or how it feels
to hold a creature
even once
by its wings.
 

—from Poets Respond

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Kirsten Shu-ying Chen: “It’s that time of year again. Walking around this weekend in the late summer heat with hordes of Lanternflies everywhere and various tensions in the air, I couldn’t help but see their stamped out deaths as somewhat reflective of both the very real human deaths that seem to surround and numb us daily, as well as the metaphorical deaths we negotiate internally within ourselves. Why are we humans so driven to destroy? Where does this desire come from? And what—if any—good can we do with it? Admittedly, I’ve got more questions than answers.” (web)

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September 15, 2024

“Trump Says My College Town Has Immigrants Who Are Eating Their Pets” by Shuly Xóchitl CawoodPosted by

Shuly Xóchitl Cawood

TRUMP SAYS MY COLLEGE TOWN HAS IMMIGRANTS WHO ARE EATING THEIR PETS

We used to dance at the Regency Room in downtown Springfield on some
Thursday nights on Fountain Boulevard, all of us getting a ride
 
from whomever had a car and would take us there. We didn’t drink
back then but ordered pop or ice water and pretended we were older
 
and I would act like I was not looking for the RA I had a crush on
who had dated me then dropped me abruptly for another girl down the hall
 
even though in the years to come he would tell me how much he liked me
still, how he regretted the break, and I would look for him in so many
 
places—the Union, the pathway between Thomas Library and Firestine Hall,
and at every party, every gathering where students danced or smoked weed
 
or drank from the barrel juice someone had concocted of every alcohol-filled
green or brown or clear bottle. I found him, once or twice, and he had a way
 
of lying—to himself or to me, I’ll never know—and it would pull me back
into his orbit, or I threw myself into it. You get too close to some things
 
and they burn. A lie is kindling. Belief is the paper, sticks, all the wishes
for a thing that isn’t. Someone who builds a bonfire must be careful with the flame.
 
Someone who acts like the sun must tell people not to look directly into his eyes.
I looked for so long, I learned about a lie’s brightness. One day I saw him,
 
years later, and he seemed so easy to find. My eyes had adjusted, and I
understood darkness: how to touch it, and then how to walk away.
 

—from Poets Respond

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Shuly Xóchitl Cawood: “In the debate, Trump says that immigrants in Springfield, OH (where I went to college) has immigrants who are eating pets. I was thinking about how people believe lies, get swept up in charisma, so I wrote this poem about how that happened to me.” (web)

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