Category Archives for POETRY

A Poem from Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz


At the Office Holiday Party
by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz

I can now confirm that I am not just fatter
than everyone I work with, but I’m also fatter
than all their spouses. Even the heavily bearded
bear in accounting has a little otter-like boyfriend.

When my co-workers brightly introduce me
as “the funny one in the office,” their spouses
give them a look which translates to, Well, duh,
then they both wait for me to say something funny.

A gaggle of models comes shrieking into the bar
to further punctuate why I sometimes hate living
in this city. They glitter, a shiny gang of scissors.
I don’t know how to look like I’m not struggling.

Sometimes on the subway back to Queens,
I can tell who’s staying on past the Lexington stop
because I have bought their shoes before at Payless.
They are shoes that fool absolutely no one.

Everyone wore their special holiday party outfits.
It wasn’t until I arrived at the bar that I realized
my special holiday party outfit was exactly the same
as the outfits worn by the restaurant’s busboys.

While I’m standing in line for the bathroom,
another patron asks if I’m there to clean it.

A Poem from Stephen Behrendt

For six nights now the cries have sounded in the pasture:
coyote voices fluting across the greening rise to the east
where the deer have almost ceased to pass
now that the developers have carved up yet another section,
filled another space with spars and studs, concrete, runoff.

Five years ago you saw two spotted fawns rise
for the first time from brome where brick mailboxes will stand;
only three years past came great horned owls
who raised two squeaking, downy owlets
that perished in the traffic, skimming too low across the road
behind some swift, more fortunate cottontail.

It was on an August afternoon that you drove in,
curling down our long gravel drive past pasture and creek,
that you saw, flickering at the edge of your sight,
three mounted Indians, motionless in the paused breeze,
who vanished when you turned your head.

We have felt the presence on this land of others,
of some who paused here, some who passed, who have left
in the thick clay shards and splinters of themselves that we dig up,
turn up with spade and tine when we garden or bury our animals;
their voices whisper on moonless nights in the back pasture hollow
where the horses snort and nicker, wary with alarm.

A Poem from Elizabeth Alexander

My mother loves butter more than I do,
more than anyone. She pulls chunks off
the stick and eats it plain, explaining
cream spun around into butter! Growing up
we ate turkey cutlets sauteed in lemon
and butter, butter and cheese on green noodles,
butter melting in small pools in the hearts
of Yorkshire puddings, butter better
than gravy staining white rice yellow,
butter glazing corn in slipping squares,
butter the lava in white volcanoes
of hominy grits, butter softening
in a white bowl to be creamed with white
sugar, butter disappearing into
whipped sweet potatoes, with pineapple,
butter melted and curdy to pour
over pancakes, butter licked off the plate
with warm Alaga syrup. When I picture
the good old days I am grinning greasy
with my brother, having watched the tiger
chase his tail and turn to butter. We are
Mumbo and Jumbo’s children despite
historical revision, despite
our parent’s efforts, glowing from the inside
out, one hundred megawatts of butter.

A Poem from Denise Duhamel

Buying Stock
by Denise Duhamel

“…The use of condoms offers substantial protection, but does not
guarantee total protection and that while
there is no evidence that deep kissing has resulted in
transfer of the virus, no one can say that such transmission
would be absolutely impossible.” –The Surgeon General, 1987

I know you won’t mind if I ask you to put this on.
It’s for your protection as well as mine–Wait.
Wait. Here, before we rush into anything
I’ve bought a condom for each one of your fingers. And here–
just a minute–Open up.
I’ll help you put this one on, over your tongue.
I was thinking:
If we leave these two rolled, you can wear them
as patches over your eyes. Partners have been known to cry,
shed tears, bodily fluids, at all this trust, at even the thought
of this closeness.

A Poem from David Allan Evans


Girl Riding a Horse in a Field of Sunflowers
by David Allan Evans

Sitting perfectly upright,
contented and pensive,
she holds in one hand,
loosely, the reins of summer:

the green of trees and bushes;
the blue of lake water;
the red of her jacket
and open collar; the brown
of her pinned-up hair,
and her horse, deep
in the yellow of sunflowers.

When she stops to rest,
summer rests.
When she decides to leave,
there goes summer
over the hill.

A Poem from Major Jackson


Immanence
by Major Jackson

My own jury I acquitted my inner savage,
known for one-kneed vows to décolletage.
I was aiming for shadows bones make,
namely, the jolt of leaves and roses. A clock struck
and returned the slick smell of snow
on chanterelles. I settled into a naked meadow.
Beneath my right palm disappearing, I brought
an even finer thirst for soil and amateur brawls.
When I faced Nature, I had not a tincture of will.
I tossed her on my bed and kept still.

A Poem from C.G. Hanzlicek


To Be a Danger
by C.G. Hanzlicek

Just once I’d like to be a danger
To something in this world,
Be hunted by cops
And forced into hiding in the mountains,
Since if they left me on the streets
I’d turn the country around,
Changing everyone’s mind with a word.

But I’ve lived so long a quiet life,
In a world I’ve made small,
That even my own mind changes slowly.
I’m a danger only to myself,
Like the daydreaming night watchman
Smoking his cigar
Near the dynamite shed.

A Poem from Delmore Schwartz

The Beautiful American Word, Sure
by Delmore Schwartz

The beautiful American word, Sure
As I have come into a room, and touch
The lamp’s button, and the light blooms with such
Certainty where the darkness loomed before,

As I care for what I do not know, and care
Knowing for little she might not have been,
And for how little she would be unseen,
The intercourse of lives miraculous and dear.

Where the light is, and each thing clear,
Separate from all others, standing in its place,
I drink the time and touch whatever’s near,

And hope for day when the whole world has that face:
For what assures her present every year?
In dark accidents the mind’s sufficient grace.

A Poem from John Bennett


Overriding a Handicap
by John Bennett

Back a
few years
my granddaughter
hooked up
with this
scrawny kid
named Andy
at a
Rainbow Family
gathering in
Arkansas &
then at a
Hempfest rally
in Seattle the
police towed my
granddaughter’s
van from where
Andy had
parked it
in a
no-parking zone.

Outraged at
authority as
he always is
he climbed the
cyclone fence
at the
holding compound &
tried to
run the van
thru the gate.

Unlike in
the movies
the gate
didn’t budge &
they both
got busted.

Andy skipped
out on the
court date &
left my
granddaughter
with a
$7,000 fine
that she’s
paying off
$25 a month.

People tell me
he’s bipolar
manic depressant
maybe even
schizophrenic but
if he
crosses my
path again
I’m going to
throw him
up against
the wall &
slap his
face til his
nose bleeds.

A Poem from Mark Strand

Keeping Things Whole
by Mark Strand

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.