Poetry | September 2024

In May 2007, in these pages, I published a made-up song I heard my daughter singing when she was not yet three years old. I was struck by it so much that I felt it called for presenting it here. (Reprinted below.) That led to many issues in which I included the poems and words of younger poets. Some months I have work to present, and some I don’t, but I know there are always many, many young (grade school through high school) and many other really young poets out there saying and writing remarkable poems, and so I’m reinviting all of you young poets and all of you parents, teachers, and friends of young poets—listen, write ‘em down and send ‘em in. I’d love to see, consider, and possibly publish these remarkable pieces on these poetry pages (and on our website). Email [email protected] and include your age or your young poet’s age. Thank you.

—Phillip X Levine

We all need the sun.
We all need the sun.
But everyone loves the moon.
Everyone loves the moon.

—Piper Jaden Levine (2½ yrs)
(originally published July 2007)

The Cat Who Edits

The cat who edits what isn’t loved is motivated
by its own greed for the spotlight.
It’s been asleep, dreaming of the red pen
it’d paw at when it heard a new poem in the hall.
Without even asking, it pounces and takes over,
removing any trace of what was there before.
When you see the cat, it is time to run and hide.
It will keep you up all night and work you like a slave;
it doesn’t need a screen or a fat stack of paper.
It has only one idea: to take your poem apart
and put it back together again as something else.
It won’t stop until it thinks it’s done enough damage—
till you’re tired of fighting with every word he adds or deletes;
till there’s nothing left that can be changed again, nothing left
that is yours alone,
It is his.

—Claudia Wysocky

Mending the Cracks

Life wears on me, expecting me to stay put in its shack.
The dreary walls close in; I feel the trembling pressure,
but I am the stone wedged within a stubborn street crack.
We delve into risky exploits which were void Hoyle’s knack,
so, I never cared for creatures of lust and rapture.
Life wears on me, expecting me to stay put in its shack.
The squeak of rain boots exposes me to a flashback
where I am drowned in the greed of my culture,
but I am the stone wedged within a stubborn street crack.
I wish to be as genuine as an old, well-read paperback
to comfort creatures of curiosity, but I always say, “yes sir.”
Life wears on me, expecting me to stay put in its shack.
Where is the exit? I wish to wander the wilderness to track
tonics and remedies to clear my palate of sickened sugar,
but I am the stone wedged within a stubborn street crack.
Filthy sweetness clings to my gums leaving a rotting plaque,
but soon I will slim the hurdles and grow my strength into a fester.
Life wears on me, expecting me to stay put in its shack,
but I am the stone wedged within a stubborn street crack.

—Alyssa VanPelt

Grateful

He was grateful for the gentle purring of his cat. The joyfulness of the sun after a season of rain. The triumph of the bees following the return of the flowers. He brightened the world with his laughter and a smile as wide as the heavenly hereafter. Brightening up the darkest shadows with alizarin blues and greens. His brush illuminating forests and pools of fallen water. The yellow flower wavering in the sun. The brusque advance of a passing wind. The brittle rejoinder of a broken branch. He was grateful for his love’s slumber after relentless nights of thunder. The caress of her hand across the wrinkles of his world. The tumult of a new born baby climbing into the lap of the world

—Bruce Weber

Aftermath
Spreading wife’s ashes on her garden
I think will be so hard
but laugh as a breeze sprinkles them
around and back up into my face
like sooty kisses
evenly distributed
light on air
I breathe
and believe
come in the sun
with me
one more time.

—C. P. Masciola

Autumn

Trees
old with
cold
bare blue
bark
shed red yellow
years.

—Daniel W. Brown

Untitled

I know we took it back
But I still reach
For the keys
In the mornings especially
I don’t know why that is….
You don’t find your way to my dreams
As frequently as you once did
I’m still seeking a goodbye
It seems we made it formal somewhere
We seemingly managed to do it all
From you sleeping on your floor
So I can have the couch
To love making
To sharing food, money
And most importantly
Our lives
Please
Just tell me goodbye
And let us die

—Penny Scofield

Ultimate Loss

In the corridor ahead
two men guiding a gurney
bearing a black bag
I was too late
Passing the nurse’s station
all sorrow and madness
a nurse looked up and said
Some of us have never had that

—Clifford Henderson

Ode to Kamala

If only this dawn
Of a New Presidency
Might mean the dawn
Of a New Beginning:
Might mean a melting
Of frozen hearts—
A New Compassion;
Might mean a broadening
Of narrow minds—
A New Enlightenment;
Might mean an embrace
Of different ways—
A New Tolerance;
Might mean a loosening
Of old strictures,
Old scriptures—
A New Faith.
Someone once prayed
“Father, forgive them,”
And was crucified;
Someone once preached
“I Have a Dream,”
And was crucified;
Someone once proclaimed
“Imagine,”
And was crucified.
Haven’t we done enough harm?
We’ve no time left to crucify.
It is time, at long last, to sanctify:
To sing a psalm in unison,
In an all-encompassing embrace,
In this holy chapel of Earth,
In consecration not of The One,
But of Each One—
The full congregation;
To gather close in welcome
Of our glorious differences,
Knowing that differences
Deepen and diversify us;
To weave of us all
A coat of many colors,
Stitched together as one:
Myriad beautiful tones,
All harmonizing, all blending,
All dazzling, all sacred.
And all of the same lining.

—Tom Cherwin

Splits

Today I tore a hole
in the last pair of grey Hanes
you lent me the summer before
our senior season of cross country
when Cuddy’s was celebrating
twenty years of business
with ten-cent wings
down the street
from our cold-water apartment
and we spent the summer
stacking ninety-mile weeks
next to the bones,
too tired to keep up with the dirt
or walk next door for laundry.
A thousand miles of hills and heat
bore reverence for faulty pipes
and shared underwear,
laughed about over pitchers of Miller
on Monday nights after an easy twelve
up Oakwood Drive
and deepened the next morning,
flinging sweat in the mud
along the Wallkill
during cruise intervals
at paces now foreign to legs
that rip through remnants of exception.
Tomorrow I’ll try to return them
at the last place I saw you,
rolling ten on your own
down Dubois in the sun,
if I can find the words
that will take me back,
they sound just like our breath,
they pound the way we shook the earth
with every summer step.

—David Lukas

Blue Dress

Beneath her
ocean
blue
dress
waves
full of
stars
gently
break.

—Ryan Brennan

Grandmothering for Dummies

Buy some WD-40.
Tighten bolts, the seas are deep;
Keep a lookout for your whale
Keep a weather eye:
The forecast promises tears.
Get friendly with your crinkly eyes,
That’s you, in your looking glass, surprised.
Most days they call you Grandma Ishmael;
On difficult days you may be a GrandMoby Dick, or
Avast Ye, Mad Nanny Ahab!
Your kids, who “Sail the ocean blue”
aboard the Pinafore, with their lively crew,
believe your anchorage will do.
Do you?
Keep a Ship’s Log. Observe
your sailors navigate, and laugh, and splash, and dive;
You tried to convey your water wisdom;
You pray they don’t drown.
Some have. Swallowed into whirlpools,
in their all-weather wetsuits,
they winnow below, around your hull.
Remember when Mommy rinsed your hair in the tub?
You loved that. See her swimming with the others
whom you’ve loved.
Each storm, Captain—
Braving thundering winds in a small boat;
Giving birth; Later, getting them to school
in a blizzard that first day of the bone marrow transplant
of their Daddy;
—primed you for every next blow.
Check your bilge,
Water will be always wanting to penetrate;
Everyday check your anchor chain,
Captain, Anchors Away!
Is each degraded link
as secure
as can be?

—Jean Churchill

July 2009

Do you recall how gladsome your beating heart
When I was imagined before you,
A slip of a girl in slip of white
Waiting?
Or you could ask me did I not behold
The blunt strength of your arms reaching
And rejoice?
That you knew every atom I’d delight!

—Karen Savino