First Cigarette

Teddy strikes a Bogart pose…

Sarah Russell4 Comments

My friend John Ziegler doesn’t publish much poetry, but he should.  Maybe this will give him a shove.  His ability to capture a moment in time is so fine.  Some atta boys from readers might help.

Skinny bare legs over
the edge of the garage roof,
Measle takes a drag
on the unfiltered Pall Mall,
coughs like a clogged lawnmower.
Teddy strikes a Bogart pose,
heavy eyelids,
cig between thumb and forefinger.
Chippy lets a smoke feather
trail from her delicious lips,
Detective Magazine,
the guy looming, fedora
the woman dreamy.
Reverend Cartwright hollers from the window,
shakes a dust mop.  “Calling the cops!”
We walk Chippy under the linden trees,
sit on her porch,
no one ready to go home
to Dad parking the Plymouth,
the dog shivering with joy,
ham and boiled cabbage,
Grandma calling in the dark
for a half a glass of water.

– John Ziegler

 

 

 

Brazilian Telephone

Sarah Russell1 Comment

This poem by Miriam Bird Greenberg. . . well, when you read it you’ll know why I am at a loss for words.  You can learn more about this gifted writer and read more of her poetry here.

In the peach orchard in an old bathtub
the children are standing someone
in a bath of salt water, and one
gently attaches electrodes
to the nipples of the one
in the bath. Out of the weeds runs one
with a rescued battery from the old
motor home, which they had gotten
to rev its engine like the sad bleating
of a goat. If, later, anyone asks
how they learned to do this, in a striped shirt one
will say, Oh, I was looking for science
experiments in those old textbooks someone
got from the library book sale last year.
I have been baking all day,
and in a few minutes will start to wonder
what happened to that box of coarse kosher salt
I got just last week.
The children are all singing
some ditty from a musical
we saw at the community theater
a few days ago, and, in the tub the one
with electrodes affixed so gently
to his chest is calling
out little mews of uncertainty,
is calling and calling into the sundown
past the knotted trees with their hairy
fruits, green and hard. Hush,
hush, don’t worry, another one
is saying, fingernail following a line of text
in a complicated book. I think this one
is called the Brazilian Telephone, one
says, connecting finally,
after all this build-up, the ends of two
wires to the battery terminals
which, with steel wool stolen from the kitchen,
they had cleaned so carefully
earlier in the day.

– Miriam Bird Greenberg
  First published in Poetry Magazine
  Republished in her book, Pact-Blood, Fever Grass

 

I lost summer somewhere

Sarah Russell29 Comments

Sorry.  Gotta take a “me” moment in this month of celebrating mostly other people’s poetry.  Poetry Breakfast is one of my favorite online journals, and they honored me by publishing one of my poems this morning.  You can read it on their site along with other fine poems (and follow their site to get a poem for breakfast every morning) or read it here.

I lost summer somewhere
in the wildflowers, woke
to trees blushing at my disregard,
wind hurrying the clouds along.
I should have seen the signs.
I watched geese abandon their twigged
April nests, pin-feathered goslings
ripple ponds listless with July. Now they rise
gray against the gray sky, skeining south
before first snows.

I’ll stay here, I tell them. I’ll air out
cedared cardigans, chop carrots
for the soup tonight, cross
the threshold of the equinox,
try not to stumble.

Sarah Russell
First published in Poetry Breakfast

 

Old Photographs

Sarah Russell4 Comments

Gabeba Baderoon is a South African poet who teaches at Penn State in Women’s Studies and African Studies.  I love to go to her readings.  They are always evenings of insight and passion.  This poem is from her newest book of poetry.  You can learn more about Gabeba through this great article about her.

Old Photographs

On my desk is a photograph of you
taken by the woman who loved you then.

In some photos her shadow falls
in the foreground.  In this one,
her body is not that far from yours.

Did you hold your head that way
because she loved it?

She is not invisible, not
my enemy, nor even the past.
I think I love the things she loved.

Of all your old photographs, I wanted
this one for its becoming.  I think
you were starting to turn your head a little,
your eyes looking slightly to the side.

Was this the beginning of leaving?

– Gabeba Baderoon
  Previously published in A Hundred Silences

 

The Quilters of Gee’s Bend

Sarah Russell7 Comments

I first found Alarie Tennille’s work when I read her poem “The Quilters of Gee’s Bend” in Goodreads.  “Quilters” won the Goodreads contest that month and also received a Pushcart nomination.  Although I’ve read many of Alarie’s poems now, “Quilters” remains one of my favorites.  More information about Alarie’s poetry is on her website.

The Quilters of Gee’s Bend

Seems like that old river tied
itself in a knot just to keep
black folks there at Gee’s
Bend while time and fortune
swept on by.

And Master Pettway gave
those folks his name, but stripped
everything else he could. Left
just scraps, but they were used to that.

So those hands that hardly
needed something else to do
unraveled their worn-out
world. Pieced together
remnants of Africa
and raggedy dreams
to make something new.

Let dress tails dance
with britches—heat from
the cotton fields pressed
deep in their seams.
So tired of plowed furrows,
they let their stitches bend
now and then just like
that river. Nothing perfect,
yet God was in the details.
And the quilters called that
making do and visiting
and keeping warm and pulling
up memories each night,
till one day they were told—
we call that art.

— Alarie Tennille
     First published in Poetry East
     Republished in Running Counterclockwise

National Poetry Month

Sarah Russell9 Comments

To celebrate National Poetry Month, I’ll share my favorite poems — the ones I return to and always find something new.  I hope you enjoy them too.

The first is by my friend Steve Deutsch who writes a satirical political blog that’s worth a look.  This poem originally appeared in Weatherings, an anthology produced by Future Cycle Press on homelessness, aging, and our planet.

Flotilla

You left behind.
one half a jelly donut,
stale as last Wednesday;
some clothing, moth-eaten,
mildewed; two shoes,
one black, one brown,
with newsprint for the soles.
You left behind a paper sack
of winter warmth, and poetry
by Whitman, Poe and Crane,
well-fingered and browned in age.

You walked into the river
and left behind four dollars
and eighteen cents, which I
have spent on coffee
and a banana nut muffin,
that crumbled in its freshness.

Your poetry; penned
in your perfect prep school hand,
was stuffed inside two newish socks
atop the brown and laceless shoe.
It is unnervingly good,
but I can use the socks.
I crumpled your words in their freshness,
and set them to sail upon the river,
page by remarkable page.

Steve Deutsch

D NER

Her mama said she was uppity.

Sarah Russell33 Comments

Wish it had been the R that fell, she thought. Then it would say DINE, like the food was good, like it was more than runny eggs and meatloaf. But it was the I, and everyone called it the DEE-ner, like some hillbilly joint. Jake said it gave the place character, didn’t even know where the I had blown to after all these years.

She hated waiting tables. Her mama said she was uppity. “Worst thing we did was name you Chelsea after that foreign place,” her mama said. “You get off your high horse and make peace with staying here.” But she never would. Never! She’d get a little money ahead and clear out. Go where Chelsea was an OK name, and DINE was what folks did, and tips were more than a quarter.

“You gonna stub that smoke and get back to work? I ain’t paying you to be on break all day.”

“When you gonna put the I back, Jake?”

“No time soon, Chelsea girl. No time soon.”

– Sarah Russell
First published in Rusty Truck

Double Shift

The diner glows fluorescent at 2 a.m.

Sarah Russell55 Comments

The diner glows fluorescent at 2 a.m.,
beckons boozers and truckers, runaways,
women between men.

Mary receives them
as her namesake received Gabriel,
pours coffee unbidden, tends
to coconut cream and lemon meringue,
eggs over easy, a malt for the guy
with stringy hair, jittery for a fix.

She saves her tips in a pickle jar
under the grill — enough, she hopes,
to post 50 bucks for her old man’s bail
come morning.

Sarah Russell
First published in Kentucky Review

The Weight

One drunken night he lay on the coach road and she lay beside him.

Sarah Russell15 Comments

“The Weight” is by my friend Ryan Stone who lives in Melbourne, Australia.  More of his fine poetry can be found at Days of Stone.

One drunken night, he lay on the coach road
and she lay beside him. He pictured a truck
descending – wobbling around corners,
gaining momentum. They spoke about crushes,

first kisses. He told her of an older woman
who’d stolen a thing he couldn’t replace.
He tried to describe the weight of lost things.
She listened until he stopped,
until I stopped

hiding behind he. I felt small,
watching the cosmos churn
while I lay on the coach road
one summer night, speaking
of big things
and nothing.

Ryan Stone
First published in Algebra of Owls