A publication of the Lifelong Peer Learning Program of the CUNY Graduate Center
by Mark Fischweicher
Only after the game,
(Three hours selling beer in the bleachers),
Only then
could I bring myself to say
Oh Buddha,
What joy I have seen –
Gulls –
……..fall on the stands,
…………..Sunset forms rows.
…… No fans watching.
All so much garbage
…….Even the birds soon gone.
Mark Fischweicher has been scratching out poems since junior high school and still hopes it may become a regular thing.
by Mark Fischweicher
I take you down the trail with me, Du Fu.
I give you these canyons,
inhospitable, bleak, barren rock.
Perfectly Pink Utah podiums, cut
into postcard ruins.
Free as dust, lifted from the sea 60 million years ago,
posing now as lacy steeples, limestone royalty,
frayed old chessmen waiting for the next move.
That ridge – they call The Sentinel,
there, Thor’s Hammer; there, The Sinking Ship and
there, in the distance,
Chinese Wall,
not as long, I admit
but with the same moon over it;
the same moon over all.
I smile at the sadness you bring me.
The Cretaceous ocean hasn’t invaded North America for eons
but I see it washing up against the Gulf Coast now,
ready to devour Florida at any time
ending the lines at Disneyland,
leaving only canyons behind.
Not even canyons, just the wind and the dust,
already characters in your cracked
old poem.
I have read poetry for many years and make but little pretense.
The blooming lilies do not make me weep,
The singing birds here do not shock my heart.
The dust claws at it.
The frost chips away at it,
and the wind, silent now,
as much a part of it as you are,
having died a thousand years ago or more
and never having heard of U
tah
as it will hear of you.
But “No one listens to poetry,” said Jack, says the wind
again and again.
The way we’re going,
Someday it might all look like Utah,
deserted courtyards, swept clean as any yard in Athens,
Georgia,
clean as your prince’s garden, Du,
the one in ruins that you saw,
that made you see that nothing would be left,
not the palace, not the pinnacles
not even the poem.
No volcanoes left to erupt the white pages.
Whether we imagine it or not
the palace is gone, the poems, annotated,
followed by questions and a possible quiz.
The wind does not need to be heard.
Quietly,
the oldest trees arch their roots
into the sloping red dust that no longer reminds me just of you, Du,
now that you are here,
that coats my shoes as I walk now with Simon, my five year old.
And, that summer –
the rivers flooded the midwest,
drought and heat burned up the east,
Sarajevo continued to die,
Akita was buried in ash
and New Yorkers
headed for the beaches
once again. . .
“Paiutes called them legend people,
turned to stone by Coyote’s anger.”
Simon heard the story,
saw a postcard of Mount Rushmore
and noted how angry the Gods must’ve been at those guys.
And, further south in Arizona, all that’s left
are monoliths, huge single stones spread across
a vast valley of dust and sand.
Years ago, I stopped there in an old blue Plymouth,
Valiant,
not us; we had to sleep in the car.
The wind rocked the chassis much of the night
and painted it, covered it with the red sand,
ready to take us in.
Ready to take us
in.
Mark Fischweicher has been scratching out poems since junior high school and still hopes it may become a regular thing.
by Mireya Perez Bustillo
I will speak to you
who came from far
to this my Avila
to see my dried up sandal
and my defiant bone,
my right middle finger,
the only one not stolen by the
Holy Fathers for their reliquaries.
see, this relic of my flesh
desecrated by this emerald, that Indians
died for, that I never wore in life.
Do you see this spot? Here he
came to me and it was sweetness.
What do you think was that
fragrance lingering in my inviolate
body that so drew the clerics?
His fragrance in me.
You call me Santa. What did
I do? All I wanted was to
fight the Moors as in the romances
of chivalry and to have a swain
rescue me from the crenellated heights.
I was just a woman whose dream came true.
Mireya Perez Bustillo: Mireya’s poems invoke a powerful array of spirits. Her poetry appears in Caribbean Review, IRP Voices, Anthology of Colombian Women Poets, among others.
by Harriet Sohmers Zwerling
You turn left at Race Point
onto the blacktop road
that rolls through the dunes
with their female curves
like breasts and thighs of
silky sand.
Small, arthritic-looking
pines dot them,
breathing resin and salt.
Below, the restless sea tosses
ribbons of foam against the shore.
At night the dunes mimic the moon,
those dark craters,
and lying among them, we fill
our eyes with stars.
Harriet Sohmers Zwerling is the author of a story collection, Notes of a Nude Model and other pieces. Her new book, entitled Abroad: an expatriate’s diary, based on the journals she kept while living in Paris during the Fifties, is due out in Spring.
by Harriet Sohmers Zwerling
She came first, the girl, and helped deliver
Apollo, her twin.
Both were beautiful, as were all Zeus’ bastards.
Poor Mama Leto, hounded by Hera, homeless,
wandered the islands with her children.
Still, her babies grew into gods;
he of the sun; she the moon.
A wild girl, fierce, contradictory,
she was a huntress and loved animals, a killer of men and
protector of women in labor, guardian of virgin girls.
Tall and strong; she loved forests and beasts,
lived with deer and dogs and had a female militia
that followed her orders.
The occasional encounter with a male was often fatal
for him. A proud hunter, Aktaion, accidentally
saw her naked and was punished for it.
With poetic flair, she turned him into a stag
and had his own dogs tear him to pieces.
Her hunting pal, Orion the Titan,
presumed too much. They say her twin,
Apollo, jealously killed him.
Created by the perverse Greeks,
she is, of course, immortal.
Could I have danced with her once at the Dutchess,
on Sheridan Square?
Harriet Sohmers Zwerling is the author of a story collection, Notes of a Nude Model and other pieces. Her new book, entitled Abroad: an expatriate’s diary, based on the journals she kept while living in Paris during the Fifties, is due out in Spring.
by Nancy Yates
On the hard wooden bench , we were sitting
side by side, waiting
for the downtown R train.
He turned toward me and stared
at the unwashed Concord grapes I was polishing,
one by one, and popping into my mouth –
fragrant fresh from the Farmer’s Market
at Union Square—
the first of the brief fall season.
A slight young man, with red cap, focused his soft brown eyes
in my direction.
I smiled a bit in recognition and he smiled a bit back.
And I waited for the right moment, waited some more and waited still,
until the R train rumbled towards us —too late now—a small heaviness.
I stood and stepped toward the train, then turned back to him,
“These are for you!” I thrust a big bunch of grapes into his hands
and ran. From behind closed subway doors, I saw his wide smile.
Nancy Yates took a poetry class some time ago at JCC and thought it would be fun to send a few poems to Voices for consideration. She now considers herself published.
by Nancy Yates
Suspended in that time and place,
in sombre dark and heavy space,
Beauty sleeps and waits for her bright
Prince to come along,
to give her back her light, her life,
she waits to be transformed,
to be his Queenly wife.
Then one fine day, the Prince appears
and Beauty opens eyes and smiles
and knows
he’s there for her,
an end to all her sleepy woes.
He leans to kiss her upturned nose
but sneezes loud and undergoes
a curious change of heart and mind.
He stares and blurts (he’s quite unkind)
“Your makeup’s worn,
your silk dress torn,
your glass case musty
the castle dusty as can be
you’ve put on weight, it’s clear to see.
No doubt, just lying around for centuries
has dimmed your suitability
to be the kind of lovely spouse
who’d serve and keep a tidy house.”
While she’s astonished and less groggy,
her suitor looks more froggy
every moment she hears him speak.
But now she’s done with prince and frog.
She’ll seek, with her retriever dog,
a magic portal to the Mortal
World, and find
a brand of man
who’s princely on command.
Nancy Yates took a poetry class some time ago at JCC and thought it would be fun to send a few poems to Voices for consideration. She now considers herself published.
by Nancy Yates
Mauve was a harlot, worse than a scarlet
woman.
Mauve was unnatural, her family tree and pedigree
a minor scandal at the time.
Mauve’s midwife was a man,
a modern Merlin of chemistry.
He managed to change fashion history!
From coal mine depths to dressing room
an unexpected social boon,
Mauve ascended to gentility
and sashayed with the grand nobility.
Apropos—
Mauve has her suspicions about Indigo.
Nancy Yates took a poetry class some time ago at JCC and thought it would be fun to send a few poems to Voices for consideration. She now considers herself published.
by Sarah White
I know she’s coming when I hear the sounds—
something between a humming and a mewing
as if a hungry kitten
had strayed into the building.
Leaning lightly on her cane, she taps her way
around the lobby. Afraid of wind,
she wears a scarf and hat too heavy for the summer.
With taps and cries, she signals
other widows in the building—
telling us
her husband died last year,
her younger daughter the year before,
from cancer, and the other daughter’s coming later
to take her walking in the winds of summer.
Author of Cleopatra Haunts the Hudson (Spuyten Duyvil, 2007) and Alice Ages and Ages (BlazeVox, 2010), Sarah White has given up writing poetry hundreds of times.
by Sarah White
Quick! The street is coming up
to meet you. Please
put a hand between
your face and the concrete.
You’re a sight
for Samaritans. Are you
alright? Let them
help you up. Or,
sink through
the sidewalk. Underground,
you’ll be a find
for archeologists
who read inscriptions
on the walls of your mind—
phone numbers, birthdays,
opera plots.
No one has ever seen a brain
take so many blows and retain
every line the Countess sings
in The Marriage of Figaro.
Author of Cleopatra Haunts the Hudson (Spuyten Duyvil, 2007) and Alice Ages and Ages (BlazeVox, 2010), Sarah White has given up writing poetry hundreds of times.