Poetry – Cuyahoga County Public Library: Read + Write Poetry
Sometimes, when we hug it feels
Like two confused pilots landing.
If we’re lucky, our bodies applaud
When we collide.
Approaching you from behind
At the counter in your AirPods,
I consider our attachment styles—
How the sight of your back
Makes me want to wrap you in my arms,
As if the knife you might be holding
is meant for me,
And kissing your neck
Might convince you
To reconsider.
I guess anxiety
Is my love language.
I sometimes worry we’ve built a house
Out of the untouched Esther Perel cards
In the basement—
That our knives, so readily on display,
Reveal too much about what may eventually
Be shorn apart—
What is hard-won
And what is just hard.
But, sometimes, you lean back
And your sigh becomes ours.
I see the slice of bread
Is already buttered,
And the knife
Is just a table knife,
And the steam
Rising from your coffee is just steam.
Poetry – Union Station Magazine
There are places we aren’t meant to go
And if we go we aren’t meant to bring others
We know why the fence hangs ragged from its hinge
Why the grass grows machete-long beside
the cracked pathway We know why the porch cellar
is awash in light and the grey psoriatic
steps blister with abandon We know
why the door is a gnarled hematoma
and the entryway earthen with cobwebs
gurgles a warning We know the rabid animal
in the chimney feeds on grizzle
We know the fire that stalked its rooms
despoiling even the air the bodies
it emptied feet-first on their final gurneys
We are able to sneak in and remember
but when the younger children ask
to follow we tell them no as if death
is a disease we can protect from
an ash we can wash from our hands
when we return home.
Poetry – The Cortland Review
What happened to the cat who used to visit our parties
his jangly bell a cup of dimes
the Santeria bones we’d find in the yard
those knuckled skulls of starlings glimmering with ants
this morning the backyard is almost manicured
the rottweiler loafs and woofs
at the faintest change in light
while some window kitten mews
Leon is nowhere along the fence
or on the angled roof of the patio
in fact it’s been years
and I suspect Leon is dead
because our neighbor no longer calls him
Leon! every morning
Leeeeeeoooon!
rambler cat ambling yard to yard
A pet
the best way to teach children how people die
the devastation quick and incremental
a dent a noogie
as the first lesson should be
Poetry – Paperbag
The Internet Has A Lot Of
People Who Failed So Spectacularly They Almost Won
There’s An Artist Who Drinks Colored Milk And Throws It Up All Over Canvases
A New Jersey Cheerleader Is Suing Her Parents To Pay Her College Tuition
A 14YearOld Boy’s Poem Goes Viral, Appears To Be Copied
This Is Completely Normal And American, And Actually Not Shocking At All
Some People Don’t Have A Problem Destroying Something Everyone Loves
A Snake Killed A Crocodile And Swallowed It Whole
A Young Giraffe At The Copenhagen Zoo Was Publicly Killed And Fed To Lions
A Man Woke Up In A Bodybag Right Before He Was About To Be Embalmed
So Just Look Up The Place You Were Born On This Little Chart And Check Out When You’ll Probably Die
Stop Everything You Are Doing And Watch This Dog Dance
Watch This Dog Fail At Being A Dog
Watch This Dog Say “Blah Blah Blah” Like A Human
This Dancing Dog Is Every Drunk Person Ever
What Kind Of Dog Are You?
What Kind Of Drink Are You Going To Need After Work Tonight?
Poetry – Paperbag
“Grief is, in a sense, the bill that comes due for love.”
– George Saunders
“What if it has nothing to do with climate change?
What if the coral reefs are meant to gray?”
She says, while angling her fork just shy of a gill.
You are in your potatoes. You are not looking at her face
but her eyes, whose presence her face seems intent
on proving. “I see what you mean.” you say.
“How is the chicken?” She says.
“Fine.” you say. But it isn’t fine.
The chicken is gum.
You think about eggs,
the silo of tuna in your cupboard,
other evident metaphors.
“Are you happy?” you say.
“You mean like now?” she says.
“Sure, we can start here.”
Poetry – Paperbag
after David Foster Wallace
There are no gods among us
The women sit cross-leggd
Heads dipped in oblivion
The men sit wide-leggd
Heads dipped in oblivion
I type this while leaning against the door
Head dipped in oblivion
A homeless woman begs for change
And it’s a cliche
Only the city does this
Kind of disappearing
We each are and then we are not
Ceasing to be
As we had been before entering
Someone’s view
Today I met a great poet
She was late and I skipped breakfast
While waiting—wondering if I should have
Taken the blended shake my girlfriend offered
To make this morning.
I watched the puppies melt on the sidewalk
As their owners leafed through a paper
Few people read
I sipped water and hoped the waitress
wouldn’t judge my aloneness
No one asks for a second plate setting
Just to feel less lonesome
Wait
I’ve written this before
On the Brooklyn Bridge
Again during my graveyard shift
At the Holiday Inn off route 46
Many inverted nights
Up hustling whitespace for the corporations
—the nation’s collective memory
Once during college
I ran out of money
and someone broke into my room
And filled my fridge with food
Poetry – Union Station Magazine
a single vine
splits a storefront wall
crawls up the shutterless window
where the Alabama wild grass
displays a faded brochure
next to the Piggly Wiggly
in the parking lot of
the old bank
that is now a museum
a minivan pulls in slow
a family slides the door open
steps out
is glad to see us
is glad to see that we are open
though we are not
we let them in
we let them inside
because inside the museum
in the center
is a universe of names etched in terrazzo
and the family finds among the names their own
and the children don’t cry
but the universe is a well
the women steady themselves
on
throughout the south
trees shed branches in shame
whole buildings converted
to houses for names
the sidewalk is cracked
where there is a sidewalk
where there is none
those who stayed behind
to tend the gardens
make do
Poetry – Ducts.org
for Andrei Bolkonsky
Suppose it rose, a coffin
among swimmers
Suppose it was a hand,
brittle as the fall it was meant to break
What alliances have you made
in the name of senescence
Suppose it could be shed and hidden in corners,
behind appliances and doorways
Suppose it couldn’t
Suppose it was the surface of the moon
and only a privileged few could describe it exactly
Suppose it had no color
Suppose you had no idea what to make of it
and instead of cowering you sang
Poetry – Ducts.org
This morning the world tried its best to tuck me back in.
I’ve been writing from the demilitarized zone
Of my chest and the weather is almost always clouds.
Who can recall the sun with all this posturing?
I heard a woman say, “We ought to live more real life.”
The next morning I climbed a stool in my kitchen
And cried for a little more normal.
I prayed for the lightbulbs I’ve yet to screw in,
The weeds congregating the slabs up the walkway.
There’s a prayer for every sadness because God
Is more a Zamboni than a fine-tooth comb.
Think of prayer as a tremendous pressure kettle whose
Whistling reaches a fever pitch in times of grief.
Think of man as a macaroni portrait made to look like God.
What I’m saying is, there’s an art to living.
I heard a woman say, “She never stopped doing the things
that make her feel satisfied.”
May I come in and join you in front of the tv?
I’ve got so much catching up to do.
How about the dinner table?
I once dined with a pastor who loved exotic spices.
After we prayed, he’d sprinkle atomic sauce
On his pepperoni slices, while
I praised the Scotch Bonnets
On my family’s deserted table.
It’s true.
My mother will always be driving home from work.
The meek shall inherit a deeply flawed ball of yarn,
This isn’t a parable.
I heard a man say, “We’re at a place in history where we know better.”
I said, “I know, I know, I know.”
Articles – The Well&Often Reader
A large part of what we call inspiration is the experience of seeing something and saying, “I want to do that.” To that end, we’ve all had moments of inspiration. But how many of us act on that inspiration? How many of us have the audacity to say, not only, “I can do that.” but “I can do that in my own way.”? This, perhaps, is where we find the link between inspiration and creativity. Notwithstanding talent, discipline, and a general sense of that which is good; creative people have a knack for taking existing things and making them into imaginatively new things.
Designer, illustrator, and children’s book author, Matt Luckhurst understands this. He hasn’t said this explicitly – at least not to us – but his work, a raucous menagerie of color, shape, line, and influences ranging from Cubism to the masterful work of design legends Paul Rand and Alvin Lustig, is the mark of a man who sees and isn’t afraid to say, in his own euphonic lilt, what he has seen…
Fiction – Third Place Magazine
I. The Yearning
The yearning came swiftly, with no traceable origin.
Growing up in the suburbs of northern New Jersey, one becomes accustomed to certain luxuries. For every KFC, there’s a Roy Rogers somewhere nearby. For every McDonald’s there’s a Wendy’s within walking distance, a Burger King not too far away, and if you lived in one of those lucky towns sensible enough to allow a row – no, a stretch of fast food restaurants – you also had a couple more obscure choices like Checkers or Popeye’s.
Certain chains never made it into town though. They were the kind of places you’d find at rest stops along I-95, or on the edges of towns, cast off like leper colonies, or insane asylums. For me, Taco Bell was one such place.
Over the years, I’d met a few people who swore by Taco Bell, crowning it superior to all other fast food chains, the notion of which you can see actualized in the movie Demolition Man, wherein Taco Bell is the sole remaining restaurant in the film’s futuristic utopia (Which, now that I’m older, I realize was totally just a commercial).
Finding a Taco Bell was easy – there was one just West of Union Square – but my half-decade long indoctrination into the so-called New York creative class had all but eradicated any willingness to consume, or more aptly, be seen consuming Taco Bell. My friends bought food from farmer’s markets, joined CSAs, or shopped at the Park Slope co-op. In their eyes, my eating lunch at Taco Bell would be a point of concern – a sign that my depression about work had gotten the best of me (Yes, things have been rough around the office lately. And yes, I did consider just sort of casually never showing up to work ever again.). But the Taco Bell thing was about freedom, not depression.
For so long, I’d been pretending to be this thing I wasn’t – working ten hour days on something I hardly cared about, partying with people who never seemed to remember me, and eating all kinds of avocado paninis that really shouldn’t have been as expensive as they were. This Taco Bell trip was about repudiating all that. It was about reclaiming my true self.
From the moment I entered the restaurant, a Taco Bell/Pizza Hut combo, I felt a little sick. An aromatic curtain of cow parts, chicken grease, wet mop, and tomato sauce greeted me as I sashayed to avoid the worker absentmindedly waltzing her mop along the floor. I attached myself to the back of the line and marveled at the speed and precision of the Taco Bell/Pizza Hut cashiers. (Can you imagine what it must be like to work in a joint restaurant? You have to be familiar with two whole menus, including the specials deals, and possibilities of combinations, which would be especially hard in a Taco Bell joint restaurant, because despite its uniformity of ingredients, the Taco Bell menu is arguably the most complex menu ever conceived: from the basic dollar menu, with its Cheese Roll-ups, Triple Layer Nachos, and Caramel Apple Empanadas; up through its vast Taco and Burrito section; and on to the things that don’t sound Mexican at all, but rather seemed to have been thought up in focus groups, things with names like Gordita and Chalupa; and then there are the insane Taco Bell specialties, whose names could very well have been the names of Transformers: Your Enchirito’s, Meximelts, and Crunchwrap Supremes. Just Imagine having to memorize that menu, as well as a completely unrelated menu of Pizzas with equally ridiculous names. I’m pretty sure there’s an entrance exam.).
Carefully, I surveyed the menu marquee whose soothing glow of amber and purple nearly moved me to tears. Chards of chicken never looked so good. Melted cheese so melted. They were photographed in what appeared to be a black hole, each item emanating the same calming purple. I can’t explain why but I got the same feeling I get when I see photographs of parents hugging their children. Whatever it was, these tacos really spoke to me.
I ordered a Crunchwrap Supreme, a beef hard-shell taco, a chicken soft-shell taco and a bottled water.
II. The Eating
I unwrapped the beef taco and took a healthy bite, nearly cross-sectioning the thing. Beef oozed out the hand side and oil dripped into the plastic tray. The taste conjured memories of grammar school, pint-sized milk cartons, lunch lines, all four food groups, and that feeling of not quite knowing what you’re eating, but being grateful, because everyone around you is eating it too and that makes you feel special and a part of something bigger than yourself.
I basked in the genial beefy glow.
With one taco down, I had to choose between the Crunchwrap Supreme and the chicken. I figured if I ate the chicken first there’d be enough room for the Crunchwrap Supreme. But what if I filled up on the chicken and couldn’t finish the entire Crunchwrap Supreme? It would be a travesty, considering the Crunchwrap Supreme is a Taco Bell specialty, and the ostentation of its naming alone presupposes its superiority and thus its need to be devoured wholly.
It was decided.
I carefully unfurled the wrapping, flattening the edges to get a good look at this marvel of Pan-American delights. It looked nothing like the Crunchwrap Supreme I’d seen on the menu. Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t expect a warm purple glow, or anything, but I would imagine the shape being at least somewhat similar. The Crunchwarp Supreme on the menu was snuggly wrapped, a perfectly hexagonal tortilla, while the one on my tray was a circle with glandular dysfunction.
I picked it up and held it in my hand. Just beneath the perfectly grilled outer tortilla layer, a tough inner shell was holding everything together. This, I submit, is the genius of the Crunchwrap Supreme. It’s essentially a hard taco, wrapped in a soft taco, only prepared like a Quesadilla.
On my first bite, I came up with what I surmised was the supreme part, a saucy mixture of lettuce and sour cream. I was, personally, more invested in the crunch, so I promptly took another bite. Not half bad. It wasn’t half good, either, but I could see the appeal.
I ate happily for a while, but three-quarters in, something happened. A woman in a white lab coat sat at my table. She said nothing but as she sat, she looked first at my face, then at my tray, then back at my face. I could see the disgust in her eyes. The beef and sour cream, now a monochrome goo, formed a tiny puddle in my tray, drowning bits of half-eaten lettuce and broken taco shell. I probably had some of this puddle in my beard.
I smiled and she responded by looking at her pizza.
I want to tell you I didn’t take it personally, that I had somehow discovered self-worth and deep inner peace in that Taco Bell. But what really happened is that I was seized with dread. I realized how deeply alone I had been since I moved to New York. I realized I had to quit my job. Most of all, as I felt the bile rising in my throat, on a trajectory that would no doubt end in this woman’s tray, I realized I had made a grave mistake in ordering the Crunchwrap Supreme.
I closed my eyes, held my breath, and prayed.
*This story is an excerpt from an untitled and unfinished novel about working in New York City.*
Poetry – Poets House
This is nothing.
I have wrapped it
in a bow. It is big
and so the bow is big
and the nothing appears
bigger than it actually is.
I am holding onto it
because, of all my things,
it is easiest to carry.
It is not light.
Nor is it heavy.
But it has heft
the way a gun
has heft.
I haven’t found a
good way to conceal
my nothing. I carry
it with me at all times
like an organ. I haven’t
found a good way to
tell my lovers
about my nothing.
Usually it happens
early. My lover
notices this nothing
and asks about it.
I say, “This?
Oh, this is nothing.
I am holding onto it because,
of all my things,
it is easiest to carry.”
Articles – Curbed Philly
New York things: sorry, but you can’t all be popular in Philly. It didn’t really “work out” between Philly and Brooklyn Flea. Brooklyn Flea Philly, an offshoot of the successful New York City flea market, folded its many tables for the last time on Sunday October 27th and bid its Northern Liberties location a final goodbye. The flea’s demise got us wondering what NYC-exported businesses have flourished or flopped after making the jump to Philly…
Articles – Curbed Philly
Over the last decade, more than a few articles have been written about the influx of New Yorkers who decide to make Philly their home. Here’s one woman’s story, and it doesn’t involve lattes or private schools. In 2012, Emily, facing a steep rent hike in her shared $1650/month Brooklyn 2 bedroom (Now renting for $2100/month), decided to quit her 11-year relationship with New York. She’d already been commuting once a week to her employer’s Philadelphia office, so Philly seemed an obvious choice. “I asked a couple of friends that were moving apartments in Philly and they were like, ‘I got this one bedroom – my rent is $600,'” explains Emily. Convinced, she requested a full-time transfer to Philly and began looking for apartments…
Poetry – MakeBlank
at sunset the dead speak
casting a language
of eye and rust
sea and fire.
the dead speak to us
as we whirl about
anxious as marbles
through tambourine leaves
and whispering traffic.
they know about heights
and how they are among
earth’s most unforgiving things.
how blessed we are to have
been planted firmly
as mountains.
they say
between us
is only time.
all measurement
is of time.
every sky is a word.
many words.
one of Earth’s many
dead languages.
Fiction – MakeBlank
The cop’s knee is in his back. All three-hundred plus pounds of his weight is applied precisely to the man’s spine. The man swallows air like ocean water. The man feels, distinctly, the pain of a rib against his expanding lung. There’s never enough air when you’re afraid you might die. Language tends to fall apart, too. The man cries for mercy. He pleads apologies but his words, slurred by the gauze of Schizophrenia and the copper taste of blood, are taken by the cops as provocation. The younger cop’s face glistens with sweat as he holds the man’s ankles. His partner’s broad back seems to swallow light in the dim parking lot. The younger cop thinks of catfish. More officers will arrive soon. The man can smell his blood in the wet cement that kisses his forehead. His arms are pulled far beyond any natural position. Wailing, he squirms, the cop’s knee pivoting his movement. Another car screeches to a halt just out of eyeshot. Soon another. The arriving cops’ steps are a faint rapping enveloped by shouting. The thwacking sound of a car door slamming or something worse. The arriving cops know only what they’ve been told; Some vagrant, possible burglary, resisting arrest. What is the legal definition of resisting arrest? Some officers use a sliding scale. Everything seems to add up, here. There’s no real time to assess. They’ve been trained to assist. Most importantly, they’ve been trained to assist their fellow officers. They shout at the man, telling him to calm down. The man is far far away. He is locked in a small closet in the basement of his childhood neighbor, amid half-empty paint cans and exposed fiberglass which he knows is not cotton candy. Just outside the door, the sinister giggling of children can be heard. His father, a police officer, is upstairs playing poker. The man can hear the screeching of the chair, sudden and sharp above his head, as he cries for help. He can hear the rapid thuds on the staircase and the children go silent as his father enters the room. He remembers how his father pulled him from the closet with just one arm and gathered his small body up under it, all the while, threatening to arrest whatever kid did this to him. No specific road led to this moment. Schizophrenics often begin to show symptoms around age 19. What is the legal definition of murder? The man cries for his father. Coming from the mouth of a 38 year old man, the cries sound a touch more helpless. The first cop, still on one knee in the man’s back, pushes the man’s face against the ground. The cop thinks of his younger brother. Children who are much smaller than him. He is annoyed and out of breath. He reaches for his taser. As he does so, an arriving cop fires his own taser. The sweet chatter like a tiny machine gun. There are many ways to skin a catfish. The man writhes uncontrollably. Now, involuntarily. The man has seen a gun before but never felt one against his skull, and certainly not at this velocity. He isn’t even sure it’s a gun. To be honest, he isn’t thinking about what just hit him. He is focusing on the gasps of air he can barely manage. The last thing he sees is a shoe, not unlike his father’s, kick him in the side. A wheel on a parked car. Orange light. For the rest of his life, the man’s father will wince each time he hears the word routine. His relationship with his old uniform will become troubled and somewhat problematic. He will remember his son, not as the swollen face in the news photos, but as he was before the illness took hold, a smart-mouthed boy, tiny and always afraid of being cornered.
Poetry – The Letter All Your Friends Have Written You
As a teenager,
I wanted desperately
to be in the NBA.
Why?
So I could be famous enough to
get a book deal,
leave basketball forever,
and
embark on a career
as a writer.
Well
Basketball is hard.
Articles – The Operating System
I’m going to level with you; I know nothing about Turkey and I know even less about Turkish Poetry. Luckily, I have Buké, my sole Turkish friend. Buké is tiny, smokes cigarettes, and speaks with a directness that can sometimes be mistaken for rudeness. It is she who introduced me to the Turkish poet Orhan Veli Kanik (1914-1950). I can’t speak to Kanik’s stature but, like Buké, his poetry is about as direct as a poet can get. Like the work of William Carlos Williams or, more contemporarily, Billy Collins, Kanik’s poems have been described as the kind of poetry that convinces readers they, too, can write a poem. Take, for example, “The Hill”.
THE HILL
In the next life, after the factories end their work
If the road taking us home
In the evenings
Is not
So steep
Death
Is not a horrible thing
At all.
It reads like something your grandfather might say and that’s what makes it so effective. A good poem is a story that never gets old. It stays with you and no matter how often you tell it there remains the same spark of truth. In “People”, Kanik expresses a single thought simply and profoundly. The profundity is apparent upon first reading but the genius of it is a slow burn.
PEOPLE
All the time
But particularly
When I know you don’t love me.
I wish to see you
Like the people I saw
Sitting on my mother’s lap
As a kid…
Unencumbered by ornament and deceptively simple, Kanik’s poems are as accessible as they are insightful. They’re a bit like the blues. Turkish blues. Is that a thing?
Here’s my own poem, not exactly inspired by Kanik but in the same tradition.
RUNNING 2
if you come in last place
and still manage to break records
it’s all well and good
but sooner or later you’ll come to find out
that you’re only racing dead people
–
Read Orhan Veli Kanik’s book “I, Orhan Veli” online: http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~sibel/poetry/books/i_orhan_veli/
More on Orhan Veli:
http://middlestage.blogspot.com/2006/12/orhan-veli-kanik-all-of-sudden.html
Fiction – MakeBlank
“I ain’t never seen nothin’ like it. Me and Momma was going to meet my Daddy at the bus station. I was hungry and asked if we could stop for something to eat. We walked by the hot dog man and I wanted one so bad but Momma said she didn’t have no money. I didn’t say nothin’ but—I mean it—if it wasn’t for Momma being there, I’da took one.”
“You wouldna took nothin’! You know how hot them dogs is? You can’t just stick your hand in there and pull one out! That hot dog man be on you so quick.”
“Shut up, Kenny. Lemme finish.”
The three boys formed a half circle. LeMonte, or Montie, as everybody called him, stood almost a foot taller than the others. The charcoal fabric of his slacks were worn grey at the knees. A patch of faded navy covered a hole in one of his back pockets. Kenny purposefully whacked the dusty concrete with the broomstick they used for stickball. Chuck was the youngest. He crouched down real low, like a catcher, his butt up against a street post, listening intently, as he ran his thumbs up and down his suspenders.
“Hurry up and finish telling it then. I wanna play already.” The broomstick flinched with each crack against the pavement.
“We didn’t get no hot dogs but Momma must have felt bad for me ’cause we stopped at one of them newsstands next to the shoeshine boys and she bought me a Charleston Chew. See, I still got the wrapper and everything.”
“Yeah, yeah. We all seen a Charleston Chew before.”
“Kenny! Shut up!”
“Okay okay.”
“So after that, we keep walkin’ and we gettin’ closer to the bus station and everything, when, outta nowhere, all these police cars come shooting pass. Their sirens was goin’. I could see just up the street there was a whole bunch of people crowding up, maybe five hundred people, look like there was something real bad had happened. I asked Momma what happened and she said she didn’t know but she hoped my Daddy was alright.”
“Did you find out?”
An old black car roared pass. The boys squinted through the dusty smoke and into the afternoon sun.
“Momma wanted to go around the crowd but we couldn’t ’cause the police wasn’t lettin nobody pass on the side. We had to walk straight through all them people and what I saw I ain’t never seen nothing like it and I don’t ever want to see nothing like it again.”
“What was it?!”
“Yeah, Montie, quit holdin’ out. What’d you see?”
“Well, you gotta promise not to tell. ‘Cause Momma don’t know I saw it. She told me to look away but I’d already seent it.”
“What was it?!”
LeMonte leaned in real close and opening his eyes wide as two moons he whispered. “It was a dead white lady.”
Six moons.
“She must have been a movie star or somebody real important too because she had a white dress on, but it was all torn up. The police wouldn’t let nobody get close except for this man taking pictures.”
“What happened to her?”
“Don’t know. She was on the roof of this smashed up station wagon. There was glass everywhere and you could see her foot hanging off the side and one of her shoes was almost in the middle of the street.”
“Dang! You think somebody killed her?!”
“Don’t know. It looked to me like she fell right out of the sky.”