One Piece by Nicole Jovanelly

Hey Mickey, you're so fine

I saw him the other day,
Gnawing on the rhine
Of a molding cantalope,
Crouched in the yellow
Stale piss, glass shards,
And cigarette buds,
Behind the old toys r us.
Slits were in his puffy
White gloves, red crack
Like an earthquake
In his eyes, trembling,
About to shatter.
Whiskers bent like loopy
String of a birthday,
Pocket knives as teeth.
He glanced at me,
The feeling of sewing
Needles crashing against
My spine, momentarily.
He limped toward me,
Begging for spare change
In a crackled tone, holding
His scampy hands out
With the trail of pixi sticks.
"Only five dollars."
Breathing heavily, my body
Twists, changing its course.
His lips drooped, tongue
Pursed, shooting obscenities,
he spit like a fire hydrant.
Accidentally dropping
Some powder on the floor
In his process, frantically
Pushing his fingernail
Into the cracked pavement,
Restoring his product.

{Poem by Nicole Jovanelly}

One Poem by Jessica Flores

Question Mark!

I have not come to like or to dislike
To hate I must first love
To love I must come to feel

I don't know the meaning of the word love or hate
If I do not understand then I cannot do
Because I don't do I do nothing
But doing nothing is doing something

So do I then know
But can I know if I don't know
Then I must come to understand

But I am left confused
Unknowing what I do know
Knowing that I have not come to like or to dislike
So I then now know

That I do not know what I know
Because I know of nothing of what I know

{Poem by Jessica Flores}

One Piece by Jasmine Rawani

Unwelcomed

I know she doesn't care about me.
If she did, she'd be holding me instead of that bottle of vodka.
I'd kill to get her to hug me, or even a pat on the back.
Instead, she shows her affection through bruises and scars
On my face and body, I know it's just the alcohol talking,
But I don't know how to stop it.
My tears of pain are tears of joy to her; she thinks I'm enjoying this.
She doesn't understand that without me, she's screwed.
I work fifty-six hours a week hoping and praying
That we can spend it like a normal family.
Hoping that she spends the money on food for us.
Praying that she, for once, uses the money on something
Other than her addiction, but it never happens.
No one can separate her from her baby.
She says it's the only one who understands her,
And I'm starting to believe it.
She's a crazy lunatic who doesn't give a damn about me.
Sweet dreams, Mother. Pretty soon your life
Will be as dark as the empty hole in your chest.

{Poem by Jasmine Rawani}

One Poem by Samantha Talbot

Gone

She sits and crys in the house alone.
No one to hear her.
No one to comfort her.
Hes gone for good.
Theres no comming back.

The clock on the wall ticks,
time passing by, still no one comes.
She clings to an old t-shirt,
holding the smell of it, of him.

A picture of them on their wedding day,
still sits next to the bed.
She can't bare to look at it,
to be remembered of what will
never be again.

{Poem by Samantha Talbot}

One Poem by Peter Lattu

winter

the fig trees are bare
to winter’s blast
no longer sheltering
our southern glass
leafless to the storm
and winter’s cold
all bare
letting in
the wan winter sun
bringing no warmth
at all
to chase the chill away
winter’s here to stay
the dark is closing in
to take
the warmth away
until
spring glows green

{Poem by Peter Lattu}

One Piece by Tisha Bamba

A New Life

As I start my journey to a new life.
Full of excitement. Full of fears.
Of the known and the unknown, with every bit of wonder.
I'll make it.
I'll take it.
And I'll use it to make me the woman that I know I can be.
I finally seek out to this world for my dreams.
Able to see everything I long to see.
Able to endure the challenges that arise.
I'm a fighter.
I learn to except the sacrifices that help me realize that
I am in the real world.
HE gave me the strength to choose my life.
And this I choose.
The perfect definition of living life.
The heartbreak that comes with it has me appreciate their souls.
So I listen to the amazing sound of these waves that I will miss.
Now everything rests into a memory, that lays in my heart forever.
As I set off to the journey of a new life.
HE will guide Me.

{Poem by Tisha Bamba}

One Poem by Kathleen Coffee

Metamorphosis, for Sir James Jeans

The solar orbit goes ovalesque around
in Gravity’s grooves.
The sun-disk unravels as it travels
or it would have been too hot
for us to handle.
The pressure of the seasons on
the planet’s epidermis
keeps dividing the world
into who’s out and who’s in,
and whose is that fiendish, smirky grin?
Mister Death, is that you?

Is it true by traveling inward
I break out of
my molecular cocoon
into a world of pure wave lengths
where I shed the alphabetic
chain links holding me back,
words dissolving like darkness
in the morning sun?

Such a trip is as difficult
as each becoming all
or all becoming each,
the all inherent in the small,
hard as base being alchemized to gold,
easy as there turned into here,
which happens suddenly
when the butterfly’s no longer a grub.

{Poem by Kathleen Coffee}

Two Poems by Ron Koppelberger

Crystal Flow

On the grounds of swift mayhem and desolate blood, by handfuls
Of dry dirt tinctured scarlet with lichens and moss, near fountains
Of cascading azure life, love and rescued alliance, the trial stained
Crimson and narrow, secret in shadow, in silhouettes
Of gazing thrush and cooing owls, by the destiny of
Eternal waters lead unto the thirst of Spanish
Leagues in native dramas’ in wild hungry desire, the precipice
Of youth, the crystal flow of what’s supposed
By the gods’ and pilgrims in tow.


Rose Water Dreams

The easy evidence of Champaign demeanor and cool
Gilded pearls of contemplation, of shades in ebony,
Echos of celebration, and earned belonging in the
Desires of glowing caste,
By late evening smiles and quiet airs of weekend belonging,
The everything in all and perfumed mists of
Satisfaction, a figurine in cat’s
Eye dialogues and rose water dreams.

{Poetry by Ron Koppelberger}

One Piece by Kasey Carroll

Redondo

You cradle caramel candy and baby spoons
with your calloused, protecting hands
as we sit, buoyant on the sand.
I call you koala bear, staring at me with your
thick maple syrup eyes,
swollen cheeks, balloon lips,
and wet, salty toes.
Big, you look pretty with the birds
as your audience,
You say,
They want to hear your jasmine voice.
Those little pigeons in the distance,
They love unguided sounds.
You move your hands to the beat of the waves, chewing your caramel candy, pocketing your baby spoons,
saving your favorites for later.
I sing loudly and my words weave a blanket around you.
Wool is my favorite feel;
your voice heats my body.
I give you life as you hold the sunset in your hands,
both hanging comfortably beyond the coral sky.
You smile,
Big, watch me, I’m floating.
I see the mystery in you, the cashmere in your laugh.
You play around with the wind; you touch everything in sight,
pouring love potion and passion fruit iced tea into the world.
My eyes circle you, my prey, my pink rose petal.
I tell you I feel like a star tonight, but you’re most valuable.
Big, you’re my golden prize,
and I’m you’re morning sunshine.
So please, keep singing.
This melody climbs an invisible staircase to your waist,
As you inhale,
the sweet air carries you gently to the ground where I sit.
I sway naturally,
intoxicated by the smell of sugar lingering on your neck.
You part your lips,
Big, you’re blushing!
You kiss me like a bruised plum.
I laugh softly,
burying myself in your precious arms.

{Poem by Kasey Carroll}

One Poem by Susan Suriani

For Olivia The Strong

The flower my daughter,
The streams of tears seem like a flower with dew on her cheek,
Her sadness seems unbearably sad when you're the mother,
And you can only listen while your daughter feels so deep.
How can you make everything all right, all beautiful
for such a tender heart who always tries to be true?
How can you tell her you care like God cares,
That he cares as much for her as he cares
for the tree so tall and true?
Yet, fire season does come and strike the tree down,
And firemen come to show their love for the forest
as it lights the sky so blue.
She must go through the fire too as I did,
and as her grandmother before me.
Always remember that pain when it goes away is hardly
remembered even as we can carry on and see hope so closely.

{Poem by Susan Suriani}

One Piece by Dale Craven

Brother

You are my brother
And we are in this together
Until the end

We have broken our bread
And we bid each other peace
And though we both loathe to admit it
Our sister means to speak the truth
To soothe our souls
And to keep us from evil
And,at night,when music plays
We find comfort and solace in each other
Despite our differences

It seems we are all beautiful creations
Named people
Who celebrate life and all the blessings it may bring
When we work together

{Poem by Dale Craven}

One Poem by Derrick Harrison Hurd

In the Pale Moonlight

If the color of the day foretold its story
This day like a siren dawned red
Perhaps a life could be saved
Because of something you said
A monstrous calamity will not occur
Because of something you were
If you rise to meet your destiny
And rain bleeds things white
You will rest in peace and power tonight
In the pearl moonlight

{Poem by Derrick Harrison Hurd}

Two Pieces by Sarah Loveland

Lies

Lies, lies, lies
Everything I say is lies
“I’m going to school”
“I’m going to work”
“I’m going to study with friends”
I look out through the thick steel bars
That embrace and smother me
And I wonder how this happened.
When did that teensy little lie
Turn into a string of lies
And then a web of lies
That entangles me
Even as I sit here behind thick steel bars?

The first time I am discovered
I say to my mother
“I only wanted to try it”
“It won’t happen again”
“I promise”
She believes me and doesn’t tell dad.
I wish now that I can take it back.
I want to take back that first lie
So that maybe all the others
Will cease to exist without it.
I feel like I’ve let down my family.
I can tell they’re disappointed in me
As they speak to me through thick steel bars.

Then I meet him.
He is perfect with his brown hair
His athletic physique
His medical school dreams
And his gorgeous eyes
Which serve merely to mask his deception.
Everyone loves him
And tells me “He’s a keeper”
So I listen to their blind advice
And I keep him.
My parents are proud of me
And I don’t want to lose it.
So I let him corrupt me
And lead me astray
Lead me right after him
Into this room with thick steel bars.

I want to stop these lies.
Stop. Stop. Stop.
But I fear it’s too late.
I fear that I am trapped
Destined to be a liar
Forever behind thick steel bars.


8 ways of looking at a rock

1
rock over scissors
paper over rock

2
dribble the rock
pass the rock
shoot the rock
score

3
a child’s diversion
walking along and kicking
a rock down the street

4
rock broken down
and combined again
to make the sidewalk
on which he drags his feet

5
carved and polished
a rock placed on her finger
a symbol of deepest love

6
he is my rock
my refuge from the storm

7
a rock thrown like a grenade
shows the defiance of a rebel
shattering a French window

8
“hot funk
cool punk
even if it’s old junk
it’s still rock & roll to me”=

{Poems by Sarah Loveland}

Two Poems by Tyler Merkel

Summer Days

The late summer sun slowly sets,
after a long, pleasant, warm day.
A beach, now empty after as the sun fades,
and paints a burning, red picture.

We walk home with sand in our clothes.
The late summer sun slowly sets.
We walk along the street all alone,
The sun expires behind buildings.

I can see the glowing red faintly,
We walk faster as we lose light.
The late summer sun slowly sets.
I can hear mom calling us home.

Days grow shorter everyday now.
Darkness comes before we know it.
And the warm, summer days, get cold.
The late summer sun slowly sets.


October

October
Falling with golden snowflakes
Creating a lamination of red, orange, yellow.
Taking full, energetic forests,
Making them cold and bare
Preparing for winter

{Poetry by Tyler Merkel}

One Poem by Hope Kim, 5th grader

Stars

Stars in the sky, fly high.
They are your light,
When the moon floats away.
Next to the moon in the sky,
The stars, so bright,
It reflects in your eyes,
As you gaze at the beautiful stars.

{Poem by Hope Kim}

One Poem by Mary Kipps

Untitled

Higgledy-Piggledy
Known throughout time as the
White gander’s mistress of
Jingle and rhyme

Mother Goose captured with
Whimsy-nonsensical
Childhood’s spirit in
Immortal lines

{Poem by Mary Kipps}

One Poem by Frank LeRose

The South Never Dies,

in me,
that sun then
was absorbed through the eye
down
to what is bred in the bone
to this love
of a place
where I ran
to have the days outlast me
and re-make everyone
forgetting.

{Poem by Frank LeRose}

One Essay by Peter Lattu

Poems about Fall and the City

While browsing in the local library, I came across Leaf by Leaf: Autumn Poems selected by Barbara Rogasky and Sky Scrape/City Scape: Poems of City Life selected by Jane Yolen. The cover photo of Leaf by Leaf caught my eye: a long vista carpeted with fall leaves flanked by bare trees and empty benches. Sky Scrape/ City Scape also grabbed my attention with its cover illustration of a cityscape. Their content bore out good first impressions.

In Leaf by Leaf, Barbara Rogasky takes the reader from the summery days of September to the chill winds of November through poems by Randall Jarrell, Robinson Jeffers, Gerard Manley Hopkins and others. “November Day”, by Eleanor Averitt, has the striking image of the wind stripping the fall leaves off the trees like an old woman plucking pheasants. The photographs, by Mark Tauss, complement the poems imaginatively.

Sky Scrape/City Scape takes the reader on a journey through the city from dawn to dusk. Along the way are encounters with commuters, children playing, city traffic, street cleaning and the city dump. The book opens with a poem by Langston Hughes and has poems by Carl Sandburg, Lucille Clifton, and others. “74th Street” by Myra Cohn Livingston captures the grit and perseverance necessary to learn to roller skate. Ken Condon’s illustrations beautifully echo the poems with soaring skyscrapers or mounds of garbage. The poems and illustrations sing of city life in all its complexity and raw urban beauty soaring to the sky.

Both of these books, while marketed for children, contain adult fare. Picture books are good for adults too.

{Essay by Peter Lattu}

One Poem by Eric Pierzchala

Nothing More, Nothing Less

If only for once
To walk upon this earthen crusted soil
As naked, as nude,
In,
full-on-out-exposure
and
hand-in-hand with my one mate of soul—and
underneath the sunlight of a cloudless noon,
so of my imperfections, I could not—
not even for but a, stolen moment, hide…
But then, there ever so goes my
natural, thought,
But then, there so goes—ever walks away my,
primal, hope.

{Poetry by Eric Pierzchala}

Two Pieces by A.J. Huffman

A Nightmare of Ash and Flame

Your smile scares me.
It scars me.
With its brutal innocence.
So honest.
I cannot help but distrust
its glow.
Is growing
around my mind.
A holy disease.
I agree.
To breathe in its light.
And so I burn.
Beautifully.


Consciousness Atremble

Open the space
between my mind
and your lips.
Unwind.
The distance.
The tension.
All remember
the form of forget.
Is hollow.
Echoing out.
Watch the waves.
Falter.
As their touch gets tougher.
Roughly pushing us forward.
Then, gratefully, pulling us back.
Happily.
I will let it hold me.
Until I believe
I am gone.

{Poetry by A. J. Huffman}

Three Poems by Brian Shadensack

II.

I begin to long for complex sentences
a dance of the Syntax.
The excitement and terror of the open
There is no fiction
in unusual ways
The sinewy articulation between sentences
Undoing the vivid


III.

Their eyes a dance of unsaid words,
of unsaid love.
Dreaming of early optimism,
of late lives.
The acrid smell of her wet hair,
all that is left.


IV.

I sit in a world of fantasy.
My belly full of rose water and
melted tootsie pops. I smell
of hormones and oak.
My senses dying in an
alcoholic euphoria.
Is this happiness?

{Poetry by Brian Shadensack}

One Poem by Megan McDonald

Habitation

He rarely speaks my name anymore.
He says it’s not necessary.
He says names are for unfortunate others
Not acquainted so intimately.
I am not sure how I feel about this
Anonymous intimacy—are we
Two strangers living in a common house?

His body moves through mine as through a door,
Pushing toward escape so persistently.
I am not sure if I exist during
This communion of boredom and ecstasy.
The passionate prayer is uttered in silence
So as not to betray our identity:
Two strangers living in a common house.

Does he touch me as he touched women before,
Or am I different, separate from memory?
Do his hands hold the power to tell me from
Another flesh since his tongue ignores me?
I seek recognition in his voice
Because I no longer want to be
Two strangers living in a common house.

I listen for some whisper of opportunity
To articulate the forbidding words.
I will speak of love when introducing
Two strangers living in a common house.

{Poem by Megan McDonald}

Two Pieces by Ron Koppelberger

The Seeds of Eden

Garden rags and arts in shadow, a known wedlock
Assurance in attested cloaks of cherry blossom stain,
A press in pure morning-tide summons,
In dawn’s decision to affirm the sovereignty of fires
In passionate realms of light, a suggestion in genuine,
Untaught bliss, in ministries of reckless
Abandon shed unto the seeds of
Eden.


Starving Darkness

Compelling women in heightened discourse and measures
of soul, an eastern lay defined by the will
Of bleeding spirit and the bruised flesh of saints in
Matchstick houses, a righteous assent in gilded
Dreams of dire contention, driven by the body of
Starving darkness and virgin perfect wake, a touch
Beyond the egress of asylum and passing
Glances in time, in rhythm with the fortune
Of happenstance and fate.

{Poetry by Ron Koppelberger}

Three Poems by Jene Beardsley

Epitaph

To most his life looked somewhat dim,
But rooms within held shelf on shelf
Of shining autobiography.
They would have read for years. Yet he,
Like God, did not reveal himself
To those who did not believe in him.


Astrology

Never wish upon a star--
It has no influence this far.
Stars will always go away
As if to get the thing we pray
Yet coming back the following night
Bring nothing but their lonely light.
But if you still think stars exist
To help us with our dust and mist,
Wish on the one that gives us day
To work stark longing into clay.


Geriatric

Some things old
Cast out for the new
We have simply forgotten
The loveliness of
Until they turn ugly
For being called ugly
And we feel justified
Casting them out.

{Poetry by Jene Beardsley}