Day 15
Welcome to Day 15 of the fundraiser! Today, we have a selection of seven poems for you.
First Day of School 2020 SUSAN ESCHBACH
Teachers arrive
purposeful strides
Dells, Chromes, whiteboards
ready
No children enter the school
waiting , they are
at kitchen tables sofas
bedroom nooks mom’s work
Screens alight
waves, smiles, glad to be here,
now frozen, muted, oops lost you, now waves
some shy
some in new dresses barely noted in the square
No children enter the school
In the morning air
at my window
cacophonous crows, raucous,
make up the difference
Everyone at their “meets”
Only the principal hears the
joyful ruckus.
On Emma Lazarus’ Sonnet “The New Colossus” MARTIN BIDNEY
Exhibited at the Statue of Liberty
written for Rosh Ha-Shanah 2020
[“Lazarus” = Elazar = God Our Helper]
“Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles.”
I lift my hands up to the evening sky
And pledge, forever Matriot to be!
I was an exile, and She cared for me,
A mighty woman with a torch on high.
Her lamp she lifted by a golden door.
Her name is Love, the source of Liberty.
We love our neighbors and we’ll keep them free.
Our hymn of siblinghood will heav’nward soar.
And let me added cordial praise outpour:
A mighty woman welcomes you today.
Her lightning torch – a sonnet. Let me pray
We Emma Lazarus remember well:
Her lyric welcome is our Freedom Bell.
For New Year, say her Jewish name once more.
What she carried Fran Markover
Devil Red lipstick, thirteen slips of paper
with phone numbers of the daughter that
never called, a picture of her nephew cop,
soup crackers crushed in cellophane,
Kleenex just in case, bobby pins, her wallet,
insurance cards that told her who she was,
drivers license although she couldn’t drive,
cracked mirror, glasses broken from the
final ambulance, the newsletter featuring
her niece who colored Crayola get wells.
At the bottom like sunken treasure, a golden
watch, heart-shaped, still ticking.
EN LA LUNA Daphne Sola
(CRAZY!)
Translated from the Spanish)
No se quien es
I don't know who he is.
His name will only rasp against the book I am holding, page by fluttering page.
When light comes through the window, I turn my head so I cannot see.
No me diga quien es!
Do not tell me who he is or offer me a cloth to cover my eyes, a cloth finely woven, each thread a certainty.
I reject it, tear it to bits and cling to the dark, where the world is flat, the sea heaves like an animal, and the moon shows the face of someone unknown, or, as the Japanese believe, the shadow of a rabbit cooking rice.
Whatever Went Before Joanna Green
What lines were drawn, tight or loose
Around this magick to make
Sense of it, of me...
What shapes to fit shapes
Or not to fit...
How reflected smiles or frowns
Molded me, stopped
Or goaded me...
Where I turned around
To force upstream
Or flow with...
What now?
Unbind the lines.
It cannot be too late.
Making the Best of It ROB SCOTT
Science lights but cannot warm--Melville
Curses!
Curses!!
Curses!!!
Scientists say
There exist
Multiverses
That means
We are now
No longer THE universe just A universe
I ask you
Can things get any worse?
All That Jazz DAVID REGENSPAN
I see you, Lester Young, with your pork pie hat,
Strolling through the courthouse parking lot with Lady Day,
Your saxophone snug in the crook of your elbow,
Your conversation as sly as the purr of a tomcat.
Are you both going to enter the courthouse,
Talk yourselves out of some scrape or other,
Play like a singer and sing like a horn? And you, Charlie Parker,
Why do you lean on the lamppost like an old roué,
Dreaming of chord changes for Sewanee River,
As if it wasn’t enough that you took a flat song like Cherokee
And birthed Bebop? I can’t get rid of jazz,
It rattles in the trees like cicadas who think
They are not going to die in three days. Why
Do I think I can get away with this? My walking like chord changes
As I strum the whole town with my feet?
