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?

 



 



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