Category: Poems

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The Woman at the Stoplight

I see in her face
that oh, she needs it too—

a gap in the day,
cloistered though not
confining,

person-
sized pocket to slip into,

buffered as by a cloud’s
sheer inner lining,

for a breath
of self-replenishment,
self-repair,

or only just
a breath,
(stanza break)

and then
(I promise!)
out again,

far from too much
to ask,

so with the full force
of my small ferocity,

I importune the air:

“What would it cost
you who are only
lavish, seamless,

great incorporeal sprawl
of everywhere?—

open!
And admit us.”

—Claire Bateman, first appeared in Every Day Poems, featured in The Joy of Poetry, T. S. Poetry Press

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On the Eve of Your Thirteenth Birthday

for Jeffrey

the last day of twelve
was nothing special,
you said.
you didn’t dress for gym,
didn’t play four-square with
the others. only walked,
you said.

In English, you wrote
a myth…about Gusano—
it means worm in Spanish
you said.
this Greco-Spanish
worm-god found freedom,
you said.
but he led his people
back into the
earth to rule the Underworld
and that’s why he will
be responsible for
the zombie apocalypse,
you said.

and math was about
interest, like money and
banks, you know?
you said.
and you have homework
so you came home in
a bad mood and didn’t
want to talk about twelve
you said.

so i hushed and got out
the eggs, cracked them one-by-
one in the bowl and mixed until
those yellow eyes are gone; i
rubbed grease on the pan that is
swathed in black enamel
from years of cradling sweet
batter…and i poured more
in. you at the table building
up interest when the room
starts to smell like a birthday.

and suddenly, you are there,
beside to lick the batter from
the bowl. what time was I
born?
you said.

—Laura Boggess, featured in The Joy of Poetry, T. S. Poetry Press

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Valentine’s Chai

Sitting in a sunny cafe, I call my parents
because I can’t stand to hear
bad news at home.
So I call from here, on my cell,
armed with chai.

She’s telling the doctor, No more.

She will leave his office with some pills
that will lengthen her sweet tooth in time
for Valentine’s Day.

I quaff my tea and head to the store
for candy hearts, chocolate hearts,
Reese’s peanut butter hearts, heart-shaped
cookies piled with icing—any
confectionary way to say I love you I love
you I love you I love you I love you.

—Megan Willome, from The Joy of Poetry, T. S. Poetry Press

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Bottled Water

I go to the corner liquor store
for a bottle of water, middle
of a hectic day, must get out
of the office, stop making decisions,
quit obsessing does my blue skirt clash
with my hot pink flats; should I get
my mother a caregiver or just put her
in a home, and I pull open the glass
refrigerator door, am confronted
by brands—Arrowhead, Glitter Geyser,
Deer Park, spring, summer, winter water,
and clearly the bosses of bottled water:
Real Water and Smart Water—how different
will they taste? If I drink Smart Water
will I raise my IQ but be less authentic?
If I choose Real Water will I no longer
deny the truth, but will I attract confused,
needy people who’ll take advantage
of my realness by dumping their problems
on me, and will I be too stupid to help them
sort through their murky dilemmas?
I take no chances, buy them both,
sparkling smart, purified real, drain both bottles,
look around to see is anyone watching?
I’m now brilliantly hydrated.

—Kim Dower, from Slice of Moon, featured in The Joy of Poetry,
T. S. Poetry Press, by permission of Red Hen Press

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With My Mother, Missing the Train

With My Mother,
Missing the Train

She was always late. At the final minute
we’d run for the city train, which roared right past,
its line of faces scanning us not in it.
The world was turned to terror by the blast
of hot departing wheels. Air seized my mother,
crushing her flustered skirts into a flurry
with me there clinging. Hush, there’ll be another,
she’d say to keep me calm. No need to worry.
But there was a need. The speed of things was true
and rushing traffic urged us both ahead.
I wanted to race again, to burst right through
and make the great train wait. She never said
that missing things was serious, till I grew.
She held my hand more tightly than I knew.

—Helena Nelson, from Plot and Counterplot, featured in The Joy of Poetry, T. S. Poetry Press, by permission of Shoestring Press

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The Find

To me it is just
a cave—a bouldered space
held dark against this mountain.
To you, it opens
dreams of dragons, pink and green
as the dragon-scale shoes
I bought for you just yesterday,
knowing it would be too soon before
you came upon this place, only to find it had become
just a cave, an empty bouldered space.

—L.L. Barkat, from Love, Etc., T. S. Poetry Press

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Whispered

I should tell you
about my hands, small
and experienced.

The other night,
when my youngest daughter
said, as I tucked her into bed,

Tell me something. Tell me anything,
I turned off the light and whispered this:

when I cut the beets tonight,
the red water went all into
the lines on my hands—

so many lines.

—L.L. Barkat, from Love, Etc., T. S. Poetry Press

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Dear—

1

What if

2

What if the only way
she could write again
required a white cup

3

And the cup,
would she pour herself
into it? Or, rather, bring it to her lips.

4

What if

5

What if she held the cup very close,
by its delicate white handle,
and whispered into the hollow.

6

Something like—
I was five, and he said
pick mulberries with me;
I could show you the tree
on which they weep and sway.
And her mother held her chin
and said, tell him no…
it would spoil your hand-sewn dress.

—L.L. Barkat, from The Novelist, T. S. Poetry Press

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Lifted

What’s that?
I say, and turn to see you watching me.

Go back, you whisper, coming close,
lifting my hem a little higher.

Okay…

They were young.
She was French and Indian (through Canada),
but they say she looked like Cleopatra.

It was night,
and she and he drove closer to the stars,
somewhere in the Helderbergs

(there is a castle in those hills, I hear,
built by a philosopher, potter, poet).

The sky, I think, was black and red,
too much, as it were, and then
he raised her hem—

for the universe knew, it knew:
you would have need of me.

—L.L. Barkat, from The Novelist, T. S. Poetry Press

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Lambent

You see, it is more complicated
than that. I said it was the untutored search
for lambent, astral, welter, and the river of stars.

But my mother would not know
the meaning of lambent, welter, astral—
though the river of stars

is a place she walked me, pointing
on the darkest nights, when I suppose
she wanted to escape her memories

and show me something of the world,
the kind of something only she
could show me.

What did she know of astral predictions,
when she simply walked the nights to forget
the welts of time

and the long-gone days her father’s boots
met her mother’s face in the lambent
living room, where kerosene lamps

could not light her hiding place
beneath the sideboard (why was the sideboard
in the living room?)

You see the complication now.
And how a passel of big talk
tells her this: what do you know

of the world? You never even learned
to chop an onion, through its many
moistened skins. You couldn’t keep

my father, Ivy man of words…
when all you knew was the river,
and the stars.

—L.L. Barkat, from The Novelist, T. S. Poetry Press