Poetry Reading

To be a boxer, or not to be there
at all. O Muse, where are our teeming crowds?
Twelve people in the room, eight seats to spare
it’s time to start this cultural affair.
Half came inside because it started raining,
the rest are relatives. O Muse.

The women here would love to rant and rave,
but that’s for boxing. Here they must behave.
Dante’s Inferno is ringside nowadays.
Likewise his Paradise. O Muse.

Oh, not to be a boxer but a poet,
one sentenced to hard shelleying for life,
for lack of muscles forced to show the world
the sonnet that may make the high-school reading lists
with luck. O Muse,
O bobtailed angel, Pegasus.

In the first row, a sweet old man’s soft snore:
he dreams his wife’s alive again. What’s more,
she’s making him that tart she used to bake.
Aflame, but carefully-don’t burn his cake!
we start to read. O Muse.

Reflective writing prompt:
Start with “O Muse.”

       Stan Heleva and Michelle Pauls

When We Were Whales* – by Stan Heleva

We knew nothing of the legs we had shed
As we swam in the Peruvian desert
Nor how they had become unnecessary
Not an inkling of immanent return had we, nor again why.

We had only silent ballet, no music
Turning ourselves over in the murky sun
Only to dart in to tear more flesh from our fellows
Our tusks glinting dully, our beards stained with blood.

Our name, Leviathan Melvillei, was unknown to us
And might have remained so for all the good
It has done dead whale or dead poet: we had no tune I repeat
We taught them only to cry in pain; they made of it a song.

*From Michelle Pauls’ Forthcoming play, “It’s Complicated….This Gift of Life.”

Reflective writing prompt:
Write about when we were something else.

                  Faith Ringgold

From “The American People Series”
#9 – The American Dream, 1964

Reflective writing prompt:
Write about both sides.

           Danusha Laméris

                      The Watch

At night, my husband takes it off,

puts it on the dresser beside his wallet and keys

laying down, for a moment, the accoutrements of manhood.

Sometimes, when he’s not looking, I pick it up

savor the weight, the dark face, ticked with silver

the brown, ostrich leather band with its little goosebumps

raised as the flesh is raised in pleasure.

He had wanted a watch and was pleased when I gave it to him.

And since we’ve been together ten years

it seemed like the occasion for the gift of a watch

a recognition of the intricate achievements

of marriage, its many negotiations and nameless triumphs.

But tonight, when I saw it lying there among

his crumpled receipts and scattered pennies

I thought of my brother’s wife coming home

from the coroner carrying his rings, his watch

in a clear, ziplock bag, and how we sat at the table

and emptied them into our palms,

their slight pressure all that remained of him.

How odd the way a watch keeps going

even after the heart has stopped. My grandfather

was a watchmaker and spent his life in Holland

leaning over a clean, well-lit table, a surgeon of time

attending to the inner workings: spring,

escapement, balance wheel. I can’t take it back,

the way the man I love is already disappearing

into this mechanism of metal and hide,

this accountant of hours

that holds, with such precise indifference

all the minutes of his life.

Reflective Writing Prompt
What drives your internal clock?

Electrons – Lehab Assef Al-Jundi

Atoms within your body
spin.
What seems solid –
knees, nose, hair –
moves swiftly. Particles
orbit each other. Dart like meteors
through vast spaces.

Air about you
made of same.
You take from it
and you give.
Drawing in atoms and molecules
to form
your ever changing image.
Your lips move.
Your tongue speaks your name.
You take it on faith your words will
make sense.

Meaning flows out effortlessly.
Electrons skip like rocks on water
between your solid body
and your electromagnetic thoughts.

You look through a window.
Listen to voices from within and without.
Dazzled by what you perceive,
you wonder about causes and effects.

When a wave of love takes you by surprise,
your eyes well up with tears.

Reflective writing prompt:
Write about what seems solid

Transient – Virginia Drda

Sunlight inhale
day’s heart beating
nature’s time clock
pulsing
fleeting
sunset sigh
splashed through the sky
exhaled twilight
waves goodbye

spring wind whispers
breath in bubbles
bursting blossoms
day’s length doubles
firefly blink
firework gasp
sands
slip
through
midsummer’s grasp

coy striptease
of autumn trees
skeletons
bare
in cinnamon breeze

icy frostlace
frozen fingers
winter’s breathcloud
lightly lingers

floating snowflakes
heaven sent
we too
are transient

Reflective writing prompt:
Write about what does not last.

Sejal Shah

From: Curriculum

My friend Anne says use the old frames and wear them. Replace the lenses. I, too, wear glasses; this is one way I know I belong to my family since I don’t really resemble them. They are my mother’s cat-eyeglasses, from the sixties; or maybe it was the seventies. They are broken and I cannot bear to get rid of them. I keep them in the blue-and-white flowered glasses case she always used. I keep them in a wooden box that says Buffalo Baking Powder Company and that I bought one summer, at an antique fair. I was not even twenty-five. What did I know then of the way things break down? Of the way I would and one day did. I want to believe I will wear her glasses one day. I keep thinking about these objects that have no particular use, how I study them: two handkerchief maps of an area now called something else; pale, needlepointed flowers (unframed); spectacles with black and gold rims, a relic signifying forthcoming absence, these glasses of a mother I will lose one day.

Reflective writing prompt:
Write about an object with no particular purpose

“Wilton” – Corinne May Botz

Reflective writing prompt:
Write about being observed unawares.

Excerpt from “Ordinary Deaths: Stories from Memory” by Samuel LeBaron

The next day, Mom leaves her cleaning and sits down on the floor

where I am playing. She looks into my eyes. “Do you know where your name came from?”

   “No,” I say. I don’t know what she means anyway. If my name came from somewhere that means that I came from somewhere. I thought my name and I have always been here.

She leans toward me so close I feel her look into the inside of me.

“You were named after your grandpa. My papa. But your name also came from the prophet Samuel. It means ‘called of God.’ When the prophet Samuel was a little boy, he woke in the night and thought he heard a voice call him. He tried to go back to sleep but he heard somebody call his name again and again. Finally, he got out of bed  and went into his parents’ bedroom. ‘Did you call me?’ asked Samuel. ‘No,’ his mother told him. ‘You heard the voice of God call you. Next time you hear that voice, listen to it and follow what it tells you.’

  “So, Samuel listened to the voice of God after that, and that’s how he grew up to become a prophet. I want you to always listen to the voice of God. If you hear it call to you, you can follow in the path of the prophet and become a great man like your grandpa.”

I stare into her face. She smiles, then hugs me, so I think I should
agree. I nod and say, “Okay.” Then she gives me another hug. It’s a
long hug. It seems like a pretty good thing. All I have to do is wait for a voice to call.

After that, I realize I often hear something call me. Sometimes it’s the wind in the trees or against the windows; sometimes it’s the cry of a bird far away. It comes through my ears, or my eyes or skin, the way I see colors or feel the sensation of cloth or wood or snow. I’m not always sure.

 Sometimes I sit still in the middle of the kitchen floor while Mom
is busy. Through the window I see leaves and tree limbs and sky.
Branches waving. The sky sometimes gray and cold, or full of rain
or snow. The more I listen, the more I hear whispers and voices.
Sometimes there are whispers inside the walls or the ceiling. Little
whispers in snowflakes that stick to a window.

When that happens, I look up at Mom as she washes dishes or stirs food in a large bowl on the counter. I wonder if she hears any of these voices. But she never turns to ask, “Did you hear that?” so I don’t tell her.

Reflective writing prompt:
Write about a voice or sound only you can hear.

                 Siren Song

This is the one song everyone
would like to learn: the song
that is irresistible:

the song that forces men
to leap overboard in squadrons
even though they see the beached skulls

the song nobody knows
because anyone who has heard it
is dead, and the others can’t remember.

Shall I tell you the secret
and if I do, will you get me
out of this bird suit?

I don’t enjoy it here
squatting on this island
looking picturesque and mythical

with these two feathery maniacs,
I don’t enjoy singing
this trio, fatal and valuable.

I will tell the secret to you,
to you, only to you.
Come closer. This song

is a cry for help: Help me!
Only you, only you can,
you are unique

at last. Alas
it is a boring song
but it works every time.

Reflective writing prompt:

Write about a song that was utterly captivating
or
About an irresistible force