Ash Wednesday

By Kevin Young
Kevin Young's Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebels, is an epic retelling in verse of the mutiny by fifty-three Africans, illegally sold in Havana, on board the slave ship Amistad in 1839.

Ash Wednesday
Once I thought everything
has a soul
Then I learnt only
the fool fears the tree—
It is empty—
So too the wind
that sends it which
way & that—
Now I know God
is such a wind
from which we
are rent—
The heavens take
the tree
from the tree—
leaf by leaf—
Being gone, taken,
is what means Heaven—
It is full—of wings—
A music of what
is missing
since nothing
but men have souls
tho, it appears,
not many.

Jamaican Idol

by Terese Svoboda

Walking backward from the sea,
scales shedding, you seek the cave.

This is why the French door admits
only ocean. You stare into the louver

and forget how to get out. Lull
is the word, or loll. The sea returns,

completing your pulse, the waves live,
each breath of yours worship.

Taken

By AJ Strong

Breathe in slowly deeply and now exhale …do you feel it?
Now do it again… but this time close your eyes and smirk, not a smile but a smirk.
A small sense of pride felt by a twisted choice.
I feel glad no sad no glad wait stop!
Ok well truth is I like it a lot.
Did you know that it would be like this?
I didn’t want to do it, I tried not to, really I did, but gosh when I did it felt so good so right.

One day I woke up and all the sudden it was gone, I searched and searched and searched some more but damn it was gone.
I looked in my heart, I looked in my soul and last I looked in my head.

Frantically I continued to search, panicked I reached for help, I got nothing.

And then it there it was, I erupted, short sudden breaths over and over again, breathing quickly, heavily, crazy uncontrollable tears began to flow, no wait gush like a fierce river, the kind of cry you can only cry when change is in your face.
I cried, I cried so hard my head hurt, its throbbing, so hard my eye were burning, so hard my body was shaking, my cheeks were flushed.
I had no control, its grip was so tight, I assume feeling similar to large, warm hands wrapped around ones neck without permission.
I could feel the wetness on the bed, I could hear the voice in my head.

None of it mattered.

It stopped and then I arose, strangely in a feather like state.
A lack of weight that was present and mine, mine to have, to feel, to own.

Breathe in slowly deeply and now exhale … do you feel it?

Freedom is present.

Phantom Noise

I love the language used in this poem, which is by soldier-poet:
Brian Turner

There is this ringing hum this
bullet-borne language ringing
shell-fall and static this late-night
ringing of threadwork and carpet ringing
hiss and steam this wing-beat
of rotors and tanks broken
bodies ringing in steel humming these
voices of dust these years ringing
rifles in Babylon rifles in Sumer
ringing these children their gravestones
and candy their limbs gone missing their
static-borne television their ringing
this eardrum this rifled symphonic this
ringing of midnight in gunpowder and oil this
brake pad gone useless this muzzle-flash singing this
threading of bullets in muscle and bone this ringing
hum this ringing hum this
ringing

French Movie

By David Lehman

I was in a French movie
and had only nine hours to live
and I knew it
not because I planned to take my life
or swallowed a lethal but slow-working
potion meant for a juror
in a mob-related murder trial,
nor did I expect to be assassinated
like a chemical engineer mistaken
for someone important in Milan
or a Jew journalist kidnapped in Pakistan;
no, none of that; no grounds for
suspicion, no murderous plots
centering on me with cryptic phone
messages and clues like a scarf or
lipstick left in the front seat of a car;
and yet I knew I would die
by the end of that day
and I knew it with a dreadful certainty,
and when I walked in the street
and looked in the eyes of the woman
walking toward me I knew that
she knew it, too,
and though I had never seen her before,
I knew she would spend the rest of that day
with me, those nine hours walking,
searching, going into a bookstore in Rome,
smoking a Gitane, and walking,
walking in London, taking the train
to Oxford from Paddington or Cambridge
from Liverpool Street and walking
along the river and across the bridges,
walking, talking, until my nine hours
were up and the black-and-white movie
ended with the single word FIN
in big white letters on a bare black screen.

Anybody Can Write A Poem

By Bradley Paul

I am arguing with an idiot online.
He says anybody can write a poem.
I say some people are afraid to speak.
I say some people are ashamed to speak.
If they said the pronoun "I"
they would find themselves floating
in the black Atlantic
and a woman would swim by, completely
dry, in a rose chiffon shirt,
until the ashamed person says her name
and the woman becomes wet and drowns
and her face turns to flayed ragged pulp,
white in the black water.
He says that he'd still write
even if someone cut off both his hands.
As if it were the hands that make a poem,
I say. I say what if someone cut out
whatever brain or gut or loin or heart
that lets you say hey, over here, listen,
I have something to tell you all,
I'm different.
As an example I mention my mother
who loved that I write poems
and am such a wonderful genius.
And then I delete the comment
because my mother wanted no part of this or any
argument, because "Who am I
to say whatever?"
Once on a grade school form
I entered her job as hairwasher.
She saw the form and was embarrassed and mad.
"You should have put receptionist."
But she didn't change it.
The last word she ever said was No.
And now here she is in my poem,
so proud of her idiot son,
who presumes to speak for a woman
who wants to tell him to shut up, but can't.

The Hand

By Mary Ruefle

The teacher asks a question.
You know the answer, you suspect
you are the only one in the classroom
who knows the answer, because the person
in question is yourself, and on that
you are the greatest living authority,
but you don’t raise your hand.
You raise the top of your desk
and take out an apple.
You look out the window.
You don’t raise your hand and there is
some essential beauty in your fingers,
which aren’t even drumming, but lie
flat and peaceful.
The teacher repeats the question.
Outside the window, on an overhanging branch,
a robin is ruffling its feathers
and spring is in the air.

I thought this would be a suitable poem to post for National Teacher Day. I celebrate and salute my husband and other teachers today and every day of the year.

A Lady Who Thinks She Is Thirty

By Ogden Nash

Unwillingly Miranda wakes,
Feels the sun with terror,
One unwilling step she takes,
Shuddering to the mirror.

Miranda in Miranda's sight
Is old and gray and dirty;
Twenty-nine she was last night;
This morning she is thirty.

Shining like the morning star,
Like the twilight shining,
Haunted by a calendar,
Miranda is a-pining.

Silly girl, silver girl,
Draw the mirror toward you;
Time who makes the years to whirl
Adorned as he adored you.

Time is timelessness for you;
Calendars for the human;
What's a year, or thirty, to
Loveliness made woman?

Oh, Night will not see thirty again,
Yet soft her wing, Miranda;
Pick up your glass and tell me, then--
How old is Spring, Miranda?