The Poetry Box

Pushcart Poems

“House” by Michelle Lerner

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Front Book Cover of Protection by Michelle Lerner (Cover Image by Robert R. Sanders)
“House” by Michelle Lerner, a poem from her chapbook, Protection, released in July 2021, by The Poetry Box, has  been nominated for The Pushcart Prize.

Please enjoy the poem, and feel free to leave a comment.

“House”

I am your tin house,
your cabin, your tent
and like a tiny nomad you travel with your yurt
on your back, wrapping around you
as you writhe like a bronco, bucking at the walls
my blood just the whisper
of wind as you stretch.

You do not know yet to be lonely
you do not know
what it means
to wait.

I am a house of spirits,
yours and mine.
You hiccup and I try
to hold you in, to hold you still
with my hand on the roof of your world.

And your father surrounds me
as I surround you,
he is my house
opens windows and doors
offers me his arms, offers me his back.
Sometimes he holds you at night,
his hand on my belly, cupped
around your foot, or fist
as you sleep unknowing,
his hands not really hands,
his voice just vibrations
of the air in the eaves
of your tin house, your tent,
this space that I have given you
this room of your own
to stretch into the world
creating
yourself
as we watch, wide-eyed, and wait.

“Clearing Out” by Marilyn Johnston

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front book cover of The Poeming Pigeon: From Pandemic to Protest
“Clearing Out” by Marilyn Johnston, a poem from The Poeming Pigeon: From Pandemic to Protest, released in October 2021,  by The Poetry Box, has  been nominated for The Pushcart Prize.

Please enjoy the poem, and feel free to leave a comment.

“Clearing Out”

All summer long, I’d tried to put
our things in piles and give it away.
I wanted to walk into a room
and see blank spaces on the floor,
the table—enough to clear my head
of the clutter from under the bed,
where dust balls and shadows hide.

I emptied the dishes out of the hutch, found
homes for the silver, the glass-cut bowls,
everything the kids said they’d never want.
The only item kept—one set of dishes I vowed
to finally use. An extravagant find, bought
as a new bride, 44 years ago, after hearing
anything looks best served on white plates.

I wanted to have the joy around me,
like the mindfulness I practice reading
Mary Oliver’s poems, Karr’s memoir;
while I study the Oswaldo Guayasamin
prints on our family room wall—
all that’s left, soothing, pristine.
Nothing out of place.

And I laugh now, the preposterousness
of it all—that September night, while we
awaited the alert to evacuate the fires,
how I stopped to set the table,
just wanting to see the white dishes
one final time, against the glow
of the ochre-red, smoky skies.

“Traveling with the Speed of Light” by Zeina Azzam

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Front Book Cover of Bayna Bayna: In-Between
“Traveling with the Speed of Light” by Zeina Azzam, a poem from the chapbook, Bayna Bayna: In-Between, released in May 2021, by The Poetry Box, has  been nominated for The Pushcart Prize.

Please enjoy the poem, and feel free to leave a comment.

“Traveling with the Speed of Light”

News from Damascus scrolls on TV,
a morning chat with a friend just home
from work, seven hours in the future.
My hands can almost touch the cyclamen
on West Bank hills, as if tending flowers
in my backyard. The corniche road
winding around Beirut’s tip hugging
the sea, so close to my doorstep.

As world wanderers we click on screens,
sift symbols, look with sister eyes
in oval lenses of intersecting circles,
the radius of the voyage invisible.
Stories between ethereal mouths and
ears, voices in bits and bytes penetrate
thick mountains, deserts. We measure
epiphanies in seconds, move on,

leave unintended footprints:
there are dreams of tented trysts,
shards of conversations, mistakes—
maybe second thoughts—deleted.
Like dense coffee grounds lining once
welcoming cups, or small bowls of dull
olive pits, a sadness. Only scintillas
of thoughts linger, a salty taste in memory.

Now in Washington a white moon blooms
while the sun throws rays on Jerusalem
and Amman…and this luminous language
of loving: imaginary lines around the globe,
a curving cage of messages at the speed
of light. We reach out, draw in, close as
the space between fingers on a keyboard,
far as the great meridian from pole to pole.

“XIV” by Joanne Godley

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Front Cover of Picking Scabs from the Body History

 

“XIV” by Joanne Godley, a poem (previously known as “Anatomy of a Scar”) from her chapbook, Picking Scabs from the Body History, released in July, 2020 by The Poetry Box, has  been nominated for The Pushcart Prize.

Please enjoy the poem, and feel free to leave a comment.

“XIV”

I will not touch this wound    will not     I’ve taped my hands at
night worn mittens and gloves    created internal distractions to
stay as far the hell away      from myself so the hurts could crust and
scab over      I am a Black mother who told both children at their
becoming ages what it meant to be a Black in America; as they
left the Cute age, transitioned to the Intimidating age, & arrived
at the Dangerous age—America’s categories for Black youth—I
read the little black book to them at night How to Be Black and Stay
Alive—my girl included—the book told you to look a grownup
in the eye; to neither smirk nor shirk nor grin when spoken to;
stressed the importance of enunciating and articulating the King’s
English every day; to respect their elders; to neither lie nor cheat;
to say ‘yes sir’ to an officer; and understand that milk is a food not
a beverage

when my son was a phd at U Chicago*, he organized a protest
group—U Chicago having closed their Trauma Unit forcing many
South Siders to bleed to death en route to an ER across town;
Miz O was then administrator—the group leafleted, held talks,
picketed, engaged and enraged the University for years someone
sent me a YouTube video of my son’s arrest at one protest Chi
town cops surrounded him     he asked that they call the University
because the protest was sanctioned     he used the safe word those
pigs took my 77-inch baby down    face down    then opened ranks
the camera showed him on his face on the ground handcuffed my
heart flash froze      I tried to squeeze my body up into that phone
and shove aside those cops slip off his manacles and say, “get up,
Baby. Mama’s here.”      this drama plays on repeat in my head a
zillion times each day each night Trayvon Martin / Eric Garner
/ Sean Bell / Michael Brown / Alton Sterling made the news for
walking or running or speaking for saying nothing or breathing or

simply being Black     and human silent tears well and crest inside
my pain is a wrapped box no one wants to open the anti-gift     I
am all Black mothers to all Black daughters and sons birthing
them growing them launching them into the world to fight social
wrongs or die trying     their exit wounds wound me    linger deep
crust over      taut tough scars I point to with Black motherpride
this scab that scab

“there, those be my sons”

 

 

* The U Chicago Med Center broke ground on a new trauma center 9/2016—
two years after my son received his doctorate

“Black Dot” by Julia Paul

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CoverFront-StaringDownTheTracks

 

“Black Dot” by Julia Paul, a poem from her chapbook, Staring Down the Tracks, released in March, 2020 by The Poetry Box, has  been nominated for The Pushcart Prize.

Please enjoy the poem, and feel free to leave a comment.

“Black Dot”

This is what loneliness looks like,
defined by what surrounds it.
A single black balloon
slipping through white sky.

This is the period sitting stone-still
at the end of a sentence,
any sentence, including this one.

This is what God looks like
from behind closed eyes,
faceless and distant.

This is the soul
according to some.
The soul, blackened by sin,
the light of grace snuffed out.

No.

This is the needle mark.
This is the black hole
into which the self disappears.
This is the exit wound.

“Soused Sestina” by Lauren Tivey

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Front Book Cover, "Moroccan Holiday" poetry by Lauren Tivey
First Prize, 2019

 

“Soused Sestina” by Lauren Tivey, a poem from her winning chapbook, Moroccan Holiday, released in January, 2020 by The Poetry Box, has  been nominated for The Pushcart Prize.

Please enjoy the poem, and feel free to leave a comment.

“Soused Sestina”

A blotto fantasia, on the rocks

Picture a man whose sole motivation is a bottle,
someone aimless and roaming in a dark forest of liquor,
a wolf on his track, brambles upon the path to his lover,
hunters lurking in tree stands, guns trained on this drunk
stumbling through thorny underbrush, in need of an angel
to guide him toward the shining, boozy beacon of ecstasy;

you can imagine when he lands on the spot, the ecstatic
guzzling of amber liquid—fluid of life—in the bottle
clean and glinting, its sloshing contents, his very own angel
promising relief and comfort, freedom from fear via liquor,
an escape from reality, imaginary threats. After he’s drunk
and satiated, the staggering and rolling: he’s never been so in love.

Nothing matters other than being smashed, his smashing beloved;
it’s a match made in heaven, the one true meaning, this ecstasy
of ethanol, forest now a seaside resort, conjured from the drink,
wonderland of waves, sun, salt, and suds, ships in a bottle,
even hunters morphed into mermaids, gesturing with liquor
from boulders in the undulating ocean, like pure angels.

It’s the promised land, he’s made it, and from every angle
it’s clear sailing with the Seven Sisters, a balmy day, so lovely,
in boats of booze, whiling away the time, answering liquor’s
siren call, forgetting past, present, and future, only this ecstasy
in his companion, his soulmate, enchanting inamorata in a bottle,
fulfilling every need and desire, which is only to be drunker

than the next lamo wobbling their way down an alley, drunk
as a skunk. Hold fast! he shouts, hold true! My darling angel
I’ll never leave you! He’s the chosen of the genie in the bottle,
he knows, never learning she always strands her unwitting lovers
on the rocks, battering and breaking them in sadistic ecstasy,
leaving them quivering, devoid of hope, of joy, of liquor—

and here he lays, once again, exposed in the sun, leaking liquor
out of every pore, buzz evaporating, no longer the drunken
sailor, baking on the crag like a crab out of water, ecstasy
turned agony, and then comes the chuckling albatross, no angel
saving him, but shitting on him as he keens for his lost love,
just a wretched tosspot withering in the glare, sans bottle.

And so his tryst with liquor ends, not with a perfect angel
blissfully drunk in his arms, but a thieving, maniacal lover,
pilfering his ecstasy, unhappily-ever-after, with a bottle.

“Mouth Quill” by Kaja Weeks

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CoverFront-MouthQuill
“Mouth Quill” by Kaja Weeks, the title poem from the book, Mouth Quill: Poems with Ancestral Roots, released in Sept, 2020 by The Poetry Box, has  been nominated for The Pushcart Prize.

Please enjoy the poem, and feel free to leave a comment.

“Mouth Quill”

At home, my stroke-assaulted mother,
you startle and confound me.
On my childhood bed
we eye each other.

Metallic sounds ring from your mouth.
Wailing not at gods, but from some crucible of the gods.
From those Northlands winds blow low and rise, they ripen.
Your incantation pelts the room, the color of blue sorrow—

one river, two rivers, three rivers, more . . .

My voice fails. I fear to go there and utter nothing.
I offer recorded purity, nuns singing 9th century Christian chant:
Gloria, laus, et honor tibi sit. Rex Christe, Redemptor.
Isn’t this your God?

No! You smack the music device
and, though words have eluded you for months,
deep-throated, you decree, “This is false death!”
and renew your endless spell.

We are so far from singing together.
I don’t know how to join you: my mouth quill has stilled.

Oh, Mesi Marja-memmekene, Honey Mama-berry,
Emakene hellekene, my Mother my dear.
Äiu, äiu, äiu, once you charmed me to slumber
on silken nets in this space of braided hair.

“An Annotated Facebook Acrostic” by Linda Ferguson

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front cover of The Poeming Pigeon: Pop Culture issue
Cover Art by Robert R. Sanders

“An Annotated Facebook Acrostic” by Linda Ferguson, a poem from The Poeming Pigeon: Pop Culture issue, released in December, 2020 by The Poetry Box, has  been nominated for The Pushcart Prize.

Please enjoy the poem, and feel free to leave a comment.

“An Annotated Facebook Acrostic”

Feverishly photographing beautiful food and flowers.*
*I hate my boss. My kid served detention three times this week. Again,
ants in the jelly. So not perfect. Don’t tell anybody.

Ahhh, squirrels, puppies, llamas, donkeys. Soft and warm and snuggily.*
*My anti-anxiety medication is NOT working.

Cats! Sleeping in baby’s brand new cradle, leering at squirrels, licking
their toes in the bathroom sink.*
*I know I’m supposed to be eager to please, but how cool to be a furry,
arrogant beast with claws and teeth.

Everyone is smiling, smiling, smiling, just like celebrities! Perched on a
ladder cleaning the gutters or cheering for the team (windchill factor
below 20), blissed out in the recovery room just after surgery!*
*Remember what happened when you cried in front of everyone in third
grade? Do NOT, under any circumstances, look sad in public ever again.
I’m not kidding.

Bevy of besties. Besties at the apple tasting. Besties sipping wine on
the balcony at the beach. Besties belting out birthday karaoke.*
*I am never alone. Never lonely. I am adored. I never lie awake in the
dark thinking Oh hell, what’s wrong with me. I’m not kidding. Really.

Oh là là! Me in front of the Eiff el Tower and the Tower of Pisa, the Tower
of London, Thailand’s State Tower and Santiago’s Gran Torre. All the
torres and me!*
*See how adventurous I am! Such good taste (and money)!

Offl ine, I think about doing yoga, taking in orphans and communing
with fungi under trees.*
*If I do more things, I could post about them, and people would love
and admire me even more. How awesome would that be?!

Kudos! I won a prize! You won a prize! We donated money! Our latest
remodel is so lovely! We’ve all been with the same partners forever!
Our children are so successful and happy! We signed the petition
to save the bees! We rode the bus one day this week! We’re all so
beautiful, clever and aware, I can hardly speak!*
*When oh when will I be happy?