The Poetry Box

pushcart nominee

“Beyond Gravitas”
by Jarold Ramsey

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CoverFRONT-JumpStraightUp
“Beyond Gravitas” by Jarold Ramsey, published in Jump Straight Up, released in November 2023, has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

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

Beyond Gravitas

by Jarold Ramsey

 

They said it couldn’t be done
or more precisely he shouldn’t try it
—not, surely, at three score and fifteen!
—not, please, with your bionic hip!
But what was he to do, with his grandchild,
who had been taking Circus lessons,
showing off a repertory of stunts
but couldn’t manage a headstand?

Head to the floor, hands pressing downward for balance,
elbows akimbo, knees hoisted and briefly
cradled on the elbows, then legs slowly lifted,
straightened, wavering, but marking time
beyond gravitas over his pulsing head.

There now kiddo, that’s how it’s done,
said grandpa the old show-off,
seeing spots as he clambered down to earth,
already thinking about the next family lesson,
with Leo, Harper, Samantha, Maddy, and Willa,
all conspired on the floor with him,
all dangerously upside down for love,
twelve legs straight up waving like saplings,
reaching for the leaves and the birds!

 

from Jump Straight Up by Jarold Ramsey (The Poetry Box, 2023)
nominated for The Pushcart Prize by Shawn Aveningo Sanders, editor/publisher

“The Rule of Dew & Tiny Parachutes”
by Lana Hechtman Ayers

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CoverFront-WhenAllElseFails
“The Rule of Dew & Tiny Parachutes” by Lana Hechtman Ayers, published in When All Else Fails, released in May 2023, has  been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

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

The Rule of Dew & Tiny Parachute

by Lana Hechtman Ayers

 

When I was a child, my father waged war
against the dandelions in the lawn,
a battle I never fathomed,
thinking their yellow spirals sunny,
their fancy geometric lace even better
when my breath would launch airborne
their heads of fluff gone to seed—
a million tiny parachutes up into sky.

But for Daddy, a carpet of unbroken green
meant he lived in a world where rules
were obeyed and everything made better for it.

The eye is the window to the world
of other and self,
and a dew drop
is a crystal ball on a small scale.
When I looked into its invisible oracle
on a blade of grass
I witnessed a bead of knowledge
in a language that has no words but wonder.

 

from When All Else Fails by Lana Hechtman Ayers (The Poetry Box, 2023)
nominated for The Pushcart Prize by Shawn Aveningo Sanders, editor/publisher

“Mending” by Melanie Green

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front cover of The Poeming Pigeon, issue #13, designed by Robert R. Sanders featuring cover art by Beverly Ash Gilbert
“Mending” by Melanie Green, published in The Poeming Pigeon: A Journal of Poetry & Art (#13), released in October 2023, has  been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

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

Mending

by Melanie Green

 

After bumble and debacle,
stress and overdo—
viral flare in the this-body.

Cattywampus.
Ache and slow
garb of the moment.

So, to the delve
and distill, the verbing
of rest, composition—lull.

Time is spindrift, null.
Fathom hush
through a gentled window.

The human form,
made from old stars
and their gritty knowledge,

with millions of wisdom
years within that heal
the nicked and rubble.

The endure-body
which mends itself over
and over again.

 

from The Poeming Pigeon: A Journal of Poetry & Art (#13)
nominated for The Pushcart Prize by Shawn Aveningo Sanders, editor/publisher

“Stars” by Andrea Hollander

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front cover of The Poeming Pigeon, issue #13, designed by Robert R. Sanders featuring cover art by Beverly Ash Gilbert
“Stars” by Andrea Hollander, published in The Poeming Pigeon: A Journal of Poetry & Art (#13), released in October 2023, has  been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

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

Stars

by Andrea Hollander

 

“Every day on every blouse, sweater, coat,
on every single dress,” she said. I pictured them

shining from hangers in her closet, dazzling
her drawers. “No closets back then,” she said.

Later, she told me, a few folded into her one satchel
during the weeks she hid in a neighbor’s basement.

Then in a nearby copse one cold night and next
in a tunnel (she didn’t know how long or where)

with no one she knew. “After that,” she said,
“by some miracle,” crowded in a ship’s hold,

where, against her chest, she felt the shape
of one star sewn to the bodice of the last dress

her mother had made, though when she looked, the star
was gone, and she, “too young,” didn’t know why.

Too young myself, I asked only what they were made of.
And did she paste glitter on all six points like the stars

I made from thick paper for the holidays? And why
yellow? Was yellow the only color you could use?

from The Poeming Pigeon: A Journal of Poetry & Art (#13)
nominated for The Pushcart Prize by Shawn Aveningo Sanders, editor/publisher

“Examination” by Annie Lighthart

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Front Cover of The Poeming Pigeon, Issue #12
“Examination” by Annie Lighthart, published in The Poeming Pigeon: A Journal of Poetry & Art (#12), released in October 2022, has  been nominated for The Pushcart Prize.

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

Examination

For I will consider my teeth.
For they are at once a great blessing and bane.
For they are younger than me and yet more speedily decline.
For their wisdom was impacted and pulled fourfold.
For this was done by force and regretted.
For they are a tribe.
For each day they call roll by means of the tongue.
For they have learned by heart their appointed tasks.
For some make themselves hatchets.
For some do the work of a mortar and pestle.
For some live by the sign of the dog and thus tear.
For half live upstairs, half down, and come together amenably for meals.
For they are the servants of the jaw, duly and daily at work.
For they brood over a host of sweet things.
For with age a blast of cold dismays.
For the sound of the drill is a scourge.
For one suffers heavily under the burden of a crown.
For they rue giving pain and grieve the tiniest hole.
For the which penance they nightly abide the whip.
For they reside in darkness and do not complain.
For they tell stories of the vastness outside.
For in their myths the gods are great oaks.
For they consider themselves also noble and rooted.
For they, like the branch, push forth well-loved buds.
For they know that with the little ones they must be parted.
For this is one of many trials they accept with resignation.
For they are inhabitants of a venerable house.
For they realize there is no turning back.

“Have You Ever Had Kugel?” by Marilyn Johnston

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Front Cover of The Poeming Pigeon, Issue #12
“Have You Ever Had Kugel?” by Marilyn Johnston, published in The Poeming Pigeon: A Journal of Poetry & Art (#12), released in October 2022, has  been nominated for The Pushcart Prize.

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

Have You Ever Had Kugel?

You’ve never had kugel—not until you’ve eaten it
in an alley café in the Jewish Quarter in Krakow
in a shy November light, around the corner
from where your grandparents once lived,
now a vacant lot.

You’ve never had kugel—the noodles cooked
tender and moist, layered with fresh-made
cottage cheese mixed with cinnamon,
plump-dried raisins, a dollop of sour cream,
and served on a blue-patterned plate
with a cloth napkin—not until it’s served to you
by a Yiddish-speaking woman in an apron,
as she runs to greet you from the kitchen
as if you’d just arrived for Shabbos dinner.

Kugel doesn’t taste the same unless one hand
is holding it while looking out the side window—
a shot fired, dogs approaching in the distance.
Not unless there are holes bored in the walls
of your mother’s Museum of Shattered Memories
in the attic trunk, and each time you try to peek inside
she cries, so you’re careful to leave the lock tight.

Kugel satisfies, unless you choke it down, like fear—
scanning the exits as you learn Cousin Viola must
have done, as she opened the vial and wondered
if the poison would be painful.

No, you’ve never had kugel—
not in your ceiling-fanned, poetry writing,
post-graduation trip to see where your family perished.
Not until you finally arrive at Auschwitz and you walk
under that gate, inscribed “Work Sets You Free,”
and the crematoriums appear where the tracks end,
where the stricken faces from every photo you’ve ever seen
from the Camps lie like ghosts on the beds’ rusty frames.
Not until you have to run outside, gasping for air.

Not until you finally get it that their kugel
was carved from sweat and cold winds,
seasoned with a mixture of dread and faith,
then steamed in the world’s blind eye.

And I ask you, again—
have you ever had kugel?

“El Barrio” by David Gonzalez

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Front book cover of SOUNDINGS
“El Barrio” by David Gonzalez, published in Soundings, released in October 2022, has  been nominated for The Pushcart Prize.

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

El Barrio

Bring on the clave Tito Puente-style,
bring on two-three ritmo magic,
vaya papi que tu mambo moves me,
vaya mami que tu mirada mirrors my own curiosity,
vaya la clave,
vaya el sacred groove que me tiene floating y flotando,
and planted into the bedrock de esta tierra firme,
of this, our earth.

The winged clave,
uprooted, sold-out,
and chained to the miserable hold of a Portuguese slave ship, forced into migration,
this sacred syncopation
mixed with the strains of Andalusian canto
in the sugarcane fields of El Caribe,
and landed at this spot,
this town,
this Nueva York,
El Barrio,
El Barrio, el fingertip grip onto the American dream,
where half the streets open wide to the horizon,
and the other half are dead ends,
y donde el ritmo no tiene fin,
and the groove is deep.

El Barrio, where milk is not milk—but leche,
where manteca is manteca,
where the plantains are maduros,
ripe, sweet, brown smiles.

El Barrio, where the WhatsApp call,
la llamada a tu pueblo is fricken free,
Grandmother’s voice is honey
and you need it to be.

Listen, Abuela, in Puerto Rico, Cuba, Santo Domingo, Mexico y Honduras,
los muchachos eh—speak English at school,
pero español en la casa,
el lenguaje de nuestra sangre—our blood tongue at home,
and each morning I recite for them your prayer, Abuela;
que Dios te cubre con su santo bendición,
may God surround you with his sanctified blessing,
and then they cross themselves and go outside,
and cross themselves again when they pass the storefront churches
where the Charismatic Pentecostals are raising the roof,
and once again at the corner of 176th and Amsterdam,
where gladiolas, lilies, and everlasting silk rose blossoms
mark the spot where Papo was shot,
his lifespan “June 14th, 2000 – June 2nd, 2018, R.I.P.”
spray-painted onto the tenement bricks,
and scrawled beneath the sad youthful eyes of Jesus on a plastic gold crucifix are the words
“Why do the good die young?”

I’m gonna move to Puerto Rico when I retire,
I’ll get a house near the beach
and eat mangoes all day,
but, hey, then my kid’ll probably go to college (que Dios le bendiga) in Ohio,
marry a sweet, smart girl from there,
y entonces los nietos…the grandkids will need me
and I’ll need them to know where they come from,
who we are,
and how we live,
so I’ll stay here in El Barrio,
life is that way,
life is that way,
moving and changing like the crackle and burst of Tito’s timbales,
moving and changing
in El Barrio.

“Life Is a Small Family Farm …” by Peter Kaufmann

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front book cover of The Round Whisper of No Moon, designed by Robert R. Sanders
“Life Is a Small Family Farm Going Out of Business or Maybe It’s Just the Auction” by Peter Kaufmann, published in The Round Whisper of No Moon, released in November 2022, has  been nominated for The Pushcart Prize.

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

Life Is a Small Family Farm Going Out of Business
or Maybe It’s Just the Auction

You will try and try again,
slowly the machinery will break down.
The old rust colored tractor, held together with bailing wire
will keep running, tires cracked as chapped lips.
The wheat still sprouts green and forever each spring,
which come more often now.
The banker’s shadow appears on the side of the barn
leaning with the prevailing wind,
like the row of cypress trees
that line the dirt road.
The neighbors sold out.
No one knows the new owners, who will not live there.
The auction is scheduled,
all your years priced to sell,
the stamps patiently collected, 40 cents on the dollar.
Someone will argue over the Indian basket
you decide to keep at the last minute.
Someday kids will look through the windows,
maybe salvage the 6-paners or decide to move in,
clean out the squirrel nests and porcupine shit,
where they will find your old spatula with the wooden handle
and your old love letters,
leaving the calendar on the wall
with the picture of a farmer’s wife
holding a jar of preserves,
hair held back in a polka-dotted scarf.