BROOKLYN BOUND

BROOKLYN BOUND

by Tony Gloeggler

She braces her body

between closing subway doors,

asks if this F train

goes to Coney Island.

She rushes in, pulling

the hand of a little girl

who in fifteen years

will be even prettier

than her mother. I go

back to my book, glance

at them each time

I turn the page. If

I catch the woman’s eye,

I’ll lift my head

at the end of every

paragraph. If she smiles,

it’s after every sentence.

If she starts a conversation,

I’ll smack the book shut,

throw it out the window.

But only the girl

knows I’m alive.

She looks at me

then quickly turns away.

She whips her head

around, looks back

with her mouth wide

open. Then she does it

again. This time, she

sticks her tongue out,

wags it side to side.

Finally, I get it.

Peek-A-Boo. I close,

open my eyes, act

surprised, press my nose

into a pig’s snout, pull

back my hair and flap

my ears like a fat bird

taking flight. She slides

down her seat, kicking

her feet and giggling.

The woman grabs her daughter’s

arm, leans over, threatens her

with a finger held

close to her face. The girl

bites her lip, sits up

and folds her hands

like an honor student

in Catholic School.

I want to apologize,

explain it was all my fault;

but I am afraid of her too.

So I read my book

as if it is getting good.

Minutes later, the train

rises out of the ground.

Sunday morning sun

lightens up the car, brightens

the neighborhoods we rattle past.

The girl climbs on her knees,

looks out the window,

points and tells her mother

about backyard swimming pools,

a nun clanging a church bell,

a man and woman slow dancing

on a fire escape. But her mind

is somewhere else--maybe

she’s telling her husband

she doesn’t love him anymore,

maybe she’s in the shower, touching

the tiny lump on her breast--

and she stares straight ahead.

The girl keeps pointing,

slapping the window and bobbing

her head up and down, nudging

her mother’s shoulder, yelling

Mommy    Mommy    Mommy

when she just gives up

kicks her mother

with both feet. Mommy

grabs her by the legs,

swings her across her lap             

and whacks her ass

   --You little bitch--

five, ten, fifteen times

until the girl’s bare thighs

are stained with red

burning hands and I want

to dart across the car,

somehow make her stop.

I could rub her back

as she cuddles her daughter

and they cry together.

I could sit, listen

to the woman’s apologies,

say I understand. I could

tell her about the group home,

the night I hit

the retarded kid

when he bit my wrist.

How I wrote in the log

that Jimmy Hock fell

stepping out of the tub,

banged his forehead.

How the left side of his face

puffed up and turned colors

like he lost a schoolyard fight.

How I couldn’t sleep

even after everyone seemed

to believe me and I kept

my job. How Jimmy

still runs to hug me

when I punch my card

nine o’clock sharp

Monday through Friday.

But all I do is hide

my eyes in the book,

hope that it’s over soon,

that the next stop

is mine. The woman smoothes

her skirt flat. The girl

cries quietly, covers

her face with her hands,

her skin still pink.

When the conductor announces

Kings Highway, I get up,

wait by the door. I can feel

the girl’s eyes, two snipers,

peeking between her fingers,

shooting holes in the back

of my head.

~ first published in The Ledge

photo: ralph murre

Nightroads

by Jude Genereaux

Run the nightroads with me darlin’

banish distance in a breath

zoom,

     swoop

like Peter Pan we fly to the hidden shore woods walk

golden rod promise.

You will be there.

I wake drenched in your presence.

~ first published by Mt. Scenario College

Lionel Train Under the Tree

artwork: ralph murre

Lionel Train Under the Tree

 by Robert Walton

My dog's tail,

Like an old brown rope,

Lay across the rails.

I caught my brother's eye.

He shrugged and grinned;

It was worth a try.

Sparks flashed blue.

Full speed ahead!

Owooooooooooo

Old Blondie sprang free,

Eyes like railway tunnels,

Through our Christmas tree.

Ornaments fell like colored snow.

Our Mother screamed, "What happened?"

We don't know.

~ previously appeared on Your Daily Poem

Holiday Concert

digital art: ralph murre

Holiday Concert

by David Scheler

A

bell choir

silvers satin,

ripples scarlet.

Chocolate drones

deep brass.  Light

gingers zest-flash lemon

sharp, crystal tingles cinnamon

on a fresh white

ping

!

~ first published in the

Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar

ELEPHANT CHRISTMAS

ceramic artist unknown

ELEPHANT CHRISTMAS

 by Sharon Auberle

The first year

you set out the elephants

I smiled at their scarred

and broken bodies, but

the tenderness with which

you touched them

took my breath away.

I wanted to hold you

till being grown-up disappeared,

and we were little kids again,

watching your parade of elephants

marching under the Christmas tree,

bodies unscarred, trunks raised in glee,

trumpeting their way to Bethlehem.

And every year, in every house after,

out they came from their battered boxes,

the old gray line joined by new ones:

blue and amber and black ones,

fierce old warriors and tiny-tusked babes. 

Every year the elephant parade grows

and every year comes

the same look on your face

as you set them under the tree,

as you return to that soft place

where no one is allowed to enter,

except a small boy and girl,

noses pressed against the window,

watching the passing parade.

~  first appeared at Mimi’s Golightly Cafe

Pen Pal

Pen Pal                                                                                                  

by Peggy Trojan   

The Evening Telegram printed

names of soldiers wanting mail.

Mother chose Robert Smith.

Wrote, in teacher’s Palmer script,

of ordinary happenings

in our little Wisconsin town.

What birds were at the feeder,

the fox or deer she saw,

how much snow fell,

hoping he was doing well.

Nothing sad or troublesome.                        

She wrote often, all during the war.

Sometimes, a letter thanking her

would come from a distant battle place,

Italy, or France maybe,

with the military post mark.

A.P.O. 45, New York,

censored by army examiner.

War ended in August, ’45.

The following Christmas,

a card arrived

showing a black man

sitting by the decorated tree.

He was afraid, if she knew,

letters “from home” would stop.

It made no difference, she confided.

He was fighting for us all,

and she was his pal.

For more than fifty years,

his greeting was saved in her shoebox

with anniversary cards from Pa,

and fancy old valentines.

They didn’t write much longer.

He was back home then,

and that war was over.

~ first published in Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar

Teaching Women How to Fly

Teaching Women How to Fly

by Ed Werstein

-          On December 14, 2010, more than 30 workers died and

100 were injured when they jumped from upper floor windows

to escape a garment factory fire in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Your great-grandparents marched

for safety, "Bread and roses!"

after the fire forced the women to jump

from windows at the Triangle shirt factory
in New York City  in 1911.

Your grandparents fought and died

for safety, "Bread and roses!"

at Flint in 1937.
Held the GM factory for weeks

to win their union.

Your parents picketed

time and again

for safety, "Bread and roses!"
to protect their unions

in what has become the Rust Belt.

And now women are flying again

falling from factory windows in Bangladesh

while you wait in lines at Walmart

to buy the shirts they were sewing

on the day before they died,

died to make the owners richer.

Owners whose ancestors owned
shirt factories in New York.

Owners who now are looking

for other women,

in even poorer countries,

to teach them how to fly.

~ first published in the Blue Collar Review

NEW WORK

architectural drawing: ralph murre

NEW WORK

 by John Flynn

              

He feels guilty enough about writing poems

much less talking about them for a precarious living.

He sticks closer to carpentry; straightening boards,

hammer blows, cutting out triangles of stair so it stands

right, is safe and level for the climber, the old and

babies just walking. Being sure the rafters carry

a roof that sheds rain and whatever snow load might

settle in. Joining oak boards to make the floor,

no gaps, no creaks; nails angled and set in the

tongue each with one massive blow of the mallet;       

doors that swing quietly, and catch with

a soft, hollow chirp. At end of day he puts his

tools away, picks up and sweeps. He inhales

the smell and the silence of new work and this day's

chirp of the solid core door latched behind him.

The joy of writing poems at night is that

same door opening on tomorrow

                       

                        ~ first published in WHISTLING SHADE

WOMAN AT THE BRINK

digital art: ralph murre

WOMAN AT THE BRINK

by Karla Huston

She stands at the sink; water foams

and steams as she pushes everything

under the way her mother taught her:

glasses and silver first, then plates

washed and set to drain, pots and pans

last, yellow grease popping

what is left of soap as it bubbles

across her knuckles.  She imagines

the window that isn’t in front of her,

the scent of clover filling her nose,

the dove perched on the fence,

bobbing, then, poised to fly—

unaware of the hawk

on the rooftop next door.

~ first published in Poet Lore

Mandela Free

photo: ralph murre

Mandela Free

by Richard Swanson

  

       (Nelson Mandela, freed after having served

        twenty-five years for political agitation)

Someone unhuddled,

something like conscience uncellared,

stands at the prison house door,

moves to, blinks from, then uses

the sun’s blaze to sort time present from memory.

It’s open, the gate,

no joke in a dream but real,

this minute, the last of fourteen million

they shut me in for,

for being the black man’s howl

in their septic white streets

He would like now merely to go to his home,

to touch again, feel anew

the things of his family,

taste smell savor all over

the bread of his kitchen table, but

Not right now, this is a time

for meeting, greeting the faithful,

these hardened, delirious thousands,

who wait this day for the eager press mob

to beam our triumph abroad.

He will say things, thoughts so blandly profound

they merit re-hearing:

Wrongs dressed stylish are still just wrong.

Hopes held down turn anguish to tactics.

Freedom will rise somehow after night-stick beatings.

From his cell he brought down a government.

This morning he will start to make one,

born in his jailed reflections.

Later, some things for myself.

His lungs fill up with new-found air.

                                                                

~ previously published in Men in the Nude in Socks

  (Fireweed Press)

THE SURVIVOR

                       THE SURVIVOR

by Shoshauna Shy

It was a living nightmare

from which Olivia could not awake:

tangled howls in a mash of bed

sheets, condolences that arrived

on tea trays in the mornings, the pat

of hands her forehead

could not tolerate.

However long this carried on

she was helpless to determine –

when suddenly she packed her bags

and from the house she bolted,

cashed the insurance checks then drove

to the Midway Airport and booked

eleven successive flights criss-crossing

the Atlantic.  She caught a non-stop

to New York and figured if the engine

didn’t fail over the Baltic Sea, then maybe

a wheel would come loose on the red-eye

to Nicaragua or a fuel tank explode upon

Moroccan tarmac.

She didn’t care how it happened;

she just knew the odds increased

the longer she stayed airborne.

Two months had already managed to pass

since the crash that took her Willis, her Macy

and her Nathan.  She couldn’t let days keep

flooding by or she would never catch them.

Sometimes it took both pilots

to get Olivia off the plane.

~ first published in Milk Sugar Literary Journal

A Tribute to the Penguin-Men Among Us

A Tribute to the Penguin-Men Among Us

by Stephen Anderson

who huddle around watching their young ones

take to the ice like the wobbly creatures they are

at outdoor school rinks now lent to these

bundled-up fathers who shift from side to side

and huddle together to stay warm like

looming Emperor Penguins,

while dutifully standing vigil for their

offspring who careen wildly but then

glide like pros for up-to-seconds-at-a-time before

spiraling into impromptu, shaky pirouettes

that cause the men to gasp from the sidelines,

then fake-skate with their shoes

over to the crash site where they whisper

their concern and, upon further triage,

encourage their fallen angels to right their little

skates on the ice, to again take on the

wintry reality of the late afternoon,

with their chins held high to the glory of

the Penguin-Men in attendance.

~ first published in the New Purlieu Review

A Farmer Searches . . .

digital photoart: ralph murre

A Farmer Searches for His Livestock

During a Snow Storm

by Linda Blaskey

He imagines them huddled

together by now, long

eyelashes rimed with ice.

Their hoof prints blown over

making it hard to track

them. Guernseys and Jerseys.

Like his grandfather,

only Guernseys and Jerseys.

Sure, there are others

that produce more,

the brash-colored Holstein,

the Norwegian Red, but it’s the muted tones

of his girls, their dark points,

that stir something in him. 

He loves to slide his hand

along their warm flanks,

feel the contour, like he loves

to run his hand over his wife’s hip

as she lies on her side in their bed.

He thinks of this as he trudges

through drifts, whistling, calling,

listening for the lead cow’s bell. 

A crow sits on a fence post, its caw

like a knell.  Its dark eye

watches him pass as snow sifts down.

~ first published in The Delmarva Review