SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER  2009

poetry

PHILLIPA SCOTT

HALF-ARMENIAN GIRL  

Auntie’s hazel-blue eyes guide me

from sockets in our ancestors’ skulls

She teaches me

to pick tender grape leaves from

sinewy vines

in a patch of land in Queens

stuff them with pilaf and currants

sing triumphantly as I cook

She teaches me

to love our people

enough to remember

the taste of blood

when I bite into an apricot

Phillipa Scott was raised in NYC by her Armenian immigrant aunt, jeweler/revolutionary uncle, book-addict mother and host of unlikely angels. She has lived in Bogota, Quito, Hoboken, NJ, and various cubicles on Wall Street. She is currently working on her first novel.

Metta Sáma  

in ellipsis

your brother comes to you in a dream dressed as someone other ..

. even less, he will unpeel gradually     your elementary school

lover arrives late he has a tree in his hands he’s promised to you 

he’s promised to not throw it at you this time he’ll appeal to your

spinal cord—rows of apples named bone 1 bone 2 and so on . . . if 

he takes one he’ll crush you                your teeth have fallen your 

teeth are stilled in your mouth they chip at your interior bone 1

and 2 and so on . . . your body sometimes        your body loves you 

less than it loves any other object in its world        your tongue is 

too loose any minute it will hop onto your shoulder and tell you 

secrets you’d long ago swallowed         your face is not one for the

pictures . . . no one remembers. . . . to forget is to         you crash

you current you mountaintop you sleep stilted you salt you lick 

and bruise your brother comes to you in the night your brother 

comes to you in a dream your brother is not your brother when 

your brother is only 

your lover is an elementary school strong man your brother is 

elemental schooled you recess you swing you slide you outline . . . 

someone handed you chalk and you drew squares on the side . . . 

walk . . . your brother drew numbers in your squares your brother 

is a chalkboard you read freud your lover fingers your brain’s 

inarticulated waves    your teeth want to be you eat you dream 

impotence you read freud your lover handles a tree your hand 

draws a square you are not inside that square you are your 

brother your lover is a tongue on your shoulder your brother: 

tastebuds on your tongue on your shoulder you are teeth leaping 

out of your mouth take a night close your eyes count your sheep

your tastebuds want to curl up next to you your tastebuds are 

solid your tastebuds disperse bone by bone you are easy undone

Metta Sama writes poetry and stories that "are often steeped in some sort of surrealism, while also being faithfully devoted to 'reality as the narrator understands' reality to function." She teaches creative writing, including story making and developing and telling. She received her Ph.D. in English at Binghamton University.

CHARLIE MASON

Praise

The early world is a blue place,

even when one considers the sanitation workers,

the squirrels, the traffic. This morning

the workers were thinning puddles

on the basketball court with large brooms.

The drizzle carried on, and as the men

were wetted, I watched every intimacy

of their turning bodies. "Isn't this lovely,"

I thought. "At this moment, they must be very soft."

Charlie Mason is a retired teacher from Chicago, IL. He currently works for the city as a part time day care counselor and spends his summers as a camp director. The majority of his time is dedicated to playing sudoku, or considering his wife's shoulers. He is allergic to air conditioning. His chinchilla's name is alfalfa.

HERM CARD

Scrapbook

Glue sticks - paste - scissors - tape - sparkles - those little photo hinges 

Pictures of grandma - the dog - Dad - the house (two moves ago) - 
the blurry shot of a cow on the trip to Canada

Five of us smiling at a birthday party –
who is that girl on the end?

That grease spot from my fries looks like a flower –
that flower looks like old brown paper –
there was more of it when I pasted it in
and it still smelled like a flower

Scrapbook - book of scraps - scraps of my life, scraps of me -

I remember putting it together - those things on the cover -
words cut from magazines,
letters spelling my name, pasted on one at a time,
like the ransom note in that movie I saw with Gram -
or was it Mom?

It doesn't look like my name though -
shouldn't there be an "a" in there? 

There was - I think - when I put it together.

Whenever that was.

No Poems Past Security

I put my change, my watch, my jewelry,

even my titanium energy necklace,

into the basket on the conveyor belt,

and walked through the metal detector.

The alarm sounded,

I stepped back, tried again,

– it sounded again.

“Anything else in your pockets?”

All I had left was a folded piece of paper.

“Just this poem,” I said.

He shook his head – a resigned sort of gesture

And pointed to the sign that read

NO POEMS PAST SECURITY.

“What?  No poems past security?”

“That’s right,” he said.  “Think about it.

You know what poems can be like?

“Pointed,

cutting,

sharp,

biting,

acid,

agitating,

threatening…

That’s dangerous stuff.

They can be a danger to institutions – to governments,

they can cause people to think,

to question,

to object,

to see the light,

to see the truth,

and we can’t have that now, can we?

Why, if we started letting poems past security,

who knows what might happen!”

Herm Card is a retired English teacher, and currently the poetry editor, 'street reporter' and photographer for the Syracuse City Eagle newspaper.  He is co-editor of the academic journal The English Record.  His latest book of poetry I Had This Teacher Once..., is due in October from Thorntree Hill press. Herm can be reached at hermcard@aol.com

HUDSON WILLIAMS

Tracks in the Afternoon

Along the railroad tracks in the afternoon

the sun tingles on his skin like a girl’s fingers

stroking the top of his forearm.

He lays his head in her lap, and in chalk she traces

outlines on his torso’s sidewalk.

Later on he dances in her back yard

in the rain, and she spins slow and twists

Quick, and the chalk runs down his chest --

It seems as if everything burst into green in one day,

and when it did the light turned that one holy golden shade

as when the sun swings through the clouds

on a lazy afternoon, taking its time, enjoying the journey –

Sometimes the poems pop like bubbles;

He feels the spray of syllables spatter

on the walls of his brain, and he reads the spray

as some read tea leaves, pulling

what’s worthwhile from the dregs.

But on afternoons like this,

Watching smoke float off

into the new days of summer,

words, stanzas, lines and

line breaks all erupt,

flowing thick and fast

from pen to page.

Hudson Williams is a recent graduate of Binghamton University. He lives and works in New York City.

J. BARRETT WOLF

Why High School Sucked... Sometimes

So, I was the boy chosen last for every game,

Drawing the attention of the strong only

As a target for the stinging, maroon dodge ball

Lobbed with malice aforethought

Across center line of the gym floor.

God knows, I tired of that...

The litany of their scorn,

Scraped on the rough surface

Of a darkness I carried…

Outsider, loner, geek, freak, pussy

It’s amazing I didn’t climb up something tall

Take a bead on those poor outraged bastards.

It didn’t matter that I was smart,

That I wore my heart well out on my sleeve

That I wanted, God-help-me

The same things those jackals wanted

That I was Boy-Scout loyal

That I could be trusted.

Or maybe I couldn't.

There was nothing I could do or say or be

That could gentrify me out of loserdom

Until the clock and the calendar

Dragged my ass, almost unaware, off that ill-lit exit ramp.

It was lunch hour in the cafeteria,

Annette stopped me -

Appearing in my path, unavoidable,

A sweet, misplaced Jersey barrier

Gazing over her third-year French text.

Her smile, like her schoolbooks, adorably askew

Voice hesitant with the kind of fear I now understand,

Screwing up all the gumption earned in an entire

Sixteen year life of shyness and longing to ask:

“Would you marry a Catholic?”

Civic Association

                                    Binghamton, NY – April 2009

Years ago,

I entered through the back door

walked down halls to the front  desk

Asked direction of a receptionist

Sat in a room

They shot a picture

My passport photo

Yesterday,

Having used up his broken words,

He blocked that back door

Entered through the front

Firing, without questions

Or answers

Raining fierce, moist terror like

The last downpour of spring.

How much of us remains

In the places we have been?

What part of us is of history?

How much do I carry

that could have been

Of him?

How much did he bear

That I might have borne

Or been broken by

The numbing burden

Only to borrow a friend's car

And the many tomorrows

Cut down like saplings before a hurricane.  

Editor of RoadPoet-NY.com, the Online Biker Poetry Journal, Barrett hosts an open mic at the River Read bookstore in downtown Binghamton. A detailed bio can be found on his personal website

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