30 Poems in November! Blog – Fall 2022 (Nov. 28)

Welcome to our Poetry Platform.  We are sharing some of our writers’ new poems every Monday.  Thank you for reading and thank you for supporting them in their creative endeavor and Center for New Americans in our welcoming endeavor!

 

Noticing 

 

Moment by moment,

my brain makes

it’s best guess.

 

Fingers hold on

to what I believe is tight.

My legs stretch

and move much slower.

 

Noticing, my heart breathes

from both sides now.

And, recently detect

a box inside myself

with stories, only I can tell.

 

My eyes see the sun

as the mother that she is.

And, the world extending

her hands to me, still

and always.

Waiting

for my arrival.

 

 —Suzann Heron

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fields that yesterday

suffered a long summer drought

today drink deeply

 

The horizon looms.

What’s at the end of the road?

Time and travel know.

 

planted in the earth

for one short season we fly

then back to the weeds

 

every day we walk

across the bridge to heaven

we do not look back

 

—Marguerite Sheehan

 

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 A Meal At A Table

 

 Today, the first since the pandemic

Manna is serving a meal indoors

 

I am a volunteer at the drop in center

For people without a steady place to live

Taking names of those waiting

To shower to wash and dry laundry

 

This morning 23 people checked into

The center testing negative

Greeted by staff who know

What it’s like to need this center

To need a hot meal in company

Of others who do not judge

 

We set tables with real

Napkins, stainless tableware

52 chairs at 52 places indoors

100 meals ready to serve

The excitement of eating indoors

On a beautiful day

 

And one man trying to help

Who could think of nothing

But that someone had stolen

Every last thing he owned can you

 

Imagine your life without any

Way of proving you are who you are

His tent wallet phone papers

Sleeping bag and where

Did you camp I asked

Against St. Mary’s Church

He said and I thought

 

Thank heavens he will eat

Today and wash what clothes

He’s found here and shower

A kind of baptism perhaps

And share a meal can it be said

Too many times the loaves

And the fishes

 

—Patricia Lee Lewis

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Thanksgiving Rhapsody

 

A seating at a show for one, it seems

The curtain rises on an overture

A table filled with chords they miss for sure

With violent falls and plinking, angry themes

The creamy mac or bursting, goring, beans

They crescendo with every wizened stir—

From soft motif to blaring, steamed demur

Unami drums that shake you in your spleen

From frosted window to each fork’s small prong

Four rooms fill up with people huddled in

From dizzied line to prayer they sing along

And wait for fat old feast-time to begin

The line proceeds, and starts or ends the song

With sweetened speed of swallowed pie from tin

 

—Nora Glass

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Whisper to me, wind

 

Whisper to me, wind

Let me feel the sun on your face

Hold me in your arms

In this sacred place

 

Let me look into your eyes

Of emerald green

Let me know the taste

Of your soft kiss

And cool embrace

 

I was not born

I will not die

Without love

 

—Tommy Twilite

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READY FOR THE VOTE, 2022

They’ve greatly underestimated
the bloodlust of a cackle of hyenas
bullied into bearing too many litters,
the vengeance of a murder of crows
forced to roost on eggs they didn’t want
to lay. No one took into account how much
havoc a caravan of camels can create if made
to carry a calf while doing leg lifts in hot sand.
We are a shrewdness of apes who sees right
through all of you pretending to care about
life until the baby screams with hunger.

In Kansas, Alaska and Brazil they
faced off with red-faced fascists,
none of whom could drown out the fury
of a pandemonium of parrots or a crash
of rhinoceroses knocked up and knocked
down, made to hold it in while their living
loved ones starve. We women are a stench
of skunks; good luck ever ridding yourselves
of the smell of our rage. We are a thunder of
hippopotami, a rhumba of rattlesnakes bursting |
with venom. We just want to be a friendly family
of otters, a charm of finches, a flamboyance
of flamingos, but make no mistake; we will stomp
you like a herd of stampeding elephants if you keep
telling us when to welp and with whom. We can see
why you love the idea of your seed setting the rules,
can tell you long to till all the land, force every famer
to grow whatever you cast down. But we are a team
of horses with our blinders off. You cannot lead us
anymore to your poisoned waters. We will come
for you like a pledge of wasps, an ambush
of tigers, a lamentation of swans.
There’ll be so many of us
you won’t know what animal
grabbed you by your jugulars
until blood wets the ground.

 

—Lanette Sweeney

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—Linda M. Rhinehart Neas