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