November 14, 2021 Poems

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!

 

ONLY REHEARSAL / Nora Glass

you wouldn’t understand

the lights and everything from them

like if eye-hurt had a temperature

the dry ringlets of velvet

and serendipity on the floor

honeyed wooden people

applesauce legs, widened eyes

sweet soprano’d concentrate

rounded, vibrant, chalky, covered breaths

blushed scattered on the stage

 

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THE OTHER ME / Michael Favala Goldman

I am jealous of myself

for being yours

for being naked with you

for talking in private

for knowing things

for making you blush.

 

If I were in my place

I would savor more

each greeting

each inch of skin

think more of myself

be who you deserve.

 

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COUNTING THE LAST DAYS / Gail Thomas

One green moth masquerading

as a hummingbird dives

into the tattered blooms.

Two white butterflies

circle the bare dogwood.

Three bats swoop to scoop

what mosquitoes remain.

Four nighthawks waltz against

grey clouds.

One scarlet beacon drifts down

to stain the ground,

ahead of what is

inevitable.

 

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PORTRAIT: COGITO ERGO SUM 2 / D. Dina Friedman

After the painting by Michihiro Yoshida

 

I.

Here you are again,

emerging out of a clam-shell brain,

that pulses pink. You open

the top toward heaven;

you, who never believed

in prayer or candles,

who only utilized gods

for parking spaces in Manhattan;

you, who believed in the power

of brains despite the eye’s

manipulation, shredding horizons

between real and imagined.

 

II.

Your back hand pushes down

on this pink cocoon of a brain

as if it’s a Venus fly trap,

ready to snap shut

and hide you like a turtle in its dark shell.

Who’s in control here

You, or the clam-shaped wall?

Your gaze shifts up as if expecting

a message from the heavens,

the answer to your question

on the limitations of thinking.

 

III.

Thoughts are pearls

and colors have luster.

The gray matter, pinkened,

blued. I think therefore I am.

The brain’s candle shoots its DNA

infinity-shaped, past

the sky’s horizon. Does it matter

if a thought has the weight

of fact, or the potential of delusion,

your vision hinged in this shell?

How hard you worked

to keep it open.