November 30th, 2020 Poems – Center for New Americans

Out to Lunch

Sometimes nothing seems to work,

All the senses stay away

As if they are staging a union strike

Against me. I only expect them to do

What they are born to do. The steward

Of the gang retorts, “Out to lunch!

They’ll be back when they can justify

Their work and rewards.”

What am I to do while they are out holding

Signs, drinking, having refreshments and gossiping

About a fishing expedition of throwing a wide gill net.

Are they planning a long-term strike?

The steward looks up at the morning sky

and says, “Maybe.” The ominous one-word

Response is worrisome, for the long gibberish

One gives a platform to stage my own argument.

I parse the one word injecting different needles

Of scenarios…what if this and what if that…

Also remembering that they are out to lunch

Not for a long cruise.

Maybe I’ll take a long bath while the vigilant

Steward guards my door to uphold

The integrity of the union membership.

A warm bath dissolves tensions in joints

Open to work on the contentious

Needs and demands…

By writing a haiku based

On what Kahlil Gibran said:

At the beginning

The marathon of daily

Poem was dream,

But at the end, the

Beginning is memory

Like the big bang…Wow…

Yenna Yi

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SHE TALKS OF KITCHEN GODS

She talks of appeasing kitchen gods

Mad frothing mouth dogs

Schoolchild tangled in bamboo thickets

One small island

One wife

During one life

Two birthdays

Three conquerors

Four nationalities enforced

Name changed thrice

Taiwanese to Japanese to Chinese

And then on to Americanese.

That was the winter after the war

After we drained the last fish from the pond

Wrenched the last scrawny chicken’s neck

After we burned all the tables and chairs to keep warm

Ate the last sweet potato

Baked on wire

Over that ground fire

Warmed our hands in the shadows that night

Searched the sky for the Allied bombers

We bicycled out with first light

Left the ancestral hideaway shelter.

She turned back once to see the single tattered curtain burned red by dawn

Scrubbed no floor, dusted no shelf, left no business card.

Geo Cernada

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A Poetry Reading

(enter stage left: the POET, a shambling disheveled figure, with a long unkempt beard and apparently having just finished an egg salad sandwich, part of which resides in the beard)

I am so glad we could meet.

I would share with you today

the word from the street.

Humpty Dumpty fell from a wall..

Sleeping Beauty heard him fall.

She failed to call 911

Because she was playing cards

with Tom Thumb.

Perhaps that is tragic

it seems to involve magic,

All depends how you

feel about eggs.

This may be somewhat confusing,

but this is poetic musing,

and we all know how odd

that can sound.

If you know how to speak poet,

it is easier to know it.

Consider for a moment another

odd plight,

of the Cow who jumped over the moon.

She was provoked of course

by the annoying cat’s fiddle,

a laughing dog ,and some hanky-panky

between a dish and a spoon.

I can see you nodding your

heads with a TSK TSK sound.

I don’t understand the puzzle on your face.

Is this any more confused than the

daily fare dished out by the human race.

Perhaps a chorus of” Hey diddle diddle”

will improve your mood.

And I haven’t even begun

to touch on the moral and social

tragedy involving poverty and

women’s issues glaringly

revealed by the “Old Woman in the Shoe.”

If you consider this all annoying

think of poor IO , the abused cow

never away from her gadfly, courtesy of Hera.

I’d say you are getting off easy.

Poetic babble without limit

can be squashed like a bug,

if you are lucky.

Suddenly a Loud voice from the audience,

“GET THE HOOK” followed by approving sounds

Alas, I cannot find the off

( Stage right: a cloaked figure emerges with a large pole with a hook,

yanking the poet off stage)

Paul Redstone