VoicesAdmin

by Howard Seeman

I look peeringly hard at the branches of the trees.

Finally, yes.

I was worried,
I do see little buds coming out.

I was afraid they wouldn’t come.

I am here again.
I have now gone through 69 winters,
and as these winters end,
I wait for those flowers
that danced for me,
and accompanied me on the side of my every walk

that then slowly withered and died…

to come again.

So many winters now
and so many springs.

So many that
I worry: maybe they are used up.

I am much more tired,
and more full of needing them to come again.

It is such a relief:
I was afraid they wouldn’t come.

 
Professor Emeritus, C.U.N.Y.; Life Coach at: E Coaching for Helping Professionals; Education Consultant on Classroom Problems at: Pro-Ed Media: Classroom Management Online; Published poet at: Howard Seeman’s Book of Poetry.

by Carol Schoen

The tree Betty gave us
for our fifth anniversary
is  grown now,
sweet cherries
a treat for finches,
blaze of gold darting
between green and red.

The peony bush collapsed,
weighed down by  pink
blossoms. The hostas thrive.

Day lilies, from the one
dug up at the roadside,
the year Joshua was born,
now line the fence.

They bloom
all through July,
but the black-eyed susans
were ripped out.

I heard all about it
from the woman
who lives there now.

 
Carol Schoen: She wrote her first poems for Sarah White’s study group and has been chugging along happily ever since.

by Carol Schoen

My grandfather’s grandfather
clock, tall and stately, imperious; elegant
hands; massive bronze weights; delicate Roman
numerals; a small moon in phase,
peeping from the face.

Weekly, my grandfather unlocked the case,
wound up the weights with a golden key, and swept
the hands to the proper time, checked against
his watch.  An awesome sight, my grandfather,
the lord of time.

The clock stood in my parents’ house
for twenty years. When my mother
passed it to us, we wound it, adjusted
the hands.  Fifteen minutes later
the chimes began.

Thirty minutes, twice as many chimes,
Twelve times at noon, twelve at midnight too.
It chimed when we were reading, eating, watching
TV, prompt, proclaiming its ability
to measure time.

It took a week for the clock to wind down,
never to be rewound, but the bronze
weights sagged on the cabinet floor,
the hands locked permanently at noon, moon
phases all out of sync.
Mother came to call.
Appalled at our neglect, stern
in retribution, she had it moved
to my brother’s home.  We had failed
to honor time.

 
Carol Schoen: She wrote her first poems for Sarah White’s study group and has been chugging along happily ever since.

by Carol Schoen

Articulate 
A tic or what
you ate
can make
you late,
but maybe
it will bring Art!
 
Knowledge
Only the
owl perched
on the ledge
edge
knows.

 
Carol Schoen: She wrote her first poems for Sarah White’s study group and has been chugging along happily ever since.

by Carol Schoen

Rotund bodies, spindly legs,
ungainly, unpretty,
steadfast in their assigned
roles; barely noticed,
solitary sentinels
or gathered in clusters
over tenement roofs.
Resolute,
water tanks refuse
to be ignored, know
they will always be tolerated,
unpitied, unloved,
children.

 
Carol Schoen: She wrote her first poems for Sarah White’s study group and has been chugging along happily ever since.

to Gabriel García Márquez

by Mireya Perez

From the silk and grosgrain
She encircled them in
The two thousand and more letters
He had written her
The first one in ink red as his passion
The second in the green of his hopes
The tenth in the cerulean of his happiness
The thirtieth in the lapis lazuli of his love
The seventieth in the indigo of his despair
The rest in the clean azure of his caring
The pages bleeding through to the next
Fragile parchment folded and unfolded
The words audible still, breathing to her

Darling
Dear
Sweet
Love
Kiss you
Miss you
Always

Spouting in her like bubbles from a water fountain
each one fully formed swirling around her feet
opening her toes, brushing her ankles
tickling her calves, penetrating her pores
seeking her breasts, the curve of her neck
the roundness of her cheek, the line of her nose
the secrets in her ear, the fragility of her eyelids
the smoothness of her forehead
detaining themselves to massage her back
the roundness of her hips, her softness beyond
Words soft, insistent
Words like whispers
Words pulsing
Words breathless breathing into her
Darling, dear, love, always

 
Mireya’s poems leap from English to Spanish and back again, invoking an array of spirits. Her poetry appears in Caribbean Review, Revista del Hada, NYU Poetry Review, and in Anthology of Colombian Women Poets, among other places.

by Mireya Perez

Where the crystal clear Li River
with limestone peaks border
Phoenix bamboo like furry green fingers
rising on the edges in where goats, oxen, ducks
beyond them gather blades, squares of rice paddies
lead to crossroads where farmers sit on plastic
crates playing cards
while old women carry infants on bent-over backs

No young people in sight
all gone to cities far, far away

We turn into the small road
to visit a farmer woman
in her concrete house with doorway
framed by large red New Year’s Day
good luck couplets

She welcomes us into her living room
offering us peanuts she grows
behind her an altar to her ancestors
“Here she lives alone,” our guide explains
we are urged to enter the room
behind the ancestors’ altar
the room for her future life.
Perplexed, we go into the dark, mostly
empty room ‘til our eyes adjust
to see a large gleaming wood
credenza, or is it a chest?
No, no, not a chest,
it looks like a finely carved boat
with pagoda-like uplifts on either end,
no, not a chest
then we realize
future life
this is the room for her future life.

 
Mireya’s poems leap from English to Spanish and back again, invoking an array of spirits. Her poetry appears in Caribbean Review, Revista del Hada, NYU Poetry Review, and in Anthology of Colombian Women Poets, among other places.

by Carmen Mason

When I think I’ve heard the last bad poem
when I want to give up on poetry
when I’ve squirmed through one more line
clichéd rhyme, hackneyed point of view
when love and free and blue
are duped to carry weight and fresh insight
when the trip  the song  the dance
are stopped, mute and deadly still
I give up
my lizard muse slides off the rock
no longer caring about thirst or
quick flies halted on its curling tongue
or scurrying into the green unknowingness
now all chore and drag
I give up
and slide along with it
the water taking us fast
all restless resignation

But oh

wait

there!

out of its good left eye
a glint       a dot                         a something

 something

there !

I grasp on tight and clenching
to its narrow cobbled back

leap

 

leap

leaping

its rider once again

into the green unknowingness

thirsting    hungry

once again

Carmen Mason: She has been writing poems since she was six, has won poetry prizes throughout the years, has been published in small magazines and enjoys sharing her poetry at open mikes. She writes short stories and memoir, but feels her most intrinsic ‘voice’ is a poetic one.

by Carmen Mason

Do not think me a fool for love
swinging my legs open
on the surprised carpet
now we are divorced
sculpturing you to me
new clay not yet
mashed and pounded
fired into form
which cannot stand a fall

Do not think me a fool for love
it is just we were never
like this before
evenly spinning wet
unglazed without guile
hope, disappointment

Do not think me a fool for love
nor mistake this impulse
for our old desire
it’s just
we have become
the ancient font
half standing
in the neglected garden:
birds and flowers
circling it reverently
sensing its eagerness
to fall and fold into the
roots and remnants
to become the silt
of love again.

 
Carmen Mason: She has been writing poems since she was six, has won poetry prizes throughout the years, has been published in small magazines and enjoys sharing her poetry at open mikes. She writes short stories and memoir, but feels her most intrinsic ‘voice’ is a poetic one.

by Phyllis Kriegel

Rooms for rent at
Negative Capability Cottage
Private bath, clean towels, scenic views.
Few rules apply:
Cherish uncertainty
Delight in doubt
Mull over mysteries
Favor interstices.
Reject tired Marxists
New historicists and
Peckish post-feminists.
Heed  Nietzsche’s wise words:
above all don’t strip existence
of its ambiguous character.

Phyllis Kriegel:
Dallied with Dante
Played at Proust
Cuddled with Kafka
Then it hit me:
Stories happen to those
Who write them.