Fall 2019

Message

by

by Carol Schoen

The girl walked into the overgrown
meadow, wheat-colored grass
concealing secrets.
And then she saw it:

sunshine spewing radiance
from the sign: Cornell Dubilier —
a whiff of college,
of great French artisans.

There is no value in explaining
that it is a company that makes
electronic capacitors —
the child knew she had found
a magical kingdom hidden right there
in the middle of New Jersey.

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

Hare Krishna

by

by Carol Schoen

Twice exiled, not yet at home
in the park, the tree
remembers the dappled light
of India

remembers the prayers
the marigolds
orange and red
garlands strewn
among the fallen leaves

home now almost forgotten
in an almost forgotten park
but the faithful found it
prayers send from here
the hare krishna tree
a small sign pasted crooked

for fifty years
the hare kishna tree
they come here to pray

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

Cemetery

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by Carol Schoen

The cemetery cowers
in a corner of the office
park. Bought long ago
by immigrants uncertain
of eternity
it holds many neighbors,
my parents, the family doctor,
my aunt and her demented
husband, a teenage friend
whose presence always shocks me.

I check to see if the lawn
has been mowed, if the dead
juniper bush has been replaced.
A hole in the ground announces
a coming funeral.  I do not
recognize the name.  Finally
I go to my parents and stare
down at their gravestone, blankly.

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

Angel headed hipster

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by Carol Schoen

Calm down, Allen, the angel headed hipsters
are sleeping it off.  The pot’s
all gone. Your momma’s
safe in that big sanitarium
in the sky and the Beat world blew
off in a puff of smoke.  A century
of time disappeared in a cyber minute.
Right now, right here, there’s just you
and me, two Jews trying to figure out
where we fit in a techie’s algorithm.
Here, I offer you, not the clutch
of love but a little of that mother
you hated, loved and wanted.
Come to this clean, middle-class bed
and I will cuddle you and you will remember.

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


The Year the Government Changed

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by  Mireya Perez

Conservatives hunted Liberals
don Pablo hides to safe passage
on a steamer to Havana
………………………………la casa en Sincelejo
………………………………oak-guarded
troops trample           …….  cobblestoned streets
………………………………dona Eloida reposes
………………………………newborn sleep
solos                     ………….niños, muchachas
………………………………eleven-year old María
solos
hoof hoofs en la plaza
………………………………“Rapidó, rapidó, por aqui”
………………………………María directs the retreat
………………………………through mango grove
………………………………papayas and chickens
………………………………past the tamarind tree
………………………………flings Spanish bedspread
………………………………to cushion hoist
………………………………of mama, niños
………………………………al patio de don Eusebio
While in front a brave oak groans
smashed refuge

Mireya Perez-Bustillo, born in Colombia and raised in New York, writes poetry and fiction in Spanish and English. In her work she searches for that “other voice” breaking through entrapment and oppression, the fragile markers to unearth more hidden voices. Her work appears in Revista del Hada, Caribbean Review, Americas Review, Diosas en Bronce: Anthology of Colombian Women Writers, Vibe Viva, IRP Voices, among others. Her novel, Back to El Dorado, is forthcoming.

Ancahuita *

by

by Mireya Perez

……………………..In 1960 “the butterflies,” the political
……………………..activists Mirabal sisters from the
……………………..Dominican Republic, were assassinated by
……………………..the order of Trujillo, “el jefe”.
……………………..Only Dedé survived.

Huita, huita niña
bark to plump blood
trumpet blooms borageous
to still pain of living
butterfly, Dedé
Ancahuita guards butterflies
gone Mate, Minerva, Patria
the broken bodies, the black car,
el jefe’s ire
las mariposas now one
Dedé to tell in Ancahuita refuge
Huita, huita, huita

*A common tree in the Dominican Republic, often used to mark a location

Mireya Perez-Bustillo, born in Colombia and raised in New York, writes poetry and fiction in Spanish and English. In her work she searches for that “other voice” breaking through entrapment and oppression, the fragile markers to unearth more hidden voices. Her work appears in Revista del Hada, Caribbean Review, Americas Review, Diosas en Bronce: Anthology of Colombian Women Writers, Vibe Viva, IRP Voices, among others. Her novel, Back to El Dorado, is forthcoming.

Experienced Brain Technicians

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by Mary Padilla

After poetry class
I drive home in a blizzard.
The van in front of me
says Experienced Brain Technicians.
I am thinking of Frank O’Hara
in whose world I just spent 90 minutes.
Maybe that is what poets are,
experienced…brain…
Five miles pass
some snow falls off
the B becomes a D
and I am following plumbers.
Still
there does seem to be technique
to poetry
and
it seems to come from experience
real or imagined.
I am a poet, he keeps saying
very much a poet.
Does he doubt himself so much?
Very much, I am a poet.
I am poet, very much.
A poet I am.
Am I?

Mary set out last semester to investigate poetry by signing up for two study groups on the subject. When that wasn’t sufficiently clarifying the nature of the medium for her, being at TNS, the home of John Dewey, she tried learning-by-doing and attempted to write some of her own.

Request to a Glass-Winged Butterfly

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by Carmen Mason

Might you fly as slowly
as you can
so I may take in everything
through your pellucid wings?

It would be less
overwhelming then
and of course, amazing
peering through you like that.

And could you on another day
let me use you as a parasail
and ride you and pretend
I too may be seen clear through

Not found wanting or obtuse
just what I am, what I am,
~ clear through?

I have always written poetry and prose as meditation and to make some sense of things.
They are a way to duel and dance with love and fear, joy and discovery.

Lattice

by

by Carmen Mason

I have been a lattice
all my life
but now the winds have ceased
the roses’ merciless thorns
all fallen, nailing dry
rose petals beneath me
into hard ground

I beg to let me fall with them
not outlive the one
who fashioned me
whose propping and prolonging
with new wood, paint and nails
seem like a crucifixual
stand for beauty ~

it matters nothing now
my bracing of
this grave world:
He is not coming
He will never come

I have always written poetry and prose as meditation and to make some sense of things.
They are a way to duel and dance with love and fear, joy and discovery.

First Snow

by

by Carmen Mason

There’s a slight scent of first
snow coming through the woods
behind my house where years ago
I walked right after moving there
and found streams of celluloid
from the closed up movie house
tangled in the ragged brush
knotted round the rigid trunks and
holding some up to the icy sun I saw
frame after frame of naked women, men
little children wretched, posed
smeared now
with leaves and mud

days later I returned to find
glistening sheets of snow untouched
but for the V’s of tiny birds
frozen amorphous drifts bedazzling
some encircling the bases of the trees
cloaking all that lay beneath
as if these shrouds and
firm white collars of frost might
benumb and petrify, then turn
the world back to itself
when it was new

I have always written poetry and prose as meditation and to make some sense of things.
They are a way to duel and dance with love and fear, joy and discovery.