Poetry

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 *

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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

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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

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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.

On the Bus

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by Mark Fischweicher

Jeans so tight I would worry about ripping them just getting them on,
but they were ripped already.

With sky blue hair, long and full of manufactured curls
that matched the jeans.

She reminded me of the woman on the train yesterday, Easter Sunday,
obviously riding back from the parade.
Quite a bonnet!
The closest we can come to looking like
the cherry blossoms in the park,
covered with petals and rainbow colored satin eggs
she looked like she could easily tip over
and no one batted even an eye
on the IRT
reminding me again of ‘Blue’
on her way to work on Monday morning

Later, I walked through the little park on Second Avenue
only two blocks wide with a fountain in the middle,
not turned on yet but surrounded with tulips in full bloom
as colorful as any hat in the parade

Where a nurse or aide helped an old man with a walker
to the edge of the circle to get an even better view.
Tulips have so many colors
“So beautiful,” I said and she agreed,
“So blue.”

Mark Fischweicher has been scratching out poems since junior high school and still hopes it may become a regular thing.

Southern Fried College Football

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by Tom Ashley

Alabama’s highest paid employee headed to
billionaire status who happens to be making
considerably, by a factor of 24, more
damn dough, is the football coach not the governor,
expected to win a national championship ‘cuz
failure is not an option in Tuscaloosa where
gridiron greatness is demanded and to
hell with any talk of classroom participation
injurious to the mighty ‘Crimson Tide’ boys
kicking the stuffing and giving a good ‘ole
lickin’ to some other knuckleheaded young
men all soon to be dispatched to a completely
nothing job with a concussion or four plus
operations on both knees and a shoulder not
properly thinking about a future or
questioning what they accomplished while a
resident for four years of sweat blood and
simply a handful of credits and injuries
taking them from job to job no relief in sight
unless they hit the Alabama state lottery and
very few people have had such good fortune
winning these but go right ahead putting
xs down on those lotto cards all the while
you’re going through want ads from a to
z and coming up with nothing.

Taking many study groups over the years at the IRP has been a growing and stimulating process. In college, I dreaded my writing courses. I LOVE them now.

Learning My A, B, Cs

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by Tom Ashley

As I was saying to the nasty
Bad girl in the third row on the left
Curling her long golden locks and
Disturbing all the excitable young men
Enough is enough don’t you think you tart
For christ’s sake I’m trying, god knows, to teach
Goddamn poetry to you hopeless and shallow
Hedonistic moronic ‘students’ of
Idiotic, impossibly dull imagination combing a
Jaded outlook debating which flavor
Krispy Kreme donut you’ll avail yourself then
Lovingly slam down your throat while swallowing
Mouthing to the server that absolutely RIEN
Nothing NIENTE is going to prevent yet another
Order of those crullers accompanied by a
Pumpkin latte with whipped cream and in
Quest of the perfect meal please add the
Rib sandwich and additional
Sweet thick maple sauce and those super
Toffee coated twice baked potatoes
Unless maybe you should get two in case you’re
Very hungry and not able to get close or
Within another Krispy Kreme like one near
Xerox’s headquarters on the corner of
Yerba Linda and Ashley, next to House of
Zen

Taking many study groups over the years at the IRP has been a growing and stimulating process. In college, I dreaded my writing courses. I LOVE them now.

Breakfast

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by Charles Troob

For Richard Hogan, 1936-2017

He filled the kettle
ground the beans
found a chunk of butter
in a corner of the fridge

selected a scarf
from the stack heaped on a closet hook
swirled it around his neck

chose a jacket to go with the scarf
and the shirt and the boots
and the ratty jeans

checked the mirror
made a few adjustments
added another scarf
said “O-la”
sailed out the door

then crossed the street
to charm the women at La Bergamote—

returning with fresh rolls…

and perhaps a croissant

Charles Troob adds: My dear friend Richard Hogan encouraged everyone to be creative. He loved my writng, and always asked me to read it aloud to him.