Poetry 2023

Jump Up Children

by

by Judith Meyerowitz

Twirled rope
coiled round black hands
Spin a crisscross story in
magical bands

Jump into the half-moon circle
Hip Hop between invisible lines
A blur of quick hands
Now u see it. Now u don’t.
Jump up heaven bound
Return before sound
Taps the ground

the chain gang
Carries you up
chant
Carries you up

Jump up children
Trouble the waters
May jubilee voices
and African rhymes
Set you free
from imposed ties

Judith Meyerowitz has published both poetry and prose in Voices. She began to write poetry after participating in LP2 groups.

Is This One?

by

by Judith Meyerowitz

How does it start?
An overheard conversation, an image, a question, a howl?
How do we capture it? How do we paper train it?

To rhyme?
One two, buckle my shoe
A line thin or wide
O for osmosis.
Sestinas for math majors

Does blank verse need words
Does punctuation save lives?

We sit in a Greenwich Village apartment, close by the spirits of Cedar Tavern.
Masks on the walls and spirit visions.
Do they watch over us or mock us
as we ponder who is Antinous and how do you say Bluet?

A congenial group draped on couch and easy chairs. A frieze. We are one with the classics.

But should we be in nature, sitting around a fire?
Glowing embers, sparks like Frost’s fireflies,
spirits in a jar.

We are well educated and intended
But can we find the incantation:
“More s’mores and pass the metaphors please”

Do we write the poem or does it write us?
If we wait, will it come?
What makes it a poem?
When does it stop being a poem?

And if you can’t understand it,
Is it no longer one?

Judith Meyerowitz has published both poetry and prose in Voices. She began to write poetry after participating in LP2 groups.

Sonnet VII

by

by Carmen Mason

Freely flowingxx ahxx her dark hair glowing
soft birds huddled upon a safe high ground
the candelabras glistened as she made
her way past gargoyles squatting all around.
Her lover served the red wine carefully ~
its color like the blood of love they shared
mushrooms and salmon poached on bubblingly
finger potatoes looked like piglets bared.
They laughed   told stories   batted round bon mots
until their talk led to its common theme:
coincidence and chance they’d shared a lot
(they probably met first inside a dream).
Why do some pause, then pass right out of mind
while others flyxx collide xxthen soar entwined?

Carmen Mason has written poetry and prose since she was six. She first got published in P.S. 106‘s Children’s Press. She has kept going, winning a few prizes along the way, but mainly just enjoying sharing and, while waiting for her muse to (hopefully) visit her again, telling her friends jokes by Steven Wright.

Raccoon

by

by Carmen Mason

I walk each day
across the bridge
wondering if we really
need a god or
are we enough ~

still, xx there’s the splayed raccoon
hit a few nights ago
its snout intact
half gritting xxxhalf grinning

The next day it’s flipped over ~
perhaps a dog or fisherman’s son flipped it
belly up xxxjumping with flies
and I want
to call you and get
you to come see it :
six grey teeth in a
grimacing mouth
belly oozing a million
undulating white worms
up and down
up and down
as if on infinitesimal
conveyor belts
striped fur gone XXface gone
nails scattered XXpawless
a fringe of paper-thin carcass
marking its small life
Oh let’s lift the baby up
And kiss its berry lips
and later dance with her
under the stars
to tangos and merengues
listen to the scat singer
syncopating the night air in
the snapping jazz club
give all our change
to the impatient waiter
look
let’s dance ’til the last dervish
lookxxxx look xxxlook!
xxxxxthe sun’s
xxxxxxxxdipping down

Carmen Mason has written poetry and prose since she was six. She first got published in P.S. 106‘s Children’s Press. She has kept going, winning a few prizes along the way, but mainly just enjoying sharing and, while waiting for her muse to (hopefully) visit her again, telling her friends jokes by Steven Wright.

Poemless in Gaza

by

by Carmen Mason

It is Monday again and none
have come to visit me and make me feel alive and well
none swift and dazzling, catapulting into song
none sarcastic or profound, crashing for drinks and schmoozing
startling and abusing, or dancing in the dining room
with dizziness abloom or smiting, searing
to make my senses flare, rail up

(Did Samson feel all was dead,
Delilahless, all done
unless gouged eyes could gaze again
on all he would hold up to day’s
new light, take from night’s dark knowing?)

So here I sit and wait as so much moves out there that must be
felt to tell, coax and mill, then welcomed in
The night is still so quiet   I wait   I pray so that
my hand may lift to tell
my arms press out
upon the walls that
swelling, break and fold
while something bursts the door
and greedily I’ll greet
the words
then send them out to you.

Carmen Mason has written poetry and prose since she was six. She first got published in P.S. 106‘s Children’s Press. She has kept going, winning a few prizes along the way, but mainly just enjoying sharing and, while waiting for her muse to (hopefully) visit her again, telling her friends jokes by Steven Wright.

Dylan

by

by Carmen Mason

My mother taught me lay and lie
and I went on to teach it well
to all my kids in school and
gave extra credit when they got it right.
My daughters still call to check
when working at their jobs and writing
something important
and I still yell at TV newscasters
when they say it wrong
and then Bob came along and
sandpapered the truth to me:
Why wait any longer when the one you love
is standing in front of you?
Laaaay laaady laaaaay, laaay across my
big brass bed, until the bray-ache of daaay
stay awhile and make me smile…
and of course it mustn’t be any other
way today.

Carmen Mason has written poetry and prose since she was six. She first got published in P.S. 106‘s Children’s Press. She has kept going, winning a few prizes along the way, but mainly just enjoying sharing and, while waiting for her muse to (hopefully) visit her again, telling her friends jokes by Steven Wright.

What We Owe

by

by Rosalie Frost

Consider what we owe
earth’s flora and fauna living
and dying for nearly
five hundred million years
of geologic time.

As Earth heaved, squeezed,
bumped and grinded,
the detritus of once-living things
decomposed into countless layers,
morphing into the black gold of
power, progress, and pleasure
—- but the plagues,
they are icumen.

Possessing Earth’s gifts, we stay
stubborn as the pharoah who would not heed warnings and signs till
ten plagues exhausted his people and land.

My creative life over the last two decades —- after retiring from the last of my several professional lives —-  embraces writing, photography and gardening, sometimes mixed up together, feeding each other. While I try to be disciplined in my daily practice, I cherish being curiouser and curiouser as well as free to follow non-linear and free-wheeling ideas.

Girl-Talk

by

by Rosalie Frost

As I kissed them goodbye
on their tony, tanned cheeks
in the perfumed air
(my still singleton girlfriends,
high-pitched mares), he silently came up
from behind, tied a dish towel
around my waist, pulled me back
away from my friends as tiny pink bubbles
rose up from still soapy hands,
tickling my nose.

He growled low into my ear,
what was all that girl-talk
while he was in the kitchen washing up?
G-spots, gadgets—
we talk so loud.

My creative life over the last two decades —- after retiring from the last of my several professional lives —-  embraces writing, photography and gardening, sometimes mixed up together, feeding each other. While I try to be disciplined in my daily practice, I cherish being curiouser and curiouser as well as free to follow non-linear and free-wheeling ideas.

Unfallen

by

by Mark Fischweicher

xxxxxxFor Andy

Frost bites the ground I walk on
in the woods. Moss
carpets fallen limbs,
and leaves the cobbles lush
and verdant as some
random emerald gem.

On stones the lichen grows
like bark
and leads me thru the undergrowth
and leafless branches
thru the fallen twigs and leaves,
underneath the leaden skies,
which whisper
as I walk along
beside this frozen
glory.
Winter is alive.

Death seems to be unspoken
within these woods.
Who knows what lives or dies here?
Winter hides the crime
except among the pines.
Look up beyond the old and broken shoots.
No way to tell. Just
as you
remain to
be
to me.

Mark Fischweicher has been involved with poetry all his life. As an elementary, junior high school, high school and adult educator he has published poems at all those levels and has taught courses on the Beats, the Black Mountain Poets, Ezra Pound, and The New York School of Poets.

Tirade To Dismiss My Fall

by

by Mark Fischweicher

As I get older my memory fades.
His name, her name, that place, this.
No matter how I try, I can’t recall.

The emptiness that fills my mind pervades
though some say this aloofness should be my wish
to be detached to let whatever comes to me be all.

I say my nimble wits have never been my ace of spades
My greatest attribute has always been my gibberish
just letting all my fears and cheers flow out without a stall

Not trying too hard to manage all my weird crusades, my escapades.
If I am not remiss, that should be my bliss.
That’s all. I think I’ve hit the wall.

Mark Fischweicher has been involved with poetry all his life. As an elementary, junior high school, high school and adult educator he has published poems at all those levels and has taught courses on the Beats, the Black Mountain Poets, Ezra Pound, and The New York School of Poets.