Joseph Reich - Days Before Kindergarten

Today we have a poem from Mr. Joseph Reich called "Days Before Kindergarten". Even though it's not explicitly about summer, I feel as though it is necessary for the month of June.

days before kindergarden

doors magically and mysteriously open to the school

and half-crazed kids come stampeding out

leaping onto their little red tricycles

the teacher enthusiastically

hollers--"one time around!"

then returns them

back to the shadows

is anything in this life?

anything? comparable?

Real Talk: On The Poem (Real Talk: On When I Said I Love You) - Rance Robeson II

Now you know I was just saying that shit to get chu madd!!



You know I luvvvv you girl!!

Real Talk: On When I Said I Love You - Rance Robeson II

I really wasn’t being honest



Honestly

U-Turn - Michaela Shanklin

Let’s draw a map
of this thing we started
Sketch paved highways, side streets, back roads
Draw in mountains, rivers, trees, and birds
Pencil in rest stops and road signs
Mark an “X” at our final destination
Or we can just keep driving
Windows down music glaring
The air freshener twirling
Ashes flying around our paved romance
Thoughts and dreams pass us by
Smoking too many cigarettes
Trees and back roads get erased
Birds dance in the wind
As we become an us
Hear the shutter preserve this summer romance
At night you draw stars, the moon, airplanes passing
Sleep next to me
Fade into me
In the morning you draw my portrait
You smooth my face with your finger
The ignition stalls
The leaves are dying
Home seems far
I take the map from your hands and draw
a U-turn an inch from where we are
This thing we started…

This Is a Poem - Zachary Ayres

Trillions of times per second, innumerable cosmic particles
shoot silently through our bodies, and leave infinitesimal perforations.

We do not notice.

All Your Little Apocalypses - Brian Brown

Another night pacing the floors,
mourning, then cursing your absence,
when the phone brings the same bullshit
from a different halfway house,
a counselor whose credentials
are workshop at best
reassuring me you haven't lost it,
there's still hope,
as if I can pay his goddamned fee
with hope.
It reminds of the time
you found those checks
out at Devils' Den,
the ones your cousin swiped
from the doctor's office where
she worked to support her
burgeoning crack hobby.
You ordered a thin crust cheese
from Domino's to feed your munchies
& got busted for forgery.
But it’s different for me now.
I’m not going to fight for you,
nor spread hate among friends,
via inflammatory texts,
electronic or otherwise.
I'm toasting a round of cheers
to all the forgotten nights
you'll spend a lifetime
trying like hell to remember.

Georgia - Brian Brown

I follow the same red dirt highways
seeking a celestial music,
a fugue of meadow beauty,
a cantata of dandelion wings.
Stand shamelessly before
unlocked doors of farmhouses
long abandoned, where icicles of neglect
hang permanently from fragile panes.
Stereotypes vanish into the towns,
the old folks at home now
seeking lottery tickets, the placebo
salve of Wal-Mart's low prices.
Roadside religion surrenders
to a plethora of prefab churches,
with billboard sermons threatening
surefire damnation to the unsaved.
I listen again and still I hear
no special music,
just the sorry whine of rusting hinges,
an insolent bluegrass.
Announcing the arrival
of doublewides in every field,
every forest where I first got high,
where I first got hard.

YANG CHU'S POEM 439 - Duane Locke

A crow hopped from slippery ledge
To slippery ledge in a space where
The waterfall parted and was bleached bright
By the sunlight, the crow was blue.

The crow hopped on the scanty pine
That grew out of a the sparse sand
In a rock crack behind a puff
Of mist, the crow was silver.

I asked the young monk with me,
What is the color of a crow.
I disturbed his concentrated gaze
At his sake in his blue-tinted clay cup,

He annoyed, puzzled, look into
The massive pile of notes he had
Copied from his schooling, he
Said, "A crow is black."

TUNING IN AND OUT - John Grey

Driving long distance,
I tire of constantly fiddling
with the radio dial,
let the song I don't like anyhow
fade to static, white noise.
Besides, there's a storm
gathering on the horizon,
choking off reception,
and flashes of lightning insist
on broadcasting through
my flapping antennae anyhow.
As tempest FM
bullies the airwaves,
I hum along to humidity,
rolls of thunder, creeping
darkness, shrapnel rain.
The melody, the rhythm,
are as staccato, as scattered,
as violently unstable,
as why I need to drive alone
some days, this many miles
Erratic, my lover calls it.
She says it like a weather forecast.
I hear it like a road map.

No Cups - Pete Richter

From the bottom step, Hunter
does disagree with distance,
“it was created for the romantics.
everyone comes home in
the same clothes they left in -
Pie in the sky” he said.
So I placed a bowl of lemonade
for him and his biped heart.
I invented him
in the Midwest, balancing
on a curve of chalk
looking down at the valleys.
I attached him
to the river and its flow,
the path home.
I can’t correct the light,
its’ dusk partlets at rest and
I encourage the waltz;
listening to the sprig of the windchimes.
Yellow lenses, I am gradual.
Cedar awning, I am my face.
On the bottom step,
a bowl of lemonade is waiting.
So be home before the windchimes are strings,
grazing the eyebrows of evening.

Twist My Words - Michael Lee Johnson

I see the spring dance all over your face in green
you were arrogant before you viewed my willow tree
outside my balcony.
Now you wave at me
with green fingers
and lime smiles.
You twist my words,
Harvard collegiate style,
right where you want them to be─
lime green, willow tree, and
dark skinned branches.

Love train with donkey - Harry Calhoun

Love is like a jackass on a train
how it got there
who bought its ticket
and what it will do next
is anybody’s guess
but if you don’t think
about it too much
it sure is entertaining
and you might not know
where it came from
or where it’s going
but at least it’s going
somewhere

Back in Black - Sandy Hiss

My brother was sitting on the
porch playing air guitar. His
ears recalling the hard rock of
AC/DC's Back in Black. I always
liked that song but would never
admit it to him.

He would think that he won, this
imaginary battle between metal
and new wave. I begged to differ
as I thought of Duran Duran posing
stylishly on a sailboat in the
caribbean.

They were busy drinking champagne
and eating caviar while his boys
were cavorting in sneakers with
oily hair.

But I couldn't turn away, forget
the power of drums and bass. The
in-your-face lyrics that came in
handy when you were pushed around.
Hands on the ground, trying to
stand up again.

As he finished strumming the last
chord, he looked at me and nodded.
I didn't have to say a word.
He already knew.

Fingernails - Lena Judith Drake

She has a thumb latched on her hip, mouth turned away.
Cheap makeup smeared, gritty streaks on her face,
her fingers meddle at a scalp and red hair, and she knows—
God exists only in those tendoned movements in this place.
Cheap makeup smeared, gritty streaks; on her face
an inch she rubs at, scratches.
God exists only in those tendoned movements. In this place,
smoke through the inch-open window, broken matches
an inch. She rubs at scratches.
Her fingers meddle at a scalp. And red hair, and. She knows
smoke through the inch-open. Window broken. Matches.
She has a thumb latched on her hip, mouth turned away.

Winter - Julie Yi

A white sheet unwraps—
Braves the sultry summer and lonely fall.
Its clandestine mask of dark and light,
Seeps like infection through your mind,
Covers the numbing sensitivity of soured thoughts
And acquainted experiences down a list.
When the icicles from your rooftop become ornaments:
The racing thoughts in the atmosphere
Cease its five o’clock traffic and begin to trickle
Like the bored sensations in your brain, or like
Conversation with the one you loved, now lost.
Halt and repair the things you broke and hastily thrown away.
The bitter of cold air: your lids warm your agape eyes,
Starstruck from newfound creations and passing sights.
Brings a natural refrain to the unnatural things,
As your blood is thick, and you resort to the neglected running shoes,
A long-forgotten childhood friend. Take an artless walk,
And feel a genuine breeze.
For running against wind
Under fluorescent streetlights
With the one you think you know
Blinds the eye.

Rock Star - Del Martin

Shades on, a swagger
As cool as you can be

Strumming your guitar
Singing sweet and slow

Toss your curly hair
Fling the sweat away
Contort, twist the song
Oh the sweet melody

Expressing your soul
Breaking your heart
Out there on the stage
You're all alone inside

A hushed crowd waits
Eyes closed, swaying
The chorus is for them
They sing to touch you

NO, I WILL NOT BE IN ATTENDANCE - Joseph Goosey

I may or may not be missing

an essential brain component.

I simply could not care less

for the golf tournament taking place

next weekend.

While I do not pray at night

for Tiger's jet to crash,

I wouldn't necessarily

lose my breakfast over it

either.

The traffic that ensues

is unimaginably gruesome.

You're always stopped.

There is always some potbelly in uniform

directed slightly more successful potbellies

into a gravel lot

where I once pretended to be interested

in fireworks.

You just want to get out

of your Camry, walk up to the car

in front of you and say something

about practices in futility.

That, or you just want to get out,

period.

Catherine Tassini - 'II'

And i was shown a simple truth:
The answer lies without.

The whole while i spent inside myself,
looking for more
i never knew
Thant even my freckled, flawed surface holds more truth
than i can grasp
Than the revelation that
the true beauty of this world
Is heard in the divine thunk!
Of random bodies floating through this world
when all at once they clunk! together
And the cacophonic symphony is more than divine

The ocean meets the sky;
Everything is intrinsically united

Catherine Tassini - 'I'

i lost my idea
But someone else found it.

In the folds of my skin
i stood searching for days and days
Navel gazing
Into the depths i plunged
And into the valley i disappeared
Some people never saw me for lightyears
Did you turn away first or did i?

These accusations do not matter now
in the face of the joy of knowing that
We are gifts to each other.

The immeasureable compassion
Of one hand
Pulling me up to breathe
Finally.

J.R. Pearson - 'Cherry. Cherry. Cross '

Here, churches have drive-thru's,
prostitutes: business cards with the smell of licorice,
call me! in crimson & a lipstick kiss.

Here, day does not depart,
but dies ostentatiously
clutching it's chest in a casino buffet line,
in jeweled cape pretending to be Elvis,
in a alley behind a strip club
beaten to death in a dumpster.
Here, the moon is a coin
thumbed into the evening slot machine.
When the lever is pulled
it is the gesturing arm of a giant Indian,
the tomahawk celebration of a man,
tux (un)done, in sour sweat-stained frills
and everything coming up desert stars
after champagne uh-huhs.
Here, if the silver he cups in both hands
were splashed on his face
the words he speaks
would be neon.
Phosphorescent holy verse,
a wicked scripture hung next to
breasts boiling
on a billboard,
the Shiva of Las Vegas
that blink/BLINKs
genuflection in fresh eyes of
kneeling
little ones.