Category Archives: Great Poems Online

“Prayer”: A Poem from “The Voodoo Doll Parade” by Lauren Schmidt


Lauren Schmidt’s The Voodoo Doll Parade was selected by Terry Wolverton for the Main Street Rag Author’s Choice Chapbook Series. The profane becomes sacred under this poet’s unflinching attention, in earthy poems about illness, sex, and prayer (and sometimes all three tangled up in bed together). The heart of this chapbook is a series of unforgettable narratives about homeless and mentally disabled clients of The Dining Room, a soup kitchen in Oregon where the author volunteered. The poem below is reprinted by permission. See her author page on the MSR website for more samples and purchasing information. Please order books from MSR to support this excellent small press that publishes writing with a social conscience.

PRAYER
for Jeremy

When I clear your table after you’ve gone, there’s a small scrap
of paper which reads: “God Bless You. You are Beautiful.
I Promise to Pray for You.” Pray for me? Pray for me?
Then pray for me that I wake up in the morning in a bed
and lie there, that I give my blessings their proper names
and faces, the blessings that keep me from a life too like
yours, pray for me. Because the first thought of my day

is hunger, pray for me that I eat. But pray for me that I know
hunger, pray for me. Pray for me that I feel myself in
the growl of your belly, that I remember I am more like you
than I remember, pray for me. Pray for me that I am Rodney
with his weary eyes who is all at once teacher, cousin,
neighbor, friend, and the stranger who held the door for me
when my arms were full of bags, please pray. Pray for me

that I am the woman with earth-rich skin. Pray for those hands
that slammed her plate face-down into the table for me to clean.
Pray for me that I know no such grief, pray for me.
Pray for me that I am Larry whose fingers shoot music
into the belly of the piano; those same seven songs spark
from its upright head. Pray for me that I have the comfort
of knowing what comes next, pray for me. Pray for me that I am
the blind man because the room knows to make room for him.
People move tables, chairs, themselves, part a path for him as if
he were a king. But pray for me that I make way, pray for me.

Pray for me that I am Amber with her Vaseline face,
whose words are frenzied centipedes that scatter from her lips
and braid above her head. She stares at them like a mobile
or a noose. She stares at them like she would a heaven. Pray for me

there’s a heaven. That the demons inked along Leanne’s spine
do not exist, pray for me. Pray for me that my back can carry
such blackness if it needs to, pray for me. Pray for me that I am
the pregnant girl who is allowed a second plate. Pray that I know
the power I hold in my body, for a tiny king can grow eyes in my body,

please pray. Pray for me that I am the man in this same room, seated
at another table, the man that gives the girl his milk. Pray for me
that I remember to give up my milk. Pray for me that I am the milk.

Two Poems from “Slouching Towards Guantanamo” by Jim Ferris


Jim Ferris is an award-winning poet and professor of disability studies at the University of Toledo. His first full-length collection, The Hospital Poems, won the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award in 2004. In The Hospital Poems, Ferris writes about the multiple surgeries he endured as a child to correct skeletal abnormalities. He questions the purpose of the isolation, pain, and stigma he experienced as a perpetual patient. Was this course of treatment really for his benefit, or primarily to bring him closer to society’s idea of a proper-looking human body, to make others comfortable looking at him?

In his new book Slouching Towards Guantanamo, also from Main Street Rag, Ferris extends this radical inquiry to our body politic. Our discomfort with the body’s vulnerability forces certain lives offstage–the lives of the crippled, the war-wounded, the oppressed–and once we can no longer see them, we can allow ourselves to think that they don’t have feelings equal to ours. Who sees and who is seen? What is the difference between being seen and merely being looked at?

This prophetic poet asks us to shed the burden of our ego so that differences between ourselves and others can simply coexist without comparison or judgment. Notwithstanding the spiritual weight they carry, these poems are playful, musical, satirical and passionate. The poems below are reprinted by permission. Read more on his MSR author page.

FACTS OF LIFE

Where’s the glory in it? I am not
a survivor. Whatever the state
of my legs, whatever happened
there, know this: I walk down the street
whole, whether I limp or stumble,
cane or crutches, roll in a chair.
This is my body. Look if you like.
This is my meat, substance
but not essence, essence but not
fate, sum of all its particles
back to the big one but particular
to no single interpretation
in a cosmos of possible ontologies
that we all try to limit with all
our soft might but which accepts
only the most temporary
instructions: you, sir, explain
that birthmark, and you, how about
that nose? We are not signs,
we do not live in spite of
or because of our facts,
we live with them, around them, among,
like we live around rivers, my cane,
your warts, like we live among animals,
your heart, my brace, like we live with,
despite, because of each other.

****

MANIFEST DESTINY

I love Mark Twain and the Mississippi steamboats and Abraham Lincoln’s dogs.
I love the fields of wheat and corn and the smell of Virginia tobacco.
But I am not American.
. . .
Take the stripes of your flag
and give us the stars.
     –SAADI YOUSSEF, “America, America”

I see you, America.
I am your dying son.
I recall your stories
of hope and of glorious
trails to true freedom.
Give me liberty, go west, go deep.
One small step one giant

I hear you, America.
I am your deaf-blind child.
I may have been cute once,
up on that poster, but America,
you are my inspiration.
We hold these truths
to be self-evident,
we who have hands to hold
and eyes to see.

You watch me as I cross the street—
I must be something to see.

Send me your tired,
your poor, your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free—
take a deep breath—now ask
why they look at us that way.
Greatest country on earth—
in the history of the earth.
In the universe. Ever. Top that.

I smell you, America
you are in my pores, you
are the dirt beneath my nails—
you are my nails. All I eat
and drink and breathe are you.
Why am I no longer high?
Why does my head hurt?
Why do I have so many staplers?

You watch me as I buy groceries—
I must be something to see.

I feel you, America,
even deaf-blind I feel you go by,
I am your comatose wife.
Yoked together by a vow
made long ago, now I lie
here, and you lie away. When you love,
when you honor, will you protect
me from yourself? Just who is

your self, America? Do I
count? Three-fifths, say? I
am the crippled newsy on the corner,
the guy on the knuckleboard, not a leg
to stand on. Now I am the standard-bearer,
standing out not up. Stand by, America—
this just in: you need me. I am your face
in the family portrait, just as you blink.

You watch me though you are discreet.
I must be something to see.

I taste you, America,
pilgrims pride and fruited plain,
turkey dinner once a year,
I am your orphan child.
I am your silenced majority.
You would pave me to make me whole,
bronze our laughter to save it,
feed the world on hamburger,
coke, fries, and freedom’s tales,
talk of choice and honor
and a thousand channels.

I watch you, America,
I am your slow son,
your dumb-blonde daughter,
you are what’s on. Is anyone
listening? I am the deaf-blind cripple
who is always listening,
watching, waiting to be fulfilled.
I see you, America, I see you,
see me, hear me, be me too.

You watch me like I am quite chic.
I must be something to see.

I am too hard for poems, America,
too empty. You are too brittle, too small.
One drop overflows me,
the oceans cannot fill you,
nothing soaks through.
The maw of America is open,
friendly is our middle name,
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
We take care of our own. We’ll take care
of you, too, if you don’t watch out, bud.
We have no room for poems, no time
for poems, no place for the people
of poems. Be one of us, be
a winner, be a saint, be secure
in righteousness, look forward to glory,
and take rewards both here and hereafter.

You watch me as I eat.
I must be something to see.

Liberty or death, America,
and you stand for both, indivisible,
one nation under the wrath of an angry God,
meting out liberty and justice to all
who get in our way. Forty acres and a mule,
America, paddy wagons and loyalty
oaths, banned books and internment
camps, peace pipes and more treaties,
and how about some blankets, too.
The policeman isn’t there to create
disorder, America—the policeman
is there to preserve disorder.

You watch me as I walk down the street.
I must be something to see.

I have a dream, America. Ask not.
I have lost my way, America,
but I’m right here with you.
Oh, you who would eat the earth
and call it free, the only thing we have to fear
is fear itself. Take this hand, you who love arms,
take this hand, America, opposable thumb and all. We
are the people of poems. Let us bind up our wounds
and refit the prostheses we all require.
I need you, America,
I am your child and I need you.
We are all your children, the atoms of your hope.
Let the better angels of our nature
form a more perfect union,
and let us be orphans no more.
The tired, the poor, the high and low—
we are all watching.
I see you, America. We see you.

Ruth Sabath Rosenthal: “Bad Apple”


Ruth Sabath Rosenthal’s full-length poetry collection FACING HOME and beyond (Paragon Poetry Press, 2011) includes and expands upon her chapbook Facing Home (Finishing Line Press), 2010, which I excerpted on this blog last year. Ruth’s clear and sharp-witted writing addresses themes of family alienation, Jewish heritage, and the hard-won wisdom of an older woman who’s had to learn to rely on herself. The poem below, reprinted by permission, captures the spirit of this collection, by way of some lesser-known details about the Jewish legend of Lilith. Visit Ruth’s website to learn more about her work.

Bad Apple

What anguish when Lilith figured out
her Adam was a die-hard prick, repeatedly
refusing to let her flower atop his stem.

From the get-go, he commanded she be
on the bottom. Wanting his seed, she was dutiful
wife, coy lover swallowing bile, biting her tongue,

bearing him sons, and yet, the stiff-neck refused
to soften his manner or change his position:
He wanted her always under his thumb,

kissing his feet, the ground he stood on. She revolted,
and under threat of God-awful wrath, took one hell
of a lover — a swain who liked her on top,

but said kids were not fit to live with.
She sided with him, decided to leave Adam,
against the wishes of three angels who warned

they’d kill off the hundreds and hundreds
of sons she expected to bear, if she carried
out her plan. She turned that around by conceiving

her own twist on their threat: She would kill all
the newborns she cared to — a diabiblical campaign
the angels condoned only after she swore to

spare those infants wearing a talisman inscribed
with the angels’ names. And furthermore,
she’d seek to demonize men by having her way

with them in the deep of sleep, turning each
into licentious pricks lusting to distraction,
perversion. As for women, she’d instruct each

to cease acting beneath men in any manner or form.
Her plan carved in stone, she bid Adam farewell,
but not before ribbing him unmercifully

about his dream of finding the perfect wife,
“a fit wife.” And likely he would, as one man’s poison
is another man’s pleasure, or so it is written.

Alegria Imperial: “this change of name”


Alegria Imperial, a frequent contributor to this blog’s poetry pages, shared with me this meditation on an important upcoming transition in her life. Originally from the Philippines, she will now have dual citizenship in her adopted country, Canada. Her spare, elegant language and attunement to nature show the influence of yet another country, Japan, as her writing has been shaped by the discipline of studying haiku and tanka.

Alegria says of her multiple identities: “I’m about to take my oath as a Candian citizen and pledge allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II! I find it both exhilarating and ironic (the pledge of allegiance, in particular); here I am coming from a country that fought for freedom from Spanish royalty for 300 years, regained it, lost it again, and gained it back, but chosing to move to Canada I will now willingly become a subject to a queen in a few days.”

this change of name
by Alegria Imperial

it is
a matter of spelling
only
this change of name

or am i fooling
the skies i look up to
the clouds
none i can name

the mountains
that shimmer
stealing in in stead
the names

of mountain ranges
facing East
among its jungles
my spirit roosts

alien snow
now smothers
my laughter
i drift aground

is earth
unlike the sun
untouched
by sorrow?

i hear
from mourning doves
the language
of dawns

i mismatch
evening clouds
in my dreams
the chill stays

yet the sparrow
shares its songs
that seep into my sleep
lull my world

i regain my name
on Hollyburn
where a lotus by itself
on the lake

–such poignancy–
mirorring my loneliness
soaks the sun
as if enough

i trail the buds
lined along the Fraser’s North Arm
winding down and up
the river bed

the tide cuts a line
between my dreams and the sky
ripples catch my breathing
in rhythmic sighs

i’m scaling the breast
of Burnaby Mounains
my soul resists
its longings

i’m close to home
close to sinking
in the foam
skirting Horseshoe Bay

an eagle skims
my rhyming
my longings weave
in and out of the air

on a skein
of cherry blossoms
once only paintings on scrolls
i learn to haiku

–thinking of moths
in my childhood those slivers of light
that die on the light
and fade in the morning–

on my waking
i am who has always been
the city aground on my steps
whose name i can now say

even in sleep–
Vancouver


Carolyn Howard-Johnson: “Inevitably Walls”


Carolyn Howard-Johnson is a widely published poet and the author of several marketing manuals for writers, including The Frugal Book Promoter. Her site The New Book Review features original and reprinted reviews, to help authors maximize the exposure of a good review. (This month, they’ve re-posted a review of my chapbook Swallow that first appeared on the Ampersand Books website.)

Carolyn’s poem “Inevitably Walls” was recently accepted for the first issue of the literary journal Solo Novo Wall Scrawls. The journal is published by Solo Novo Press, Carpinteria, CA and North Wilkesboro, NC. Editor Paula C. Lowe says, “‘Wall Scrawls’ is inspired by an Iowa farmhouse wall. Eighty years abandoned and orphaned, it is a hive of letters, a busy kitchen of words. Every kid with a can of spray paint somehow gets here and leaves his or her native tongue on the walls.” They’ve kindly given me permission to share it below.

Inevitably Walls

Near Jerusalem’s edge razorwire
coils above concrete slabs that trace

an imaginary line across the brutal
desert much like a wall we found

years ago when we lost our way
in a dark forest somewhere

in Germany, cried when we
found it there—unexpected—and it

not so different

from one in Ireland we visited only
last year, walls to cleave Irish

from Irish. Foreign walls, chains-linked,
wire-barbed, Krylon smeared walls

not so different

from our own, that fence that crawls
from Baja, through mountain passes

along the Rio Grande. Walls. Feeble, useless,
unholy billboards. Even poets

once wrote of mending walls…


Thursday Random Song: Talib Kweli, “Cold Rain”


Some of the most creative rhyming among contemporary writers can be found in hip-hop and rap music, but it’s a guilty pleasure because of the misogyny, homophobia, and violence that the lyrics often glorify. A welcome exception is rapper Talib Kweli, who fits within the social protest tradition of slam poetry. His album The Beautiful Struggle is in my frequent playlist. He recently appeared on The Colbert Report to promote his new album, Gutter Rainbows. Enjoy this clip of him performing “Cold Rain”. Lyrics below courtesy of killerhiphop.com.

Cold Rain


Lets try something new
It’s been a long time coming!
Let me try something brand new
Hey yo Ski!
What you ever do, man?
Come on!
Yo, what we doing it for?

This is for all the day-trippers and the hipsters
Whores and the fashionistas
Spiritual leaders practicing all the laws of attraction
The teachers who read the passages from the Bhagavad Gita
That be bustin off Dalai Lama’s or flashing heaters
the last of the boosters
With the shooting, the thugging and all the booning and spooning
and all the crooning, and cooning and auto-tuning, alive
You be tellin, peddlin’ to consumers I’m helping them to see through it
get with this new movement,
Let’s move it!

Feel the cold rain
Still I’m standing right here
Even the winter summer days

Yeah I’m a product of Reaganomics
From the blocks where he rocking a feds like J Electronica
drop and make this a lock
if he promises where the heart is
whether Jesus or Mohammad
regardless of where the Mosque is (word)
They hope for the Apocalypse like a self-fulfilling prophecy
Tell me when do we stop it?
Do they ask you your religion before you rent an apartment?
Is the answer burning Korans
So that we can defend Islamics?
The end upon us with a hash tag, a trending topic
You take away the freedoms that we invite in the game
Then you disrespect the soldiers; you ask them to die in vain
In a desert praying for rain
The music’s like a drug, and they tend to take it to vein
It ain’t for the well-behaved
The soundtrack for when you’re great but its more for when you’ve felt afraid
More than your average rapper
So you sort of felt the way
The brain is like a cage, you a slave, that’s why they lovin’ you
This is the book that Eli that start with a K-W.

I do it for the trappers, other rappers
the Backpackers, the crackers
the n-ggas, the metal-packers
the victims of ghetto factories
I do it for the families, citizens of humanity
Emcee’s, endangered species like manatees
I do it for the future of my children!
They the hope for the hopeless
Karma approaches, we gon’ be food for a flock of vultures
The end of the World
Ain’t nothing left but the cockroaches
and the freedom fighters
We’re freedom writers like Bob Moses
the chosen, freedom writers like Voltaire
For my block, my borough, my hood, my city, my state, yeah
My obligation to my community is so clear!
yeah, we gotta save them, this opportunity so rare!
We do it so big over here that it’s no bare
To the punks, bitches, the chumps, the snitches, the sneak in the game
We let them live with all they’re weak and they’re lame
The bozo’s and joker’s, promoting when they’re speaking my name

Two Poems from an Anthology to Benefit Refugees


Yes, loyal readers, it has been a long time since I blogged. I’ve been refreshing my vocation as a Christian writer at the Glen Workshop East, an experience I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone who has wondered how the identities “Christian” and “writer” can coexist harmoniously.

While I sort out my thoughts from this high-intensity week, please enjoy the following excerpt from The Last Stanza, a new poetry anthology edited by Dan Savery Raz of Danscribe Books. The Last Stanza features work by the members of StanzAviv, a creative collective of writers associated with Bar Ilan University and Tel Aviv University. StanzAviv members come from Israel, USA, UK, France, Canada, Latvia and beyond. Poets include Dara Barnat from Tel Aviv University’s English Faculty, literary translator Sabine Huynh, and Israeli poet Michal Pirani. The book also features atmospheric shots of Tel Aviv taken by award-winning photographer Nitzan Hafner. All proceeds from the sale of this book go to the ARDC (African Refugee Development Center), an NGO in south Tel Aviv that provides shelter, education, counseling and advice to refugees and asylum seekers in Israel. The ARDC was founded by refugees for refugees.

****


Finally
by Yedida Bernstein Goren

i am refugee, you were this too, yes? my friend
i ran, climbed, snaked to shaky part of your borderwall
oh israel holy-israel my mind breaking into pieces of glass
i hear jews are good people
months i journey hide every some hours
lost friends, brother, child back home
you also lose family shot at by crazed soldiers, yes?
we hear you did long long time ago 60 years
walking and walking and walking and walking
they aim bullets at me
they rape my woman
i stand there
my eyes stretch into my forehead, my pupils fall out my eyelids
i hold back the skyscream
trudge on with wife on back
over last sandkilometer
i reach you, finally, oh Israel
scarred, falling, hungry
you send me to holding station
like prison
you look down on me and wife
you so shy of kindtouch
so short on welcomewords
weeks months later
you tell us to leave on big plane
you pay
where, kind officer, do you think we should return to?

****

easyBank.com
by Dan Savery Raz

To check the balance of your account, press one.
To transfer money from one account to another, press two.
For lost or stolen cards, press three.
If you would like to pay your outstanding balance, press four.
If you like the word ‘muesli’, press five.
If you get scared by thunder and lightning storms at night,
   press six.
If you believe in a monotheistic God, press seven.
If you are an atheist or believe in many gods, such as the
   sun god Helios, press eight.
For reincarnation, press nine.
To listen to some ancient Tibetan Buddhist chants, press
   ten.
Trotskyites, press eleven.
Hermaphrodites, twelve.
For information on the displacement of the Aboriginal population
   of Australia in the late 18th century, press thirteen.
If you just want to get stoned, press fourteen
followed by the hash key.
If you treat your pet dog better than most human beings,
   press fifteen.
People that still carry some torch of hope for humanity, press
   sixteen followed by star.
For sarcasm or wit, don’t press seventeen whatever you do.
To speak to a customer service representative, call the
   premium number between 10 AM and 10.30 AM on Monday,
   Tuesday and Thursday.
To return to the main menu please text the words ‘Egyptian
   Mummification in the Predynastic Period’ to 666 or hold the
   line while we drill holes in your ear.
Thank you for banking with easyBank.com, finance at your fingertips.

Sabine Huynh: “In Memory of a Two-Meter-Tall Israeli Buddhist Monk”


Last fall, I posted some poetry by Sabine Huynh, a Vietnamese-born writer, translator, and linguistics scholar who now lives in Israel. This next poem that she kindly shares with us also reflects the intermingling of cultures and faiths, appropriately for a meditation about crossing the boundary from life to death and…whatever happens next. (Note: A Neshama candle is a Yahrzeit memorial candle that Jews light on the anniversary of a person’s death.)

In memory of a two-meter tall Israeli Buddhist monk (U. L., 1959-2009)

If you google his first name, a Hebrew name
that sounds like “Where? Tell,” in French,
and his four-letter last name
which happens to be the town where
I grew up on bitter rice and green cherries,
you’ll find him in the World
Buddhist Directory, Chiangmai, Thailand,
after Phra “monk” – a two-meter tall one –
and before an O-six phone number
ending with thirty eight – our house number then,
the house where the mother smashed her anger
into the daughter’s piano keys,
the father’s dreams, the sons’ games,
the garden where the dog died.
Oh yes, an O-six number and an email address
spammed for eternity. There is a website too,
no longer available to disciples,
even the Internet Archives’ Wayback Machine
– click on “take me back” –
fails to retrieve him from Nirvana.
When in the evening
I hang the Neshama candle
in my kam kwat tree – “gold orange”
in Chinese, I wonder
whether he is washing
his saffron robe in Basho’s old pond.
Sick on a journey, their dreams
wandered over withered grass.
No rebirth and no soul for him, no peace
of mind, no answer but so much
to remember him for.

****

See a photo of Udi on Sabine’s website.

Saturday Random Song: Dolly Parton, “Jesus & Gravity”


Now that’s the story of my life:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gyqjSn-q34&NR=1
(sorry, no embed code)

I’m to the point where it don’t add up
I can’t say I’ve come this far with my guitar on pure dumb luck
That’s not to say I know it all
Cause everytime I get too high up on my horse I fall

Cause I’ve got
Somethin’ lifting me up
Somethin’ holding me down
Somethin’ to give me wings and keep my feet on the ground
I’ve got all I need
Jesus and gravity

But I’m as bad as anyone
Taking all these blessings in my life for granted one by one
When I start to thinkin’ it’s all me
Well somethin’ comes along and knocks me right back on my knees
And I’ve got…

Somethin’ lifting me up
Somethin’ holding me down
Somethin’ to give me wings and keep my feet on the ground
I’ve got all I need, Jesus and gravity

He’s my friend
He’s my light
He’s my wings
He’s my flight

I’ve got somethin’ lifting me up
Somethin’ holding me down
Somethin’ to give me wings and
Somethin’ to keep my feet on the ground
I’ve got all I’m gonna need
I got Jesus, I got Jesus,

I got somethin’ lifting me up
Somethin’ holding me down
Somethin’ to give me wings and keep my feet on the ground
I’ve got all I’ll ever need
Cause I got Jesus and gravity

I got somethin’ lifting me up
Somethin’ holding me down
Somethin’ to give me wings and keep my feet on the ground
I’ve got all I’ll need
Cause I’ve got Jesus and gravity
Jesus, I’ve got Jesus, I’ve got Jesus
He’s my everything
He lifts me up
He gives me wings
He gives me hope
And He gives me strength
And that’s all I’ll ever need

As long as He keeps lifting me up
He is my life
He is my God
He is my wings
He is my flight
Lift me
I’ve got Jesus, I’ve got Jesus
And that’s all I need

Lyrics courtesy of www.cowboylyrics.com