Mom drives the Buick
though the walk is short.
Gravel
pops and crackles
under white-wall tires.
Park and sprint to the pool house.
They’ll check your badge.
As usual, no umbrellas left.
Toss your bag.
Cannonball in off the side.
Drench
the flowered rubber bathing caps
of elders who dare soak now.
Watch the big boys
create tidal waves to impress the girls
who pretend not to notice.
Too soon, Adult Swim.
Kids jump in once more
a defiant splash.
All swim the long route to the ladders,
ignore the lifeguards’ whistles.
Mom leaves you
to the A.M. hits
and static
on your transistor.
She wades in the shallow end.
Just a cooling dip,
her hair in a hasty bun.
She never dunks.
The Jolly Green Giant towel,
faded from last summer
is spread on the grass;
its warmth a comfort despite the heat.
Cocoa butter and
Sea & Ski
Pay lip service to the sun:
Mom will be brown
You will be pink
Before you head home.
***
VICTORIA STEELE
Is thrilled to be included in the debut MEWS magazine and is looking forward to sampling everyone else’s work. This is her first submission and first publication (unless the high school literary magazine counts!) A lifelong reader and writer, Steele has taken many courses, workshops and belonged to several writers groups through the years, including MEWS, Tunnel Vision, and the Write Group. Also an actor, Steele has appeared in many plays and movies over the years: big parts in the little shows, little parts in the big shows! Her plays Permanent Solution and The List enjoyed modest productions with Spotlight Theatre. The List also enjoyed a staged reading at 12 Miles West. Currently a student of American Sign Language, Steele has not been doing much creative writing these days. However, this vote of confidence is an inspiration to get back to it. Thank you. ☺ Contact: ves8284@yahoo.com.
Showing posts with label Poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poetry. Show all posts
Sunday, August 19, 2007
POETRY. Transformation. LAURA FREEDGOOD.
For My Father
Hair rising from your head
like white flames
you are dying.
Is this the flower
flung into air
too delicate to breathe?
Show me something lovely
in these muscles
shrouding bone.
Say this is a lily
unfurling,
say this an explosion of rose,
tell me that the gown
about your body
will lift
and you, radiant,
ascend slowly
into memory.
***
BIOGRAPHY
Weather Report, Laura Freedgood’s second chapbook, is a journey through solitude, loss, and death to an embrace of what remains.
Laura’s poems have appeared in New Jersey Journal of Poets, The Chrysalis Reader, Heliotrope, Descant, Hawai’I Pacific Review, Riversedge, Wisconsin Review, Euphony, Crucible, and in other print journals. She was the featured poet for the 10th anniversary edition of The Aurorean, a journal that publishes her poems often. Her work has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize, and she was awarded a three-year poetry grant from the City University of New York, from 2003-2006.
A graduate of Vassar College, Laura has Master’s degrees in English from Indiana University and The Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from Boston University. She has been a lecturer in English at Boston University and at Bradford College in Haverhill, Massachusetts. She is currently an assistant professor at Queensborough Community College in Bayside, New York, teaching writing to ESL students.
Born and raised in New York City, Laura lived in the Boston area for 25 years, and now resides in Montclair, New Jersey. Her mother, the late Lillian Freedgood, an artist, and her father, the late John Godey, best known for his novel The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three, inspired many of the poems in this collection.
Contact info:
Laura Freedgood
55 North Mountain Avenue, Apt. A5
Montclair, NJ 07042
973-233-0488
laura81@verizon.net
Hair rising from your head
like white flames
you are dying.
Is this the flower
flung into air
too delicate to breathe?
Show me something lovely
in these muscles
shrouding bone.
Say this is a lily
unfurling,
say this an explosion of rose,
tell me that the gown
about your body
will lift
and you, radiant,
ascend slowly
into memory.
***
BIOGRAPHY
Weather Report, Laura Freedgood’s second chapbook, is a journey through solitude, loss, and death to an embrace of what remains.
Laura’s poems have appeared in New Jersey Journal of Poets, The Chrysalis Reader, Heliotrope, Descant, Hawai’I Pacific Review, Riversedge, Wisconsin Review, Euphony, Crucible, and in other print journals. She was the featured poet for the 10th anniversary edition of The Aurorean, a journal that publishes her poems often. Her work has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize, and she was awarded a three-year poetry grant from the City University of New York, from 2003-2006.
A graduate of Vassar College, Laura has Master’s degrees in English from Indiana University and The Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from Boston University. She has been a lecturer in English at Boston University and at Bradford College in Haverhill, Massachusetts. She is currently an assistant professor at Queensborough Community College in Bayside, New York, teaching writing to ESL students.
Born and raised in New York City, Laura lived in the Boston area for 25 years, and now resides in Montclair, New Jersey. Her mother, the late Lillian Freedgood, an artist, and her father, the late John Godey, best known for his novel The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three, inspired many of the poems in this collection.
Contact info:
Laura Freedgood
55 North Mountain Avenue, Apt. A5
Montclair, NJ 07042
973-233-0488
laura81@verizon.net
POETRY. Belmar ‘52. RACHEL BENNETT.
In this one,
you are standing on the beach with your sisters. Five
ruby-lipped brunettes
too young to think of storms.
Link your arms.
Dig your feet
into sand that sinks. Fight the sound of raging winds
that barrel in off the Atlantic.
Laugh your throat dry.
Give the Ocean Hell.
The sea-weed strewn about your ankles:
it is silk, not slime.
Too young for storms. In this one,
glide your wrinkled hand, nail-polish chipped
and pink, across the faces years wore down.
Say their names. Feel pearls roll smooth in your mouth.
Think not of death, the solitude
of white
plaster walls. Echoes down the hall
from an invalid - hear them not.
Laugh your throat dry. Give the ocean hell.
You are too young for calm seas,
for the splatter crash dance
undulating fire
of sunsets that smolder to lavender and cream.
Keep your back to the sea, in this one vulnerable day
that wanes and sucks
its ocean down -
cold water down
the bathtub's drain,
and when you bathe, the sponge that moves
itself on you - not soap:
Sea-Foam. Don't close your eyes.
The hands that lift you to your bed
are not hands at all. They are schools of fish.
Shame that burns your cheeks red
brings navy to your sunken eyes
isn't shame at all. It is sunburn
and soft bruise. In this one,
you were too young. You are too young
for storms:
the splinters from a coral reef,
the salt that stings your skin.
The pain subsides by slow degrees.
You give the Ocean Hell.
***
Rachel Bennett is 20 years old and is from Verona, NJ. In 2006, she received the following awards through Rutgers for poetry: the Academy of American Poets College & University Prize, the Evelyn Hamilton Award, the Julia Carlie Prize, and the Edna Herzberg Prize. My short stories, poetry, and artwork have appeared in the following magazines: The Caellian, Objet d'art, The Podium, and The Mosaic. She is entering her senior year at Rutgers University in New Brunswick where she majors in English with a focus in Creative Writing. She is on the Dean's List and has been on the staff of two on-campus magazines. Her e-mail address is rsbennet@eden.rutgers.edu.
you are standing on the beach with your sisters. Five
ruby-lipped brunettes
too young to think of storms.
Link your arms.
Dig your feet
into sand that sinks. Fight the sound of raging winds
that barrel in off the Atlantic.
Laugh your throat dry.
Give the Ocean Hell.
The sea-weed strewn about your ankles:
it is silk, not slime.
Too young for storms. In this one,
glide your wrinkled hand, nail-polish chipped
and pink, across the faces years wore down.
Say their names. Feel pearls roll smooth in your mouth.
Think not of death, the solitude
of white
plaster walls. Echoes down the hall
from an invalid - hear them not.
Laugh your throat dry. Give the ocean hell.
You are too young for calm seas,
for the splatter crash dance
undulating fire
of sunsets that smolder to lavender and cream.
Keep your back to the sea, in this one vulnerable day
that wanes and sucks
its ocean down -
cold water down
the bathtub's drain,
and when you bathe, the sponge that moves
itself on you - not soap:
Sea-Foam. Don't close your eyes.
The hands that lift you to your bed
are not hands at all. They are schools of fish.
Shame that burns your cheeks red
brings navy to your sunken eyes
isn't shame at all. It is sunburn
and soft bruise. In this one,
you were too young. You are too young
for storms:
the splinters from a coral reef,
the salt that stings your skin.
The pain subsides by slow degrees.
You give the Ocean Hell.
***
Rachel Bennett is 20 years old and is from Verona, NJ. In 2006, she received the following awards through Rutgers for poetry: the Academy of American Poets College & University Prize, the Evelyn Hamilton Award, the Julia Carlie Prize, and the Edna Herzberg Prize. My short stories, poetry, and artwork have appeared in the following magazines: The Caellian, Objet d'art, The Podium, and The Mosaic. She is entering her senior year at Rutgers University in New Brunswick where she majors in English with a focus in Creative Writing. She is on the Dean's List and has been on the staff of two on-campus magazines. Her e-mail address is rsbennet@eden.rutgers.edu.
POETRY. The Sleep-Over. MADELINE TIGER.
Sally tried to go to sleep but
she couldn't, she missed her
Dora doll and her old baby-
sitter and her dad and her
cousins in New York and
the doggy she'd wished for
but didn't have yet and her
old school and the new one,
her kindergarten, and the
teacher who, Sally said in
a thin voice, between noisy
breaths, is - nice, sort of.
She missed her pink rain-
boots and her high bed and
the ice cream she couldn't
finish and her mom
whom she didn't mention and
the pony at Turtle Back Zoo.
After we'd whispered the list and
I sang the old songs: My Little
Nut Tree, Loola Loola Bye-Bye,
and she hugged Fishie, she fell into
the long night.
she couldn't, she missed her
Dora doll and her old baby-
sitter and her dad and her
cousins in New York and
the doggy she'd wished for
but didn't have yet and her
old school and the new one,
her kindergarten, and the
teacher who, Sally said in
a thin voice, between noisy
breaths, is - nice, sort of.
She missed her pink rain-
boots and her high bed and
the ice cream she couldn't
finish and her mom
whom she didn't mention and
the pony at Turtle Back Zoo.
After we'd whispered the list and
I sang the old songs: My Little
Nut Tree, Loola Loola Bye-Bye,
and she hugged Fishie, she fell into
the long night.
POETRY. The Doctor Said. JUDITH PINE BOBE.
THE DOCTOR SAID
I would
DIE
If I didn’t stop
smoking
that cigarette
trailing smoke
across my morning mug
of Jamaica Blue Mountain
that exotic Gauloise
in its chic French blue pack
that black tabac held
in my slender silver holder
at intermission
or at a tiny marble table
while sipping chilled white wine
from a glistening crystal stem
that Salem
dangling
ashes
over the
Italian
blue and white
Carpano
ashtray
my deeply inhaled
oval Regent
while listening
to
Mozart’s A Minor Sonata
Monk’s Epistrophy
Frank Sinatra
in the wee small hours
the Benson & Hedges
snaking
tendrils
of
sultry
smoke
after
having sex
or
making love
that stale stub
of a Marlboro
snatched
from a crowded ashtray
at 3 in the morning
He said
“YOU WILL DIE”
if I smoked
the cigarette
bought at the
all-night deli
on Broadway
or the one
from the Gem Spa
on St. Marks
or the one
picked out
of the carton
from the North Carolina
truck stop
the doctor said
“YOU WILL DIE AND TURN YOUR CHILD INTO AN ORPHAN”
SO
I
QUIT
***
In addition to a lifelong love affair with words, Judith Pine Bobé has worked in theatre, dance, music, radio and television and in an assortment of related areas.Her piece,"Sideffects," created especially for The Inner City Theatre and Dance Ensemble, was performed in both New Jersey and New York. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Lips and the Ever Dancing Muse and she has been a featured poet at many metro-area venues, including the Lower East Side Arts Festival and the New Years Day Poetry Marathon at CBGB. She has recently written the liner notes for "All About Love," a jazz vocalist's CD, which will be released in the fall of 2007.She has been a consultant to the New York State Council on the Arts and a grants panelist for the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Her e-mail address is: jpinebobe@comcast.net.
I would
DIE
If I didn’t stop
smoking
that cigarette
trailing smoke
across my morning mug
of Jamaica Blue Mountain
that exotic Gauloise
in its chic French blue pack
that black tabac held
in my slender silver holder
at intermission
or at a tiny marble table
while sipping chilled white wine
from a glistening crystal stem
that Salem
dangling
ashes
over the
Italian
blue and white
Carpano
ashtray
my deeply inhaled
oval Regent
while listening
to
Mozart’s A Minor Sonata
Monk’s Epistrophy
Frank Sinatra
in the wee small hours
the Benson & Hedges
snaking
tendrils
of
sultry
smoke
after
having sex
or
making love
that stale stub
of a Marlboro
snatched
from a crowded ashtray
at 3 in the morning
He said
“YOU WILL DIE”
if I smoked
the cigarette
bought at the
all-night deli
on Broadway
or the one
from the Gem Spa
on St. Marks
or the one
picked out
of the carton
from the North Carolina
truck stop
the doctor said
“YOU WILL DIE AND TURN YOUR CHILD INTO AN ORPHAN”
SO
I
QUIT
***
In addition to a lifelong love affair with words, Judith Pine Bobé has worked in theatre, dance, music, radio and television and in an assortment of related areas.Her piece,"Sideffects," created especially for The Inner City Theatre and Dance Ensemble, was performed in both New Jersey and New York. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Lips and the Ever Dancing Muse and she has been a featured poet at many metro-area venues, including the Lower East Side Arts Festival and the New Years Day Poetry Marathon at CBGB. She has recently written the liner notes for "All About Love," a jazz vocalist's CD, which will be released in the fall of 2007.She has been a consultant to the New York State Council on the Arts and a grants panelist for the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Her e-mail address is: jpinebobe@comcast.net.
POETRY. After Winters Thaw. MARION GOLDSTEIN.
“…our souls remain hovering over the places where we once enjoyed ourselves” Kahil Gibran
After winters thaw it is the bubbling sound
drawing me up the steep slope
that patch of mountain I call my own
surely as if I drove a flag into the ground
and staked a claim. I’ve heard the trees
playing the wind, witnessed forsythia
praying on their knees. I have scythed a path
hurled stones, dislodged boulders
with a great grunt and a crow-bar
the way my father taught me
that summer at the lake
when the birch was still a sapling
and time had yet to carve a map
upon his face, we unhinged stones
from mountain beds, drizzled them down a hill
exploding lilac and clover.
We set rocks where soil was slipping fast
cemented our days into stone
that still retains the summer.
Today ankle deep in muck
that oozes into my sneaker
I am raking winters rot
and discover under wet leaves
a lush patch of strawberries
summer at the lake
and you father
cemented in my bones.
***
Marion Goldstein is a psychotherapist who lives and practices in Montclair NJ . Articles she has written have appeared in several professional journals and she contributed a chapter to Life Guidance through Literature, a text published by the American Library Association. She is an adjunct professor at Caldwell College where she teaches a course in Poetry Therapy.
Her poetry has been published in several literary journals. Her chapbook Blue Prints was published by The New School Chapbook series. Her chapbook Psalms For The Cosmos was published by Pudding House Press and most recently several of her poems have appeared in Preaching The Poetry of The Gospels and Science as Sacred Metaphor published by The Liturgical Press. She is currently at work on a memoir, Hard to Place: A Spiritual Journey through Adoption. Her e-mail address is miggold@aol.com.
After winters thaw it is the bubbling sound
drawing me up the steep slope
that patch of mountain I call my own
surely as if I drove a flag into the ground
and staked a claim. I’ve heard the trees
playing the wind, witnessed forsythia
praying on their knees. I have scythed a path
hurled stones, dislodged boulders
with a great grunt and a crow-bar
the way my father taught me
that summer at the lake
when the birch was still a sapling
and time had yet to carve a map
upon his face, we unhinged stones
from mountain beds, drizzled them down a hill
exploding lilac and clover.
We set rocks where soil was slipping fast
cemented our days into stone
that still retains the summer.
Today ankle deep in muck
that oozes into my sneaker
I am raking winters rot
and discover under wet leaves
a lush patch of strawberries
summer at the lake
and you father
cemented in my bones.
***
Marion Goldstein is a psychotherapist who lives and practices in Montclair NJ . Articles she has written have appeared in several professional journals and she contributed a chapter to Life Guidance through Literature, a text published by the American Library Association. She is an adjunct professor at Caldwell College where she teaches a course in Poetry Therapy.
Her poetry has been published in several literary journals. Her chapbook Blue Prints was published by The New School Chapbook series. Her chapbook Psalms For The Cosmos was published by Pudding House Press and most recently several of her poems have appeared in Preaching The Poetry of The Gospels and Science as Sacred Metaphor published by The Liturgical Press. She is currently at work on a memoir, Hard to Place: A Spiritual Journey through Adoption. Her e-mail address is miggold@aol.com.
POETRY. Breakdown at the A & P. DENISE RUE.
Some days the market is just a market.
The oranges mounded in their wooden bin don’t threaten.
The trout sacrificed on its bed of ice doesn’t menace.
Even the man who talks to himself while he piggybacks the carts
seems part of the natural order.
But some days the shopping cart’s wheels shimmy and tremble
and you can hear cream curdling in its carton. You stalk the aisles
and wonder about the other women who push their cages before them.
What is the secret of their self-containment?
This one forages, this one pecks.
This one stalks the bloody slabs of beef.
This one gloves her manicured hand in plastic, pounces
on the perfect head of Romaine.
Don’t any of these women want to thrust their carts at juggernaut speed
into that precarious pyramid of oranges? Doesn’t anyone want to shred the skulless brains of cabbages, strew the aisle with slaw? Are you the only one
who desires the boy behind the fish counter, longs
to drag him behind the churning lobster tank, lick the oily scales from his apron?
Fluorescent lights wince, Muzak oozes through the sieved ceiling
as you lie down on a bed of turnips and bok choy,
open your throat like the stunned turkeys in deep freeze
and wait for the automatic vegetable mister
to put you out of your misery.
***
Denise Rue's poems have been published in Poet Lore, Paterson Literary Review, Inkwell, Alimentum and Miller's Pond, among other literary journals. She received her MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College in 2003 and has taught poetry in schools, nursing homes and a women's prison. She is a two-time finalist in the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Contest and was the 2005 Judson Jerome Poetry Scholarship recipient to attend the Antioch Writer's Conference. She works as a clinical hypnotherapist and is the owner of Wellspring Clinical Hypnosis in Clifton.
The oranges mounded in their wooden bin don’t threaten.
The trout sacrificed on its bed of ice doesn’t menace.
Even the man who talks to himself while he piggybacks the carts
seems part of the natural order.
But some days the shopping cart’s wheels shimmy and tremble
and you can hear cream curdling in its carton. You stalk the aisles
and wonder about the other women who push their cages before them.
What is the secret of their self-containment?
This one forages, this one pecks.
This one stalks the bloody slabs of beef.
This one gloves her manicured hand in plastic, pounces
on the perfect head of Romaine.
Don’t any of these women want to thrust their carts at juggernaut speed
into that precarious pyramid of oranges? Doesn’t anyone want to shred the skulless brains of cabbages, strew the aisle with slaw? Are you the only one
who desires the boy behind the fish counter, longs
to drag him behind the churning lobster tank, lick the oily scales from his apron?
Fluorescent lights wince, Muzak oozes through the sieved ceiling
as you lie down on a bed of turnips and bok choy,
open your throat like the stunned turkeys in deep freeze
and wait for the automatic vegetable mister
to put you out of your misery.
***
Denise Rue's poems have been published in Poet Lore, Paterson Literary Review, Inkwell, Alimentum and Miller's Pond, among other literary journals. She received her MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College in 2003 and has taught poetry in schools, nursing homes and a women's prison. She is a two-time finalist in the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Contest and was the 2005 Judson Jerome Poetry Scholarship recipient to attend the Antioch Writer's Conference. She works as a clinical hypnotherapist and is the owner of Wellspring Clinical Hypnosis in Clifton.
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