January Poem of the Month – Dylan C. Gailey

Afternoon Walks in Winter

Was it because the days are short
and meaningful and the nights will
be spent fitful with the scent
of burnt pallets that I am reminded
of your christening?

Or was it when I realized the breathe I held
would never pass between yours lips in time
and because the riverbed cannot
remember the cooling crush of rain
that I was left hesitant to ask.

Do the winds from the south speak more slowly to you?
Are birds aware they migrate in symbols of lesser or
greater degrees? How does the sparrow let you
touch her in death? I wasn’t certain I should ask;
you are after all only three.

Dylan C. Gailey‘s “Afternoon Walks in Winter” is her
second poem featured through WAW’s Poem of the Month.
She is also a student and teacher of Kundalini Yoga.

December Poem of the Month — Lory Bedekian

Desk

When the floods come
I swim to it.

From the stew
of water, my arms

loop and wheel, frantic
for that large mahogany slab.

Parachutes of waves
all around, I barely keep

afloat. This tsunami,
this ocean is full of debris.

I must have wandered
from shore again.

I glide and finally reach
its chipped edges. Glorious

boards and drawers,
my rectangular lifeboat:

I jump on its strong back,
lie down, breathe

and say, Thank you.
The rocking settles.

I say listen, there’s so much
to tell, so much I’ve seen

in my wanderings.
I have been swimming for days.

Lory Bedikian’s The Book of Lamenting was awarded the 2010 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. She earned her MFA in Poetry from the University of Oregon and teaches poetry workshops.

November Poem of the Month — Elizabeth Knapp

The Burning Bush

For weeks, I searched for a sign that it was over—
my rage or mourning, whichever came first.

I dug holes in the ground and covered the bulbs
with mulch. Then I waited. If something grew there,

I’d know I’d been granted. But earth doesn’t respond
like that; there’s nothing human in its language.

Words came to me, but they seemed the symptom
of something deeper. And then I saw it: blue-red

in the October sun, the color of a pomegranate
seed when light passes through it, or the amber-red

of a young Arbois, honey-red, yet bitter. It lit
the yard with the intensity of a dream, only I knew

its leaves weren’t burning. Neither god nor prophet
it spoke to me, but what it meant I couldn’t decode.

Reader, there are those who would say
I shouldn’t address you directly, but this is not

that kind of poem—Frostian, dark, with a touch
of sardonic humor. Without you, I speak to the chasm.

Sublime, indifferent, the bush taunted me, its fire-
flecked voices I couldn’t answer, its quivering vowels

slaking off heat. How was I to translate? I could say
it represented the untenable, the ineffable,

all that I had faltered or failed in (this gift to you,
my raspy hunger, the miniature graves I dug

in the hope for flower, my sad little conscience
pulling up weeds), but that would be untrue. Listen:

It’s nearly winter and the bush is still burning.
In rage or mourning, I have failed you.

Elizabeth Knapp is the author of The Spite House (C&R Press, 2011), winner of the 2010 De Novo Prize for Poetry. The recipient of the 2007 Discovered Voices Award from Iron Horse Literary Review, she has published poems in Best New Poets 2007, The Massachusetts Review, The Mid-American Review, Barrow Street, and many other journals. She holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and a PhD from Western Michigan University and is currently Assistant Professor of English at Hood College in Frederick, Maryland, where she lives with her husband and son.

October Poem of the Month – Sue Lawler

empty silhouettes

the wind whips around skyscraper exteriors
blowing trash and people
as I laugh at secretary types
holding down skirts, hair
and filmy useless overwraps

I have thermal underwear on
underneath my jeans
a leather jacket and a ponytail

there’s a graffiti artist
unknown to me
who has been spray painting
empty silhouettes
(the kind police mark corpses with)
on freeway overpasses
and the sides of earthquake dilapidated buildings
with small sayings inside
like LOST ANGELES
under a bridge that was only last summer
a city-sponsored homeless encampment

the cold wind penetrates thin unnatural polyester
like a dull needle through scar tissued vein
and I feel too lucky
watching an old man at the bus station
as he paces back and forth unable to stay warm

I have thermal underwear on
gloves and a leather jacket

there is a graffiti artist
madly spray painting
empty silhouettes
with timely messages
in ugly places
for the unwanted of LA

I wait for my name to appear

Sue Lawler barely graduated from Continuation High School and has dabbled in higher education by dropping out of three different Community Colleges. Sue was a member of Poets In Distress. In her free time, Sue likes to get into road rage traffic altercations, monitor the parking situation on her street, call the cops on loud parties, look for gainful employment and alienate friends and acquaintances both new and old. This poem first appeared in Invocation LA: Urban Multicultural Poetry.

September Poem of the Month – Mark Maslow

IT RAINED TONIGHT

It rained tonight
at angles in the wind
I’d thought of you before it started
thought about the storms we’d seen roll in

I thought about our dinner
thunderheads driving us back
deeper under cover on the jewel’s deck

I thought about the eastern road
we took in the dark time
where the rain’s end was our end

and then it rained tonight
at angles in the wind under the lights
and I thought of the night
when the lights went out
and we sat on this benchseat
of a car with no wheels
defiant, together, alone

and I thought of you in your sundress
soaked and shivering
and I missed you

I stood and danced and held my arms up
to the rain
as it tapped on my forehead
like wet kisses
in the night

Mark Maslow has been writing and performing poetry since 1991. He was the host of the Ruta Maya Poetry Open Mic in Austin, Texas from 1998 – 2008. He currently lives and works in The Netherlands.

August Poem of the Month – Elaina M. Ellis

TORCHED SONNET

Jealousy (that old peculiar ghost) leans
bones against the bar: mahogany,
an obtuse door from Old Hotel. She sings
her torch song; loosens robe. Tears negligee.

She moans a dirty moan: thick, filthy bathtub
ring. Her collarbone circles the room, sways
brooms and mops in ill-fit shoes. We hiccup,
One more round!
She ropes, You monsters! Say

‘Please’ — spools ribbons from our roughed-up lips,
then gestures with her nose, a sharpened spoon.
We’re cut! All praying muddy drinks, palms ripped.
She mounts the grand piano. We plead, Croon

another nightmare, Mother Mean! She leers.
He wants her more than you. Marry your fears.

Elaina M. Ellis full-time writes, teaches, and produces poetry in Seattle. She is the founder of TumbleMe Productions, a vehicle for multi-media artistic collaborations. She received a Masters in Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles in 2011. Elaina’s first book, Write About an Empty Birdcage, was recently released by Write Bloody Publishing, and can be purchased here: http://writebloody.com/store/index.html.

July 2011 Poem of the Month – Yvonne M. Estrada

IF YOU GO

Take the moon with you;
she’s a good singer and knows
all the night songs.

She’s an adaptable travel companion;
she can be a fishhook if you’re hungry
or a place to hang your keys or jacket.

If you wake because you hear noises at night,
she can be a sharp fang that devours monsters,
roots them from dark corners with precise beams.

She can play tricks too; she knows how
to make herself a hatched spider’s egg,
and all the stars run out in every direction.

Take the moon because, if you go,
nothing, not even she, will be beautiful
to me anymore.

Yvonne M. Estrada has published in Emerging Urban Poets Workshop Anthology (vols. 1-3), …and in fact there was no ceiling fan, San Gabriel Valley Quarterly, Catena, Verse Wisconsin and Pulse Magazine. You can see her read her work on the GuerrillaReads.com website (she’s #8).

June 2011 Poem of the Month — Steven Fleet

QUESTIONS

Are you a path
or are you a road

Are you the spark
or do you explode

Are you the wheel
or are you the carriage

Are you the temple
or are you the marriage

Are you the wind
or are you the wing

Are you the thought
or are you the thing

Are you the cause
or are you the motion

Are you the wave
or are you the ocean

Steven Fleet describes himself: “A transplant from the American Orient, I have a BFA from University of Arizona. I try to find my daily zen by making a living working with my hands. I use poetry to explore metaphysics, the nature of Self/God, the resonance of the natural world, Eastern thought, and the sacred place of Man in the cosmic order.”

You can download this poem in pdf version at http://www.writersatwork.com/poem11/june11.html.

May 2011 Poem of the Month – Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo

Ghazal of the Traffic

The sky blues yellow like smokers’ teeth tar in the city.
Smokers are made to take notice outside bars in the city.

The clutch, brake, gas, repeat rhythm numbs my skull.
Headaches move slow, jammed, like cars in the city.

I want to dip my toes in sand and lay on the water.
It’s hard to stay focused when temperatures soar in the city.

On a corner a child sells ripe mangos, yellow and green.
She looks familiar, but I have traveled too far in the city.

A hipster girl draped in vintage wails down Hollywood Blvd.
Countless are the broken dreams and scars in the city.

Radio gossip: coke-filled-photos, anorexia, Anna Nicole.
We keep our famous in air-punched-holed jars in the city.

The day turns to night’s sky like deep waters turn secrets,
and sometimes I ask, What if we saw stars above the city?

Speakers spill with Mariachi crooning a flowery Xochinero.
Tonight, home is a tear-dropped Mexican guitar in the city.

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo is a poet, essayist, and native Angelino. She is a literary curator for Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center, was nominated for a 2009 Pushcart Award, and is co-founding editor of The Splinter Generation. Her work has been published in The Los Angeles Review, PALABRA, and The Umbrella Journal. You can check out her blog on immigration at xochitjulisa.blogspot.com.

You can download this poem in pdf version at http://www.writersatwork.com/poem11/Poems11/mayPoem11.pdf.

New feature on WAW Blog!

For several years, Writers At Work has featured a Poem of the Month on our website. We’re going to start posting the poem on this blog each month as well. We invite you to write your own poem in response and post it to the Comments section.

We’re interested in the idea that poems are in dialogue with other poems, sometimes intentionally and sometimes not, so how do the poems we choose speak to you? Exceptional poems you post here may be chosen to be featured as future Poems of the Month.

You are also welcome to just comment on the poems we post. But we’d really love to see your poems!