GUESTS OF CITY COLLEGE

 
YOU CAN’T OUTRUN YOUR BLOOD STORY 
 
honey 
it be a tornado  
tossing you to  
exile in a cold  
cold country 
of disconnected bodies 
or maybe more like  
poison ivy 
festering each life 
into the family disease 
before we even 
get to know ourselves  
real good 
where comes 
this bitterness in 
the blood 
a memory forgetting itself 
becoming quicksand  
turning into a bilious 
stream 
that carried us here 
into this prison of black 
a small cage 
for a massive idea 
a splinter of 
the cosmos 
forgotten under clay 
would the externals even  
recognize us 
today 
in these hideous forms? 
forgetful  
fearful 
greedy 
waiting to die  
passing the time  
as someone’s little helper 
the body remembers 

though we forget 
and we pay the price 
of lives 
built on hubris  
recoil in the whiplash 
of carelessness  
because we thought 
being regal 
would be enough 
to protect us from 
the cunning of wolves 
their coins 
trinkets  
and contracts 
that always take back 
dress up the big nothing  
they give 
and we stand in this 
amnesia 
which is so cruel  
in its consistency 
as to only let us 
remember  
that we have definitely  
forgotten  
 

Keisha-Gaye Anderson 
Alumna

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FOURTEEN LINES IN WHITE & BLUE 
 
While the flat as dishware 
clouds are thinning—and 
distance has them far off 
so they seem—caught 
between being all there and 
fading—I start to see them 
more like puffs of cream 
going on and off—on a set 
during movie-making time 
at an old but familiar—motion 
picture studio. Perhaps, adrift, 
and feeling not part of much 
(if clouds can somehow perceive 
abandonment), then so be it. 
 

Robert Burr 
Alumnus

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SEND ME AN ANGEL

(inspired by Klaus Meine and Rudolf Schenker of the Scorpions) 
 

wisdom comes with maturity   but it’s hard to be wise

when your nation caters to avarice and ignorance

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you never saw the storm seize the new year

& like the government   life shuts down for struggle to thrive

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anxiety doesn’t believe in social distancing

sends cryptic messages between you and your mask

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you did your best   prayed for that miracle

that fell prey to lies & deceit

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open your eyes    your angel left for another zoom call

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stay locked in your quarantine

watch gray feathers   etched in red   blow off the fire escape

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Patricia Carragon

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AND I WAS GRIPPED // BY THAT DEADLY PHANTOM  
 
It’s not so much the end of an era 
as it is the era of the end. 
 
Even beginnings take on the air 
of a store closing in ten minutes.  
 
A ghost is born every ten minutes.  
A ghost is born to live forever.  
 
It’s not so much the end as The End. 
It’s a still from a moving picture, 
 
the kind of movie where nobody moves  
& everything changes. A ghost ghosts  
 
the hosts of a party because it knows 
just how this never ending party ends.   
 
A ghost thinks it’s funny to rhyme womb 
with tomb, as if no one ever has.  
 
A ghost becomes the Phantom of the Op-Ed, 
& wears the half-mask called America.  
 
(Don’t misunderstand, it’s not personal: 
the employees just want to go home.)  
 
A ghost is here to hold your living hand 
to its cold breast, & teach you how to sing.   
 

Gregory Crosby 
Alumnus 

 
FREE FREEDOM FREE 
 
Bleeding through my soul 
wounded in my spirit 
while breathing through 
broken bones, 
I am left only with hope. 

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Free Freedom Free  
 
My soul knows bondage, 
my spirit has endured… 
now, my bones roar—  
 
  Free Freedom Free 
 
When I am gone, let my bones 
be a pillar of strength,  
my soul a river of determination,  
my spirit the emblem of courage. 
 
  Free Freedom Free 
 

Albert Dépas  
Alumnus

 
GHAZAL FOR THE ENDLESS DAZE/DAYS  
(a pandemic poem for Nicholas) 
 
our teen walks in circles around our new york apartment, 
his two mamas circle round him as nights turn into days 
 
his brilliant black boy mind does not know how to process 
sadness, fear, and circumference of this endless daze 
 
we try our best to shelter him as we “shelter-in”  
we mamas, who have lost track of days 
 
love is the only piece that fits here, 
still, we wonder aloud, how many more days? 
 
we mamas can’t help but worry about our son, 
especially when his eyes say, Mama, i’m lost in a daze  
 

JP Howard 
Alumna

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NOCTURNE  
 
I’ll never be ready for nevermore, 
windless soundless take-me, creeping jackal, 
stations of annihilation, nature’s way.  
     
Shiver horror harrows nightly  
endlessly the end the end 
and after that no after-that. 
 
Words rattle many years, words, words 
in nervous tenses panicked bow to me, 
coming in a final but-when, 
 
in a final finale finally not free 
knelling endless no after no  
after after’s afterwards. 
 
Oblivion nods, not as long  
and countless freefall, but as closing call:  
ready or not, come to me, music-of-the-darkness.  
 

Marc Jampole

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ON DEDICATING THE ELAINE MASSACRE MEMORIAL 
Arguably, the most significant attack against African-Americans in our country's history, the Elaine Race Massacre, which occurred in rural southeast Arkansas in 1919 along the Mississippi River Delta, was hidden from American consciousness for a hundred years. A permanent, physical memorial to the Massacre was dedicated on September 29, 2019 for the centennial; the poet and writer, J. Chester Johnson, who served as co-chair of the memorial committee, composed this original poem, which he read at the dedication.  
 
They will end; all of them will end: 
Words to flare a conflagration. 
 
They will end; all of them will end: 
The plots setting hue against hue. 
Yes, they will end. 

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But time and the river shall 
Never end; for they begin 
To begin, again and over again, 
As time and the river wash 
Through the land, and over  
Its dreams, schemes, 
And lauded and unlauded past. 
 
We’ve told our stories here 
While others listened,  
Thinking mainly of their own: 
Of those who died killing, 
Or of those who found 
No finding of an escape  
From onslaught upon onslaught. 
 
Now, we gaze on the Memorial, 
Which tells of days  
That went unclaimed, 
Which tells things a hundred years 
Of the Elaine Race Massacre 
Did not care to hear: that  
All history is a struggle  
Between what we must end  
And what we must begin; 
 
As time and the river ever 
Flow between now and then 
And delay for neither those 
We honor here nor those 
Who have or will come here.           
       
Of time and the river, 
Beckoning no escape, 
Leaves no choice: 
So, we shall no longer wait 
For more light that we may 
Better see light, nor wait 
For other dreams that we 
May better inspire dreams.           
 

J. Chester Johnson

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DEBUSSY 
 
The shrink wrap comes off easily, 
my nails sliding down the seam 
as the smell of German vinyl slowly 
seeps through the plastic sleeve  
and I hold it up to my nose,  
industrial yet slightly sweet. 
 
It’s classic, this; classical.  People call 
the yellow label The Yellow Label rather than 
its name, or initials DG or DGG; even then 
something’s lost in the translation. 
 
Pressing the disc over and down onto 
the spindle is an erotic act, the prelude to  
Preludes to come, a very French move, 
even though its source is Hanover, leads one 
to remember the American Southwest, 
its ancestors played with the sharp scrawl  
of a cactus needle, though now we play 
with diamonds and sapphires. 
 
The thorn gently lowers onto the vinyl 
and, because it is old, leaves a trace  
of heavy white concentric circles. 
Has the alchemy of the piano transformed 
plastic into angel, dancing these circles 
until clouds of weather rain down song. 
 

Steve Koenig

 
CONTAGION 
  
We keep to the newly prescribed  
physical distancing, when on 
store lines; survival purchases  
in our blue-gloved hands. 
  
Floating above our masks, our eyes  
give us away.  Every expression  

of doubt or fear becomes a tome  
we all read and feel.  We look tough 
  
as eggshells, six feet apart, twelve  
to a box we dare not drop.  Time  
slows to an intravenous  
drip.  Our eyes bear so much, floating  
  
hope above our masks and this tide 
of contagion raging all around our lifeboat. 
 

Richard Levine 
Alumnus

 
NOVEMBER 9 
 
Sweetness, I Was Only Joking 
When I Said: you’d love me if I 
were a Morrissey t-shirt slapped 
against your sweaty body 
 
like Hand in Glove 
Outrageous And Free 
Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This 
One Before: 
 
I’m So Busy, 
Really Busy, 
Busy, Busy. 
I know I haven’t earned it yet, baby: 
 
These Things Take Time 
but I can Oscillate Widly, 
I can Reel Around your Fountain 
with A Rush And A Push 
 
And Is it Really So Strange, Sweetness? 
You were Only Joking When you said, 
You’d Smash Every Tooth in My Head, 
but What Difference Does It Make? 
 
I’m Still Ill, sweetness, 

and You’ve Got Everything 
Now. I’m just a Girlfriend In A 
Coma dreaming of a Boy With 
 
The Thorn In His Side, while drifting 
by dragonfly express, one way, 
down a landless stream of Pretty 
Girls Make Graves. 
 

Hiram Lorenzen 
Alumnus

 
ESCAPE                                         
 
it’s almost early summer tonight  
sweet breezes slip thru open windows  
and, forgetting covid-19 for a while, you are 
free to love everything again 
 
the thing is the streets that supposedly  
belong to you this winter are privately,  
dark, tempting and risky 
 
though, in the the end it’s his sour breath,`  
that leaps in front, while you maneuver   
your boots thru slogs of muddy grass,  
 
hoping to cross onto dry concrete 
 

Ellen Windy Lytle

 
CORONA: 5.1.20: 3:04 PM 
 
not a plane in sight 
says the older man 
in long european army green trench- 
coat, pink face mask-- 
& he's right--morning cloudy 
on the pier-- sky quiet 
as when henrik hudson 
must have sailed up this river-- 

and as lady liberty rises from 
the mist, i'm thinking how 
clear the air must have been 
when my grandparents arrive-- 
and how i will miss 
this      piece 
 

Eve Packer

 
DEAR BLACK MAN 
 
Dear Black Man  
 
Truth is, my father is a black man 
And his father was a black man 
And his father was black man 
And his father was black man 
That was torn from a black man the day that the  
colonizers came and made him a slave  
A moment that his life would forever be changed  
Yet more than 400 years later we still feel his pain  
and must chant #sayhisname in protests so that  
the unjust death of a black man does not go in  
vain  
 
Dear Black Man  
 
Tears form in my eyes as I write that I am sorry  
for what this world has done to you 
I am sorry you have been exploited for your servitude  
I am sorry that every day you have had to put up a fight 
to show that you matter yesterday, today, and tonight  
I am sorry that you have been lynched and killed,  
dying a sad death while your killers feel no guilt 
I am sorry that we were not there to protect you  
because even if we were present the system had 
already failed to  
 
Dear Black Man  
 
I am not sorry that your skin radiates a melanin glow  
that only you can have 

I am not sorry that the world envies your strength,  
power and courage that has kept your race from  
extinction throughout the past 
I am not sorry that in your veins flow the blood of  
your ancestors who escaped bondage without 
looking back 
Hoping that you would be born into freedom  
with your basic human rights being something you  
would never lack 
I am not sorry for the uprising to come as many  
black men have died at the unjust use of a badge and a gun  
 
Dear Black Man  
 
We ask God for guidance as we fight for our  
rights in these terrible dark times 
because black man you are loved now and forever  
and even though they try, do not let them take your light  
Because despite it all, We love you black man 
and I swear to do my best to show that it is with you that I stand 
And to my beautiful black women you matter too,  
but right now in this very moment my black men,  
this message is for you.  
 

Akaysha Palmer

 
QU’EST-CE QUE C’EST DE NOUS? 
after Frank O’Hara 
 
Likewise nonplussed into plainness 
beauty laughs to itself, attending bruise 
as angles come unfractured into more bits or less.  
 
To sight read flurries: a rescuing gesture –   
pressed to the polyp – it lemons us blind    
with running purrs and snorts. 
 
Embracing, mwa, the hour agrees       
to chasten, to traipse, to calm its tease     
of silken measure, dire beside a cry  
 
of truce or atrocity. We court the mundane 

from pulse to pulp, homely, fury bound     
halfway between fickle rescue and arrest. 
 

Jaclyn Piudik 
Alumna

 
THE MARRIAGE OF BLACK HOLES AND SNOWFLAKES 
 
How can I know if snowflakes sense their own beauty? 
When they melt onto palms, do they marry the fortune of all? 
Are the fate lines visible on the candy-striped lip of a black hole? 
Is each black hole a giant toilet at the center of every galaxy? 
Will they flush away the universe? 
Do they hold the regrets of our ancestors? 
Who will name the black holes? 
Would a snowflake melt in a black hole? 
 

Tamra Plotnick 
Alumna

 
“CARVE AN ELEPHANT.  TAKE AWAY ALL THAT’S NOT ELEPHANT.” 
 
Lucie Brock-Broido wore her hair down her back 
like Tenniel’s Alice in Wonderland.  Smoking, she said: 
“Jorie and I are girls.”  Tuxedo shirt, cowboy boots. 
A mini-skirted suit.  Said, “Don’t turn the page 
on a poem.  It’s an egg with horses in it.” 
 
Quoted Watson to Hopkins: “You must strike to the terrible 
crystal.”  A poem “glitters” like rose quartz. 
Quoted also Billy Collins: “A poem is a memory 
of something that never happened.” 
 
Wallace Stevens is her familiar, sits at her elbow 
like a marmalade cat when she writes. She liked 
“I See My Mother as a Fish” but could never have 
guessed that it was I who had written it. 
 
“Who is speaking to whom, through which mask?” 
She wasn’t keen on our “plucking the elemental 
strings of Jungian consciousness.” 

Her example of a perfect line, written by a student: 
“All summer long I longed to be a jellyfish.” 
 

Stephanie Rauschenbusch

 
MAN DOWN 
  
I hear someone screaming, 
and I see a man running and waving his arms. 
He might be an Asian man, 
but I can’t tell because his hat hides his face 
and his shouts are not in any language. 
 
I go on my way a couple of blocks 
and see a mass of clothes in the street,  
The pile of laundry is the same man I just saw, 
but he is motionless and quiet now. 
He might be sick. 
 
I walk a block and flag a police car 
and give directions to the fallen man. 
The driver races away, turns a corner, 
and never comes back 
(I guess he misunderstood me). 
So I flag another police vehicle. 
“There’s a man lying in the street,” I say, 
“He is right there. Do you see?”  
I point to the exact spot where anyone can see 
a shapeless figure crumpled on the street.

 

Thad Rutkowski

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COSI FAN TUTTE  
When worldly chaos overwhelms 
When Russia choreographs democracy’s demise  
A plague jumps from continent to continent  
Lands in my Lombardia walled garden 
as if paper masks protect against Corona  

Thank you Mozart, for the divine distraction 
Of plotting lovers — men, as usual, orchestrating games  
Casting plots to test fidelity 
As if a one-night stand equals mortal sin 
And women, as usual, cast as victim and perpertrator  
Save your fairy tales for the kids 
Everlasting love can bend to transgression 
In twenty-four hours, an election can be stolen 
A virus can transmit 
A heart can break, mend and cease to beat 
There are no lessons you will be sorry to learn 
May no woman ever die of love 
Cosi fan tutte  
 

Ilka Scobie

 
HORSE GALLOPING ON RIGHT FOOT  
response to a sculpture by Edgar Degas 
  
The horse’s tail flares 
at the instant its right  
back leg hits the turf,  
and front leg shoots out. 
  
Legs free of their plinth 
lead onward, and if other 
sculptures broke from their  
bronze shells and bolted  
  
from these display cases, 
their four hoof beats 
would land as firecrackers:  
left hind, right hind,  
  
left front, right front, 
with burnished flanks 
propelling them as if remnants  
of their maker still squeezed  
  
their sinews, and the waxy 
streaks of finger pressed  
plastiline across the horse’s  

left shank coaxed them to soar. 
  
Extensor muscles pulse  
as layered dabs. Smudges  
define the ribs and withers,  
and two dimples say eyes. 
  
With ears tipping forward,  
and nostrils widening, 
the maquettes move 
because their skeletons 
  
bent, snipped, knotted,  
and coiled metal  
forms, figures hardwired  
for eternal galloping. 
 

Melinda Thomsen 
Alumna

 
UNEXPECTED MELODY 
 
It is different, 
Stretched into a dream  
Where waking is uncertain. 
A kite broke the silence. 
And a chocolate lab noticed, looking up as she 
ran in barking circles, 
while colors wind-danced 
high above apartments.  
Another day we were startled by the melody 
of an ice cream truck, 
incongruous for its normality. 
We ate our vanilla cones 
On another Mary Poppin’s day.  
Spring arrived: 
Leafing trees, 
Planted flowers, 
City birdsong. 
 

Mason Trent

 
 
THE IMPOSSIBLE PAGE 
  
She’s peeved. My wee granddaughter’s 
so transparent. Jealousy registers 
as saucer eyes hogging the camera, 
blocking out her little sister. 
Her petulance at not getting a treat 
is classic. Knocking over the tower. 
  
The page too can be a terror—holding 
its breath. Capricious. Demanding.  
Not sharing toys. I’ve seen you 
like this before, disguised as a star. 
Ah, Venus. Take me away. Show me 

where to aim. Courage let me wear. 
  
Let’s go to the pier and stare down time. 
The sun is not the only thing burning. 
 

Jeffrey Cyphers Wright

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