GUESTS OF CITY COLLEGE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

YOU ARE HERE

 

In Loving Memory of Bishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu

 

If your services had been held

In The Cathedral of St. John The Divine in Harlem

My sister could have been the verger

The Ailey dancers might have performed

“I’ve Been Buked and I’ve Been Scorned” from Revelations

The cockles of our American hearts

Surely would have been warmed

 

But you were laid to rest

In your homeland

A single white flower atop the small pine box

Shaped like Jimmy Baldwin’s

 

The pandemic cut the numbers

Masked the mourners

Spaced the seating

But you were there

Smiling from that big picture

Charismatic conscience

Reflecting double rainbows 

On a black sand beach

Toe tapping and fist curling with the choirs 

Instructing us to love and forgive

Make our GPS a moral compass

Maintain grace with grit

Check bitterness in the breezeway

Hate in the heliport

Greed in the garden

Make human decency a destination

You did not make it to 2022

Mpilo

Mama Leah’s love

Mandela’s friend

 

We thank you

We miss you Baba

But we will not say goodbye

 

You are here

You are brave

You are beautiful

 

Prophet

Preacher

Pray-er

 

Nkosi Sikelel’i Afrika

God Bless Africa

 

Amandla!

 

Jeanette Adams 

 

SUMMER & I 

 

I love the summer nights.
The sky fills with stars and the moon.
Walking in a soft breeze, getting my mind clear.
Morning walk and a cup of coffee.
Sometimes the sun and the moon both come and we have a good talk.
The summer rain is funny—most of the time it will chase you home from the street only for a minute or so,
it is very lazy.
And other times, it will not stop crying,
such a baby.
But I enjoy it mostly than, sitting in my veranda, and drinking tea.
Someone's sorrow becomes another one’s happiness.
Summer and I, we get along just fine.

 

Zahura Akter 

Alumna

 

LOVE LETTER TO S

 

I knew 

one day I would find you.

The psychic woman told me. 

She read it in my tarot cards

and showed me in my coffee cup

the letter S in your name.

Every S that came to my life shook my heart

every Salman, Saeed, Stewart, ... .

even if they had S in their middle or last names 

like: Samimi, Steinman, Stevens, ... .

But none of them stayed

and I was left by myself. 

It took me a while to realize

the letter S was in my

Self.

 

Maryam S. Alikhani

Alumna

 

COLLOQUY WITH ANDRÉ COMTE-SPONVILLE

 

Hope is a destroyer of happiness, you say.

To live without it, is the ultimate happiness, you say.

 

Hope is an anticipation which denies the real,

obscures the enjoyment of a small success, you say—

 

ie: to dress, to undress, to possess, to progress, 

to embrace with wisdom and awareness, you say.

 

To will, to act, to love with no hope, no dream

is the undeniable ultimate happiness, you say.

 

But, to be anxious, to doubt, to wish the impossible, 

and hope against all hopes, is part of happiness too, I say.

 

So, do what you must, to live sagely, my dear philosopher.

Let me N.A. hope desperately in what will not happen, I say.

 

Nicole Andonov 

Alumna 

 

NO MATTER HOW HARD LIFE GETS

 

No matter how hard life gets,

if we can find a bench

on which to rest

and set our gaze

on flowers and trees

we can get a sense

of peace

and perspective that pain

does not reign over all

our precious days.

If we are privileged to sit

for even minutes here and there,

we can find an escape

from the prison of our minds,

(which we should be so lucky

to have

as our only shackles).

If we can savor these trees

as they burst forth in spring,

with their petals, sweet pink,

against pillowy clouds,

and new grass at our feet —

we can find time to think,

or not think, as we please,

and simply to be…

 

Emily Axelrod

Alumna

​

BEFORE YOU WERE MY CHILD (FOR MICAH)

 

Before you were my child
heaven draped you across my womb.
Your anatomy was copied,
from two imperfect beings
and became a deep crease,
bent in the middle of
a full-size mattress.

 

You were curved like your
grandmother’s back,
as you rolled your sentiments into me,
inhale by exhale, by inhale,
and I exhaled a field of poems
and expressive masterpieces
into your laughter, your eyes,
the birthmark on your bottom.

 

You were a sky then.
Coarse coils of curls and Caribbean roots,
your movements jerked-
like Sunday’s chicken.

 

My “woody”
My “bambino”

 

You were always mine.

 

Before you were my child,
you belonged to your father,
and his father’s philosophy of soundless
performances.
You sat in my womb,
as an open door;
your movement was your only speech.

 

You were the breeze that snuck in
between the strands of my hair,
the thin threads of gray on your daddy’s chest,
a mirage of olive trees
I have always wanted to plant.

 

You were the tears rolling down the
face of your ancestors,
and a meadow of cactuses,
shaped like a guitar,

 

And when you untied yourself
from the cord that held us together,
you traveled
across an overextended passage,
above a beating heart,
smooth and sweet;
a cloud wrapped in a velvety blanket,
pulling on my breast
commanding daybreak…

 

Kay Bell

Alumna 

 

I’M LEARNNG NOTHING THIS NIGHT

 

The magazine on my lap talks
about milk. Tells me that in America,
every farmer lost money on
every cow, every day of every month
of the year. Imagine that? To wake
up and know you’re digging yourself
deeper into a hole you can’t see
out of, even as your hands are wet
with what feeds you. That’s how this
thing is, holding on & losing a little each
moment. I’m whispering an invented
history to myself tonight—because
letting go is the art of living fully
in the world your body creates
when you sleep. Say a prayer for
the insomniacs. They hunger &
demand the impossible. Pray for
the farmers, hands deep in loam—
body’s weight believing what
the mind knows is ruin, they too
want the impossible, so accustomed
to the earth responding when they call.

 

Reginald Dwayne Betts

Featured Guest Poet 

 

SPIRIT OF THE BLUES

 

I once overheard someone say “Black people sure love to sing”

Any of you ever wonder why Black folks love to sing?

Maybe it’s because there’s spirit in song

Spirit be walkin’

Spirit be talkin’ to you

Spirit be riding them notes like Duke Ellington rode the A train

I know cause notesbe running up and down my spine

Rhythm be beating out the time of immortality, like the first heartbeat of man

And when I was severed from the celestial chorus

Baby I swam them natal waters

And climbed down the silver cord into song

Bessie & Sassy Sarah—Dinah & noble Nina pierced this heart

Moaning ‘bout that man that got away

Scatting ‘bout sending in the clowns 

Crooning ‘bout what a difference a day makes

Angering over strange fruit hanging from southern trees 

Blasting the blues Baby—Blues that began long, long ago with a MOAN…

 

Pickin’ cotton in the hot days sun, Oh Lord I’m tired

 

Blasting blues born of tears shed for fathers & sons, uncles & nephews 

Lying in swamps and unmarked graves

Blues born of tears shed over loved ones

Shot by guns that were supposed to protect and serve

Blues born of the weariness of drinking from separate fountains

Entering through back doors

Blues born from moaning over houses & schools, jobs & back pay that got away

Blues born from waiting centuries to see someone like me

In a White House built by black hands

Blues that began with a moan that morphed into Rhythm & Blues,

Gospel, Reggae… Rock & Roll

 

Yeah, Black people sure do love to sing—Why?

Because a song is a prayer and prayer is a song, and that’s what keeps us keepin’ on

We sang our way out of slavery ‘cause singing is our way of tappin’ into the spirit of God

Why do Black people love to sing? To honor the spirit that lies within us ‘cause

 

We got soul and everybody knows that’s alright, whoa it’s alright

 

Why do we love to sing, because we are the people of “soul”

And we must remember who we are

Lest we forget we spirit

And cease to be… 

 

Laura Y. Bowman

 

FOR SMILING, SHE IS

to Ellinor

 

No swift slick kick or salty sarcasm

flies out from her full feisty fins, unfurled.

That’s just not done in her part of the world.

Yet, wry or sly, her voice is well-piped in,

ghostly, albeit, softer than the din.

On the rug, there, comfortably curled 

around her staff waiting for when she twirled

it overhead in her fast free-formed style,

all the other birds pick at her feathers,

the order long ago established, thus.

They travel the world, sisters, brothers

on a blink that takes them mile upon mile,

and are never once seen to make a fuss.

Bob Burr

Alumnus

 

​

ANY KINDA FREE IS FREE

foolish poet

​

dancing

​

with

​

dogs                         tails wagging

​

happy

​

faces           panting                            you carrying

​

one

​

seventy pound                      girl

​

her tail flying

​

your butt

​

shaking

​

tears

​

running down

 

      your face

 

Charles Butler 

 

LIBATION

 

i.

the clementine

somebody left

on the shelf left

of the ivy-covered place

i call my lover

 

was cold

from early spring

or late fall

air

i peeled it

gently

 

easing it in two

like 

a parting of lips 

one left

on the shelf left

of the ivy-covered place

i call my lover

 

one for 

my parting lips

one left

on the shelf left

of the ivy-covered place

i call my lover

one for

my parting lips

cool & sweet

jeweled flesh

stinging juice 

biting acrid skin

 

ii.

somebody left

a rose

there

on the shelf left

of the ivy-covered place

i call my lover

 

each day

i took a petal 

crushed 

it in my pocket 

let it dry

and crumble to

particulates 

 

the clementine

somebody left

is gone

the rose

petals

particulates 

freed from

my pocket

 

stick 

in my lip

balm

so every brush

brings me

back

 

Nemo O. Captain 

 

BABYN YAR IN TEARS

 

Babyn Yar in tears

Nazi soldiers leave death camps

to attack more Jews 

 

Babyn Yar in tears 

child given to another

at Nazi border

 

Babyn Yar in tears 

babushka remembers where

massacre happened 

 

Babyn Yar in tears 

massive grave site dug in Kyiv

makes way for new one

 

Babyn Yar in tears 

Jewish memorial bombed

Holocaust for all

 

Patricia Carragon

 

CINCO DE MAYO: THE SUPPLY CHAIN

 

As cars await Taiwan’s semiconductor chips, 

Taiwan awaits Ukraine’s neon for chips!

Paper and wood mills await lumber, as 

de-forested forests cry, “no, no, Nanette!” 

Fewer trees mean less rain. What if the Hudson

River asks: why should I flow in two directions? 

and turns its back on the city, moving north fast? 

But where to go? Up-river, the displaced live 

with a certain uncertainty as Hamilton and Lion King

roar back, opening Covid curtains. And whether oceans 

are far off or next door in Sunset Park, I’m grateful, 

biking past, for the two-block-long queue of Chinese 

waiting for a meal. One hundred million mouths I can’t see

have no grain, potash, soil—no supply chain.

 

Jan Castro

 

NIGHTINGALE VS. SKYLARK

 

Today is just tomorrow with its clothes off. 

I slid from admiration to envy,

disenchantment to disdain, for a poet  

I don’t know, I’ve never met, but just now

I read his most recent poems, & thought,

Poor bastard. Perhaps someone somewhere 

reads me & thinks the same, someone whose name

I’ll only hear whispered beneath the knell. 

How goes it? It goes well. It went to hell,

but yesterday is just today, naked

under a sheet like a lover (or a corpse). 

We labor, he & I, in the obscure

(though his obscure is more famous than mine).

Song isn’t a tower but a dark well,

the sinkhole of Time from which we lift up 

water once wine, now just water again,

a freezer-burnt bucket of rhyme. Good times. 

It seems he’s switched from Seidel to Schuyler,

& sure, why not? I stumble toward MacNeice.

We’re searching for a bit of say-our-piece. 

We’re trying for a little day of peace. 

(Speak for yourself, he’d say if he read this.)

No one is ever on the same page. 

Tomorrow is just today’s empty stage,

the spotlight a body without a soul. 

Or is it a soul without a body? 

A spirit looking for an unchoked throat? 

High above, unseen, song is a jet stream,

while I wake or sleep, nothing in between. 

Good luck, I think, even though you know 

the taste of it, even if, to you, it tastes 

like something else, warm but still sharp,

verses versus us, the numbered shadows 

of a wish wrapped around a falling coin. 

I hope you know I wish you well enough. 

 

Gregory Crosby

Alumnus  

 

 

A FRIENDLY MEMO

 

The toast taken at dinner time

was well deserved.

It was not merely

a compliment to the wine;

but more of a gesture for intercourse.

 

Maybe we buried our heads

a little too deep in the glass –

Or, it could have been

some aphrodisiac in the sushi.

 

For whatever it was,

it is now an invisible

connection between us.

 

One small sip on the wine

And we toasted to:

FOREVER FRIENDSHIP –

An ingredient that life

could not do without.

 

Albert Dépas 

Alumnus

 

 

BEING HERE

 

Harried, Harry in a hurry

Down to the stoop step stomp

Pick me up some herring, Harry

But not until dawn, when it’s done

 

Beat rhythm best in brevity, this poem

But who knew?

 

Tall, green grass

Divided and about to die

Why?

When we’re all given unto rest – climb out of time.

 

Katharine Dreves 

 

  

OFF THE CLOCK

 

time hands

bloodless as pineal rapture

cling

 

to 

  breathing a carapace

  presence scratching

  itself

 

a modular climb 

stairing the well

through a curve

 

ending at its level facing

 

*

 

no clarity 

to moss infection

filtered down 

      the

 gumshare     gave      time

   animus       to spread

  atrium       clocks

 

                hammered

   deluxe

echo chimes

or canned luxury atoms

no expiration date 

    slated 

 

            to crest

    against a tithing shore

 

Vernon Frazer

​

​