GUESTS OF CITY COLLEGE

 

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A WALK IN SUBURBIA

I went for a walk
And no I was not alone
I was with them
Willow, pine, maple, oak, and the rest
I gave them names and tongues
Willow Wanka whispered and wept a bit
Miss Maple threw an eyebrow up and looked down at me
They say she has been like this since one of her leaves
ended up on some country's flag
Peter Pine was tall and wise
As always he spoke less and listened more
Uncle Oak was by himself far away on top of a hill resilient as ever
Their fallen leaves were the loudest under my feet
They screamed or giggled at my every step
I returned home
I needed time alone

 

Maryam Alikhani

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ALTHEA: AMERICAN FIRE
(Althea Gibson 1927- 2003, Grand Slam and Wimbledon tennis star.)

Mother named me goddess, long-limbed.
I broke the barrier
my hair the night let down
loose from its Gibson knot, spilling
past shoulders to cover bare arms.
Mulberry lips dusky skin
limbs quick and light as if I leapt
colors spilling
from an Isadora dawn.
I didn't laugh or wink. My long swing
swept the court for Venus & Serena.
The Times suggested my life
lacked something.
Leaving – as the Times must –
the life
spilled. I slammed that ball
straight to the mulberry sun.
Look with awe.
River of hair, river of white dress,
berry-lips pressed down.
Watch me pour
my self into the sun's waiting arms.
Long shimmer on grass.
Such delicacy. Iron limbs,
the p-l-o-ck! of catgut on wool-skin,
the crowd's gasp.
My shadow leaps, my stroke is
black lightning,
How do I not die?

 

Patricia Brody
Alumna

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RAPTURE REVELATION

I think I missed the rapture
I must have slept right through it.
Are people still waiting around?
Or recalculating 'cause they blew it?

The man who invented the date
made millions of dollars off it.
Did he give all that money away
or go to heaven alone with the profit?

I suppose they'll "find" a new date
since God works in mysterious ways.
Even Jesus said the world would end
a 2000 year "end of days."

So saddle up your dinosaurs
and predict an apocalypse now.
I'm not making my bed today
since it won't matter anyhow.

 

Elise Buchman
Alumnus

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AWAKENED
to AHS

Snapped to make the real me
your finger on my arm so formed
the fast return of someone scorned.
While I inserted mystery,
you foresaw a bit of me.

 

Robert Burr
Alumnus

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LIFE ITS OWN SELF
for Elise Buchman

They dream about you.
In a green field
all of you dance and play.
Their tails flying forth and back,
their eyes alight.
They are happy and safe.
You are the greatest woman-human-in the world.
I dream about you.
We are us. We joy, laugh, love.
We are in this world alone.
and together. we dream about you.
Past present and future blend.
We are always. They're sleeping.
I lay in the dark. Feeling the loss of you.
I cry at the rising sun.
I will take them out for their morning run.
I smile and I cry.
They are looking for you.
They will always look for you.
They will and I will.

 

Charles Butler
Alumnus

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HAIKU

the moon in daylight
some will never believe it
for them, night, only

 

Cordwainer Byrd

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GLASS ROSES
(inspired by J.G. Ballard's "The Garden of Time")

You can't wake up and smell the roses
when they've turned to glass—
petals too showy, too insular, too inanimate
to feel and understand
the world outside your garden walls.

You, like those fake petals,
strut you sculptured bod in gaudy plumage of deceased birds,
wear diamonds faceted in blood and the silent screams
of those who work to survive, not to live.
Clothes, studded in crystals, scream "look at me,"
while another family moves to Tent City.
You admire an expensive bag crafted from ice,
while the children of Gaza gather rainwater to drink.

Your extravagance wears designer rose glasses and earbuds,
not seeing or hearing the approaching mob—
the working poor who fight to keep a ceiling over their heads,
stretch shrinking dollars at supermarkets and elsewhere,
and American Healthcare won't care if they get sick.

Raising the living wage still won't cut it
when political parties make Pinocchio promises
before changing hands after Election Day.

You smile and pluck another rose,
but life is not a TikTok moment,
because not all influencers are about self-absorbance.
You can't stymie time
when time must move forward.
Your garden is dying faster than ever—
you don't see that Gaia is crying
while being engulfed in flames.

We're waking up and taking to the streets,
not accepting your Hunger Games attitude—
the brutality to quash our voices,
the building of a new Gilead,
the genocide of certain people by governmental decree.
Soon, you'll become calcified statues,
destined to overlook your destroyed garden,
the crumbled walls of your fortress,
while holding a broken glass
of your once beautiful rose.

 

Patricia Carragon

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THE BALLAD OF NARAYAMA

We fly over snow-covered mountains, huts
snow-heaped, then tuck inside Orin's. She tends
the fire, a motherless girl, her three sons, village
matters. Children call her a witch with 33 teeth!
At 69, she knocks out her own teeth, pretends she's weak.

Grasshoppers mate, snakes eat rats whole, rice grows in poor soil.
When her husband disgraced the family, Orin's eldest, 15, killed him.
Young son smells bad, copulates with a dog; Orin finds an old widow
for him. She exposes a family stealing food—the village men bury
them alive—including the pregnant wife of the middle son.

Now the hardest part. Near 70, Orin readies to go
to Narayama, a long journey up, up, and three mountains away.
Elder son leaves his mother on her prayer mat among
the bones. Vultures circle. Snow begins to fall.

 

--Film by Shõhei Imamura, 1983, Palme d'Or, Cannes.
--Set c. 1810, Japan, after story "Narayama bushikô," 1958

Jan Garden Castro

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IMPROVING THURSDAY

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You

Of all people

Have been assigned

To fix

Thursday.

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You spend the morning

Making improvements.

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You paint Thursday’s

Back rooms

Sun yellow.

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You clear out the screams

From Thursday’s

Southernmost provinces.

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You screw Thursday’s

Bellybutton

Back on,

Restore its sense of humor

Annexed in the war

With Friday.

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With trembling hands

You surgically extract from Thursday night

A ticking minute,

Sparing many stupid deaths.

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You give Thursday an extra firefly or two,

A handful of silence.

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You construct a bridge

Made of breath and secrets

Over Thursday’s blood.

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You

With your cracking voice

Teach Thursday

To carry a tune.

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You who lived three thousand[s] of them

And never lifted a finger to help,

You are good now

For all that ails Thursday.

 

Robert David Cohen

Alumnus

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A TREASURE
For Michele Kidwell

From the archive I search,
and deep in the ground I dig,
what I may find could become
a treasure for the measure
of my future. I vow to hold
deer that finding, I yet,
know what, and hope
one day it shall whisper
in my ears a truth for
my wellbeing, so precious,
like a kid, I keep it well
for my friend' kid-well-being.

 

Albert Dépas

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ARE THE STARS ALRIGHT?

The stars stayed up all night. Are the stars all right?
Is the moon all right? Is the waste site all right?

Are the turtles all right? Or the Tutsis?
Hi. I just called to ask, Am I going to be all right?

And you answer: As two nuclear plants at Indian Point
return to full power you ask me if you're alright.

Scrutinize. this sloppily run environment.
Scrutinize nuclear waste sites as they ooze
into our ozone layer. Our drinking water.

Is anything alright? Am I all right?
Do you think I want to hear about all your phobias?
Your insomnia. Your irritations.

I have my own problems. My ceiling is caving in.
And I've been waiting all day for someone to come and fix it.
But no one's shown up.

 

Dorothy August Friedman

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DARKNESS CALLS

I sit in silence
Darkness calls
You bring the light
Let me rest in your fullness
Escape this life with yours
Darkness, darkness, darkness
Let me free say ye
Feel my love say ye
You will rest in my fullness
Feel the warmth of my light
The light will be yours forever now
Let me rest in your fullness
Then let the darkness turn to light
Let me rest in you

 

Bill Gonzalez

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OUR DAUGHTER

Flowers died, we got older.
We cried to destiny.
How the wind sucked
our tears like we once
latched to our necks.
We were predators in a death grip.
Our gaping wounds so open
for our gaze, it glistens in the haze
of our tears. Our wounds are roses.
Like the desolate streets
we paved on the first date.
I see our daughter there
when I dine alone.
A fragile version of us
is whisked away by the simplest
pleasures,
the cheapest of wine
and roses.
She's the girl who asks
for pancakes at the Wafflehouse.
She didn't know any better
and that's the best part of her.
What you love about her,
is what could kill her.

Stay in golden hour,
for Sundays in the park.
The thorns we pricked from each other's throats.
Singing arias to ancestors.
I never questioned how
we're fugitives to our past.
Wrapped in the thread of solitude,
you swimming in me
in another state is a crime
if we didn't see it through
or worse, buried it.
Out of the public park wind,
dancing with the smell of
Papaya Dog in the not-so-distant
block. Yes, you're paying this time.
Our love was impossibly gentle.
Our love is dandelions
disintegrating into matter at the peak of spring.
Our daughter escapes the hand
of their mother and attempts to grip mine.
It's too high and she runs to keep up with
me. Her mitts tug at the trims of my maxi dress. We make a chain link fence of
family.
But I never feel her hands.

 

Jada Gordon

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ARISTOTLE 1, PLATO 0 (EXTRA INNINGS)

Inning after inning, four balls of cause
battle three strikes of action, cans of essence
opened and spilling substance in foul territory.

Runners slog through mud, thick and sticky
as a miasma of simultaneous dialogues,
fielders have plenty of time to bobble the premise,
drop it twice, and still make the throw.

Many errors made, yet never unearned scoring,
massive whiffs exhale monstrous blusters,
sacred numbers, buntless accidents.

In the end, a fly hangs in the sky so long
both teams take a knee and start to worship it,
but only one team is on astroturf
close enough to hear the practiced larrup
landing on plastic green between two theorists,

and only one team has a philosopher
racing home from second, sliding spikes high
into equations of pictograms miming the ideal
as a legion of fans swarm the field
before the ump can signal safe or out.

 

Marc Jampole

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YOU: A LOVE POEM

From many places
And many voices to hear,
I sought only you.

I am who I am
Where you are, and I'll be who
I'll be where you've been.

You were there before
We were, before there, before
I knew you would be.

 

J. Chester Johnson

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LIKE WHITMAN

I want to be some swooping thing, a thing
Of geographic range, ungainly, yes,
Hawkish, heavy, all-encompassing,
Avian in nature, windy as
Aeolus, yet graceful and specific when
A squirrel or a fish appears below.
I want to stand beside you at the rail
Like Whitman, intimate and proximate,
Long dead yet eerily addressing you
As a bodily companion, just as Walt did
When I first heard him say to me in verse
And in reality: I see you there.
And out beyond the rail I want to see
A gull who also bears the soul of Walt
Toward the thin horizon as we gaze,
On the cloudiest, the windiest of days
In all creation, arm in arm, at peace,
And see a bird returning with a leaf.

 

David M. Katz
Alumnus

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FANTASIA FOR IRMA

The last time I saw Irma
her hair was Lucy-red.
Red like the siren atop
the police car approaching us
when she yelled at we five kids
in the back of the car, "If you
don't stop it, I'm going to tell
the policeman and he'll take you to jail."
It was the most horrifying thing
I'd ever heard in that short life and we all
stopped hitting each other and screaming
at that half-way point
between play and hurt.
Although I don't believe in such things
I picture Hell as a sort of jail
where you can't play with your toys
or play your records or
sneak a feel of your best friend.
I wonder if when I die I will
play a featured role in Six Feet Under.
I wonder if teevee shows feel death
when they are cancelled and if reruns
and streaming and discs alleviate
some of their distress.
When Irma died three days ago
the cancer taking her at 89,
I wondered if her hair was still
dyed fire-engine red. I don't know
what color it was when she first met Mom
in 4th Grade. What am I taking about?
I forgot that because of thinning hair
she's worn wigs for at least 50 years.
Death is not knowing or remembering the
details that make life so vibrant,
like Irma's hair or my delicious
teenage dreams about her husband.
I know they loved me; the details;
are but a wisp of smoke, like that
from the candles and incense
the kids of our family burned together
in our hippie days. Chant Kaddish
and Hare Krṣna Hare Hare for Irma.

 

Steve Koenig

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TEACHING AND LEARNING

I asked a colleague who had been out,
"Are you feeling better, today?"
"I wasn't sick. I was in jail,"
he said. "Jail! Why?" I asked. "Police
arrested me for driving at night
with a broken headlight." "They
can't do that; can they?" I asked.
He smiled and patted me on the back.

We were teachers. All but five of us were
black. The principal and staff were
black. Most of the neighborhood people were
black. Our students were
black. I was a good teacher, young,
white and with much to learn.

 

Richard Levine
Alumnus

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SEPARATION IN WINTER

i can beat my bizarre dreams
living a morning routine,
and it suits me, while

we pretend play in sand
though almost nothing
survives in our hands

and, much less daylight
shifts a dank pond
to a moonlit hill,

as the cold stretch hides us
you & me, that is,
separate

one from another

 

ellen aug lytle

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.31.24: 12 NOON

i'd like to be like
a forest flower

says the guy, Asian, 30ish, wedding ring,
weighing & adding up my

2 ears of corn, string beans, single
nectarine at Abingdon Square Saturday

Farmers Market, i'd like to be like
a forest flower how come? i say

cause, he says, then i could deal
with anything

the total: 7 bucks

 

Eve Packer

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HARDWIRED

Our daughter discovers that we took her to a rock concert
before she was born.

We had VIP seats in the balcony
But, even there, the sound was prodigious.
I thought the noise would cause hearing loss
in the unborn infant.
The baby would be born with tinnitus.

When our grown daughter learns of the prebirth concert,
she asks, "Was the band Yo La Tengo?"
I think back and say, "Yes. How did you know that?"
She says, "Yo la Tengo is my favorite band."
She must have extra sensory perception.
Either that, or she heard the music in the womb,
where she began to sing and dance.

 

Thaddeus Rutkowski

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BOYHOOD

The summer is a sea a boy can ride.
Forever was the time we lived in then.
We thought this gracious season would not end.

And we were right, as right as boys can be.
For all we did not know, could not yet see,
we lads were stallions stabled by the wind.

The lives we lived no grappling mind can find.
What hooks can hook is all that fishers catch.
What boats there are, they bob upon the tides.

But we were boys, and we knew how to dive.
There is no end to where a boy can plunge,
no end at all to what a boy becomes

who spends his summer ranging by the sea
warm-brooded by a far-forgiving sky,
days halcyon without a when or why.

 

Richard Schiffman

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FOR EDWARD FIELD AT 100

O wisest of centenarians
No one will be burdened by your imbroglio of earthly goods
How sparse the material matter that embellished
your long and lyrical life.
No rooms to be catalogued, cleaned, emptied
Nothing to wrap, box, bicker over, covet, store or sell
No treasures transmuted to stoop sale fodder

This late life love that embraces you
transcends romance and genealogy
Every day walker, manager of your own mending
You, who taught me metaphorical magic
Poet, lover, traveller, gay troubadour
Hedonistic master of holy moderation

 

Ilka Scobie

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TAXI PARADISE

You entered my life wearing wheels,
four dark toes
spaced like bunions
under your taxi.
I am feeling so free,
to write bunions,
to put taxi in a poem.
I will even say something declarative,
that I love you,
though the sentence, like a wagon
drawn by rubber-minded mules,
drives me around like I was a country fool.
and so I am in a new city,
relying upon maps and strangers.
I lose myself in the park,
then find myself on the street.
The marquee of sky
announces slowly
the coming of spring.
Will I be happy then and here,
or back in the old country,
writing small throated poems,
never to write bunions,
thinking moon, June,
thinking loon-things.

 

Karen Slotnick
Alumna

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TO "FAMILY FACES NOT YET BORN"

You'll come out of the scrambling
of the flesh with flesh, then the most intimate,
arduous cleaving of mother to child—mother from child.
You'll be held in the arms—by the wrist—to whatever
improvisations desire is driving
the ones who are around you to sex, marriage. You'll be held
to whatever plenty—scarcity—of mercy exisits;
love will be your fare, sorrow your lot,
to be worn like clothes, like an underwater crown.
You'll come into questions with no answers
except in faces you'll see time changing,
that you'll see in dreams you can't remember—
can't forget—reliable as the promise uttered
that will quiet you: "I'll come back."
Time will change your face, your body,
the door of your home that was closed finally
will open. You'll perch in it
at the edge of a blank sky. If there still is a sky
it will be white and churning, empty of birds,
stretching before you, calling you. How fast you'll fly
into it, eyes open, blind.
How hard you will hold to this world.

 

Carolyn Steinhoff

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BUTTERFLIES
Day #34, March 29, 2022

Russian butterfly mines drop from the sky
Or from payloads, rockets, and missiles
Glide gently to earth

To land anywhere – hopefully near a house
Because they're so cute in their plastic case.
They're also called Green parrots,
 
And resemble a toy a child would want
To pick up and throw
From what used to be his arm.

 

Melinda Thomsen
Alumna

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SKY DANCERS

A small poem perches on my heart.
It does not leave words, but tiny footprints,
as it stretches its wings.
Does it wait for me?
My fingertips have been touched by
wildness, that alights and then is gone
    in a flicker of color and time.
I hold my breath, caught in the moment.
Sky glyphs weave themselves over
my head, written in a language, I will never
       understand,
           but can feel soul-bone deep.
Color dances near again, a flash
    of orange and deep earth brown.
It paints my imagination with
        with the brush of tiny wings.
Another joins the dance.
Together they weave new patterns
    in the sky.
My heart opens wide.
  And light shines through…

 

Mason Trent

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EYELESS IN GAZA

"Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves . . ."

Milton, Samson Agonistes

Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves,
Digging our own and one another's graves,
We have no access to reality.
I blame you, then you in turn blame me.
Subjected to our subjectivity,
We only see the things we want to see.

Eyeless in Gaza, can it be we still
Go round and round that dark, Satanic mill
In vicious circles, playing that old game:
I blame you and then you do the same:
I claim you're a terrorist; you claim
That everything was yours before I came?

I blame, you blame—I blame you blame me
Goes on and on in perpetuity.
And blaming becomes bombing in due course,
So I bomb you bomb me without remorse;
And in bomb craters we can make our graves—
Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves.

 

Henry Weinfield
Alumnus