Guests of City College

GUESTS OF CITY COLLEGE

A NATURAL MAN

In honor of Scorey Kendric DuBose's 35th Birthday July 17 2006

Scorey's a go-to guy

a get-done guy

builder

believer

a natural man

with a novel name

Scorey's a whole-heart guy

a real fun guy

carer

comforter

a basic man

with a bit of game

Scorey's a do-right guy

a hug-tight guy

sharer

supporter

a handy man

with a novel name

Scorey's a technical guy

a practical guy

vow-taker

brownie baker

a handsome man

in a family frame

Jeanette Adams

Alumna

THREE WISHES FOR THE GOOD GENIE

Open your palm

Let me enter your heart line

Cross your mind line

And merge with your lifeline

Like a long lucky fate line

Open your mouth

Show me the entire universe in it

Let me worship you like a Hindu god

But do not erase my memory

Of my human self

III

Open your chest

Like a window towards light

Tempt me with the dancing shadows

Set me free

Maryam Alikhani

APRIL

I'm eating half a blueberry donut

in my car in the sun in a park.

I'm dictating a cover letter into my phone.

There's a vibe with the sun and the breeze

through my open windows.

I'm in a groove. I'm grooving on this cover letter.

I'm getting things done. I'm achieving mastery.

The donut tastes artificial, but is sweet.

I'm even in a groove eating.

I'm making minimal crumbs,

as I brag into the phone about work experience.

I want to always feel a vibe/a groove/a whatever.

Better the vibe happen on occasion than never.

I get out of the car to further improve my mood

by checking out the view.

There are too many trees in bloom.

I get back in my car. I intend to write more.

The man standing nearby has a problem.

His doors are locked while the car is running.

The vibe is gone. I have to drive away.

Emily E. Axelrod

THE BRILLIANT FRAGMENTS

To kneel by the cochineal

head of the dead.

Fragments—grammar

broken along the way.

The birds drop

at my feet,

eleven of them, sucked

out of the sky, whole.

I return home.

I report the details.

The men who attempt

to control animals

tell me to bag each one,

though I am afraid

to touch their bright

stillness—

the blank eyes

in their blank heads.

It is all wrong

as are the chemical clouds

drifting from the fields

where the cows make

us milk and meat.

The sunsets beautifully hued:

oozy pink,

infected apricot.

Day after day

of wrong color.

Then farm trucks encircle

the town and spray

a silver-white fog

to neutralize the air.

Twinkling stitched

to the sky

like ghosts

beading the wind.

Hadara Bar-Nadav

Featured Guest Poet

Originally Published in Tin House

A POEM THAT KICKS ASS

I want a poem that rocks me deep

one that gets me running to the clothes closet

to dress up in sparkles and feathers.

A poem that triggers my heart

to thumping fast as if on my final lap

at the Formula 1.

A poem that comforts when I’m tired

caresses me between linen sheets

soft as a long-awaited breath.

I want a poem that isn't self-conscious,

on that doesn't care who sees it sick or sad

at whatever hour, in whatever condition.

A poem that doesn’t wear deodorant.

I want a poem that is wide open for me

to walk into or out of in whatever weather.

A non-judgmental poem

that doesn't mind if I'm vegan or a carnivore.

A poem that's multilingual, speaks in tonuges

and dialects too.

I want a poem capable of extremes

that goes beyond to the edge—and beyond.

A poem that knows no boundaries,

one I can take anywhere and

takes me anywhere and everywhere.

A poem I can trust to be there

like the stars and the moon.

I want a poem that dances

full of unbound leaps.

A poem that endures

the way the Parthenon and Acropolis

continue to endure. The way Michaelangelo's

David endures—naked and about it all.

I want a poem that knows when to be quiet

yet when to scream—a curdling scream

that wakes even those covering their ears

who didn't want to hear. Ha! Ha! Too late.

A poem that knows the difference

between orange and blood orange;

one that bleeds with each word, laughs

till crying with each unexpected turn,

each surprise.

I want a poem that grows and grows

assuming strength I didn't think possible

but now, can't stop seeing the metamorphosis

and how—like a poem I am

revising, revising revising myself.

Madeleine Beckman

SARAH FROM BELOW

The myrrh drifts up—& up.

My scent will carry to the highest trees.

Then, all of Time.

Hard to know what the field

where I now slip, slip off to sleep

(Well, not quite gone)

& this deep room would fetch

on the market. Am I supposed to know?

I am all goods, all services.

Laid out in my

long bright bone,

my windy shroud.

So lay me here, Lord

lord & master

child & winding sheet,

I travel in your dry soil

in your hands.

That which you command

both of you, my mystery men/ my masters

I obeyed—down to the shriek of childbirth

in old age.

Didn't I?

Down, down in the grass, wind-swept, trampled

I face

under—up—

I heard you count the change.

You have earned me rightly, you say.

Now, return me to my cave of stars—where I'll stay

& go from your hands

Daughters I might bear

This land? This land.

Patricia Brody

Alumna

EUREKA

for kateri, age nine (in memory of)

My love in life wears black and brown

a coat made of the softest down

white nose with freckles here and there

and eyes that are both bright and fair.

Her tail it wags in sweeping arcs

when asking to go to the park.

She doesn't bark and doesn't beg

although she does sleep in my bed.

She waits for me each day at six

and gives my face a million licks.

She's glad to see me home to stay

she brings me toys so we can play.

At night she curls up for a nap

her head is soft upon my lap.

She sighs so deep, her head I stroke

and I stop if she gives me a poke.

I hold her close and kiss her nose

she wags her tail and I suppose,

that she is happy—full of love

a better gift I can not think of.

True love like this can't be spurned

that asks for nothing in return.

I look at her and wryly smile—

she beats a boyfriend by a mile.

Elise Buchman

Alumna

Originally published in ANIMAL CRACKERS AND THEIR FRIENDS, 2009

PROMISES, PROMISES

If I remember correctly

It was this time last year

Probably around April first – second

Actually, it was March thirtieth

When I lifted blue skies

And pumped my orange heart

To gather the strength

To ask Uncle Steve, familiarly, honestly

Why is it that you spend all that dough

Cookies and cream

Yet you're the one that tells me

I gotta believe?

He pauses

He responds

I'd rather under promise

So I can over deliver

I'd rather wipe your tears

Then kill you with laughter

I'd rather forget yesterday's misfortunes

Then rise up to celebrate all day tomorrow

Rather give you bobbleheads

And four-dollar beers all day

Then get you so close to the world series

Only two games away

I'd rather under promise

Then over deliver

Rather under promise

Then over deliver

Promise two scoops of your favorite flaves

Then deliver the sundae of your dreams

Promise a three-course meal

Then after, you're busting at the seams

Promise closing down prisons

Deliver abolished complexes by any means

Promise guns away from kids

Deliver assaults on ruling class

Promise no more political parties

Deliver freedom of choice

Promise no more straws

Deliver new ozone

Promise less plastic

Deliver untouched, thriving Amazon

Promise healthy foods

Deliver end to hunger

Promise ceasefire

Deliver no more weapons made by man

Promise nature

Deliver nurture

Promise helping

Deliver healing

Promise no more occupation, no more settlements

No more genocide

Deliver no more isms, no more borders

No more war

Promise no more mining, no more slaves

Deliver no more talk, ¡Revolution!

Promise no more greed, no more 1%

No more autocracy

Deliver us, just us, you & me

Together

Because they promised us

A doomsday clock

So I say

Let's deliver joy in whatever's left

Whether it be two eons

Two years

Two weeks

You see, I promised someone a poem

Hope it's okay

I delivered words

I usually can’t speak

Brian Buño

LANDSCAPE

Faster than one can imagine it does

take us along with it all the way there

(just as we’ve noted in movies) to where

nothing around is at all what it was.

Come to the sinkhole and hear our flies buzz

They will engage you sis, and brother and cuz

with such sweet humming to make you all care

and likewise, their lie you shall crave to share.

Bob Burr

Alumnus

TACTILE

it's

always night

you

yeah i said

she

moved on me

her

body

flows

into

mine

help you out

with that

yeah i said

she

kissed me

the taste of her

chilled

my skin

under the skin

my blood aflame

help you

find your way back

closed my eyes

and the beginning began

yeah, i said.

Charles Butler

SUICIDE

She took her own life because she had no value.

Her mother would criticize her for bad grades and sloppy penmanship,

even for not liking dolls and dresses.

Her father needed extra comfort and told her to keep quiet... or else.

Her hair, body, and clothes became a schoolyard joke,

and the teacher hid behind blinders and earplugs.

Her college degree—an expensive paper paid by a bank loan—

a high price for not fitting in with company culture—

she never did get that promotion.

Her date slipped something into her drink—

she woke up in an alley with

clothes ripped, her vagina bleeding—

the blame would be hers, not his.

Her first miscarriage led to another and another,

or did the rumors of infertility make her feel less than a woman?

Her husband grew tired of her, divorced her, took the boys and house as

well—

the job market, more dismal after staying home to raise the kids.

Her cancer ate her breasts and uterus—

still hungry, it spread to her intestines.

Her attempts to rebuild her life backfired, even her talents went astray—

her only accomplishment was poverty.

Her face, invisible since puberty, became her road map to nowhere,

and love couldn’t find her, or did it forget her name?

Her golden years, a list of losses to outnumber her age,

but not the pills she had to take.

The list could go on—the reason was hers, not ours.

Her silent screams were real, and we never paid attention,

because suicide is a dirty word in an even dirtier world.

Who are we to judge and toss the first stone,

when she is now free and no longer in pain.

Patricia Carragon

TORSO FULL OF PCBS

—After Rilke’s “Archaic Torso of Apollo”

Help! I’m aglow with PCBs from fish I gobbled up.

Over 200 types of polychlorinated biphenyls

little fish eaten by bigger fish; they bond with my fat tissue

and never depart!

Evian and Fuji, those pure waters,

sit and stand in plastic coffins.

GE alone dumped 1.3 million pounds

into the Hudson. Some wastes

become recycled plastic.

Google and God know the toxins in plastics

cause liver, digestive, skin, brain —many cancers.

Rilke's Apollo glowed, yet I glow more!

I must change my life.

Jan Garden Castro

IMPROVING THURSDAY

You

Of all people

Have been assigned

To fix

Thursday.

You spend the morning

Making improvements.

You paint Thursday's

Back rooms

Sun yellow.

You clear out the screams

From Thursday's

Southernmost provinces.

You screw Thursday's

Bellybutton

Back on,

Restore its sense of humor

Annexed in the war

With Friday.

With trembling hands

You surgically extract from Thursday night

A ticking minute,

Sparing many stupid deaths.

You give Thursday an extra firefly or two,

A handful of silence.

You construct a bridge

Made of breath and secrets

Over Thursday's blood.

You

With your cracking voice

Teach Thursday

To carry a tune.

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

QUICK QUICK STEP

I wouldn't dance, & then I did, for love;

for love, I would do almost anything

(no, not that). How many angels can dance

on the head of a pin? Angels don't dance,

being no body, all vox. They only

follow the melody; they no longer

hear the monotonous metronome beat

of our poor hearts. They sit this one out.

This morning I found a rhyme for orange,

but I'm keeping it in my back pocket

for the farewell tour or the firing squad.

I can’t dance, but this tango isn't done.

In this prison, I have my own rhythm:

two left feet, a red right hand, & thou.

Gregory Crosby

Alumnus

MY SHADOW

Passing through, I left

my shadow on the wall.

When you come by,

though I won't be there,

you may say hello.

I am sure my shadow

will hear your echo.

In our invisible, silent moment,

we shall be united in The High.

Have a good time!

Albert Dépas

Alumnus

SHE TOWERS ME

This baby girl, thin

once held my pinky at hospital

then young 8-year-old

demanding answers

waking me up

why why and why

I want to keep my horse

No no!

she mucks stalls

got her war again

towers me on her horse

I smile

she still ice skates

with dad

we dance with the wind on skates

now she's a woman

and I feel so frail

as she embraces me

she towers over me

she saves young girls now

teaching girls how to fight

and win

I smile

she towers dad

William Gonzalez

THE MAN IN APARTMENT 5

The man in Apartment 5, Building B, 2nd floor,

sits at his white swivel chair. He wears his black t-shirt.

(Sometimes he wears his long-sleeved green shirt.)

His hair is up in a man bun. (Once, his hair was down. It's brown.)

I live in Apartment 8, Building A, 3rd floor.

My living room window facing north looks across to his bedroom window facing

south.

It’s 4 o'clock.

When I get home from the library (I volunteer putting books in order)

I draw back my curtains. The man in Apartment 5 is always home by 4,

sitting at his desk playing video games on his computer.

I actually don’t know what he is doing.

I only see his profile, facing west, in the window, no curtains.

My curtains are pulled back so I can stare any time I want

at that crow in that maple tree with my binoculars,

two round black circles like a rather large black insect

jutting out at the edge of the curtain. Lower a bit

to the profile of the man in Apartment 5

who sits in that white swivel chair for hours every evening.

Maybe he's playing video games. Maybe he's writing something. A play.

A novel. Maybe he has a podcast. (Sometimes he wears headphones.)

Sometimes his arms wave around like he’s talking to someone.

It's natural, watching other people, like watching tv,

someone else's life, in the quiet privacy of your room.

Before I sit down to dinner (usually take-out from Green Dragon),

I always check on the man in Apartment 5. I never see him eating.

I see him drinking sometimes, soda from a can. Could be beer.

Honestly, I do get bored waiting for the man in Apartment 5 to do something,

turn his head, get up, stretch, look out the window, catch me.

But what would he catch me doing?

I'm not working away at my computer on the dining room table beside the

window.

I'm not playing games, not even solitaire with a deck of cards.

The man in Apartment 5 could catch me vacuuming in the nude. (I do that

sometimes.)

But mostly I sit in my comfortable chair in the living room reading.

Just started Y is for Yesterday, Sue Grafton's latest. (I've read them all.)

Getting up to make more coffee, I check the man in Apartment 5,

still sitting at his computer, although I can't see a computer.

One night the man in Apartment 5 took a shower

and I just happened to be watching out for him. (No curtains in the bathroom

window either.)

I saw him in the bright light of the bathroom stark naked. Front and back.

(He has a pretty nice body.) He rubbed himself good with a white towel.

Then turned out the light and went back to his room and his white swivel chair.

He didn't get dressed. Sat down naked and started working—or whatever it is that

he does.

Every night before I go to bed, usually well after midnight (I have a bit of

insomnia),

as I draw the curtains, I peek. The man in Apartment 5 lies on his back in bed,

a laptop propped against his knees. Yes, I can see the bed

(headboard against the wall opposite the window). It is reassuring to see his light

on.

I say, "Goodnight," turn out my light and go to bed.

New Year's Eve I cooked a steak dinner, opened a bottle of champagne.

That was our tradition. After dinner he and I would snuggle in our comfortable

chairs

and quietly talk. We didn't watch the manic festivities in Times Square.

At midnight we would toast each other, hug and kiss—for so many years.

My daughter called to wish me Happy New Year.

I went to the window to see how the man in Apartment 5 was doing.

It was midnight on New Year's Eve and he was sitting in his white swivel chair

working

(or playing), drinking from a can. He had his long-sleeve green shirt on.

We could share a glass of champagne. We could share a steak.

At 2 a.m. he was still at his desk when I went to bed.

In the morning, first thing, I drew open the curtains wide.

He wasn't there. Usually his room is dark in the day, even on Sunday.

He comes back at 4 p.m. Straight to his desk. And starts working (or playing).

A few weeks ago, when I checked on him, as I usually do before I sit down to

dinner,

the man in Apartment 5 was lying on the bed with his hands clasped against his

chest,

legs straight out, not in pajamas, wearing his black t-shirt, black pants.

I'm not sure if those were slippers or shoes. Just lying there. For hours.

At 10 p.m. the lights went out.

The next evening I watched for as long as I could (without being noticed)

the man in Apartment 5 pacing the room then slumping in the white swivel chair.

A few days later, I noticed a U-Haul in the parking lot. Didn't think anything of it.

When I came home at 4 from the library, set the table with pork fried rice from

Green Dragon,

and, finally, drew back the curtains. Apartment 5 was empty

except for a free white swivel chair, facing the wrong way,

Today I got a postcard. Open House. Apartment 5, Building B.

I still look out at that window when I come home from the library at 4.

Before I sit down to dinner, I look for the man in Apartment 5.

Every time I pass the window, nothing to do, I look for him.

It's hard to turn out my light at 1 a.m., when his light is out.

The swivel chair. Empty room. Lights out. I miss him.

Nancy Haiduck

Alumna

SHADOWLAND

I walk in shadows

And see myself in the arc

of another’s dream.

Why should I bother

As the underbrush thickens

And clogs my passage?

To be satisfied

In little cells of twilight

Is still heroic.

J. Chester Johnson

NEWARK

from before I am born,

letters that, like their authors, hold onto each other

through decades of basement floods

from before I was born, before my father smells like Aqua Velva

and recites nonsense rhymes while I watch him trim his mustache—

those scissors with the metal curl to rest a finger on

from before the kitchen smells like burnt

hamburgers or canned Chinese food

or on Passover mazoh bri or gefilte fish

or on Shabbos, challah, wine and chicken soup,

and the phosphorus of the match my mother strikes

to light the candles and circle her hands over the flames

bringing their light to her eyes,

before the living room smells of dust that is undusted

and suffocates in the pile of the olive-green carpeting

or rises in gasps into airlessness,

before old plastic containers that, refusing to die,

yet emit their dying smell beside the newborn fumes

of the vinyl baby doll Uncle Joe buys me

whose tight ringlets I ruin with shampoo

when I bathe her in the sink

and my mother's one red lipstick—the only cosmetic she uses,

and even that one, seldom—

its perfume long evaporated leaving only

the smell of wax on the crimson stick,

before winter things hibernate in moth balls and choke us

when they emerge, panting,

and I know something is wrong, but

there is no Earth Day yet

in the morning, as I burrow my head into her shoulder

my mother smells like mouthwash

Laurel Kallen

Alumna

THE GREEN OF GREENLAND

And we rebuild our cities not dreams of islands –W.H. Auden

Rare earth was what the tyrant sought to gain,

His price of peace for Greenland and Ukraine.

Rather than green paper bills or coin,

He would disburse a currency of air,

Helium to Ukraine and Greenland

For treeless tundra and embattled souls.

He'd add no interest to the price of souls.

He felt they wouldn’t yield sufficient gain.

Yet he nattered on about his need for Greenland,

Saw in its ground the same grift as Ukraine.

He dreamed in Florida of Arctic air

Redeemed for tankers teeming with Bitcoin.

He dreamed his face was on a silver coin,

The chief and chairman of eight billion souls.

By day he spawned an atmosphere of air

Hot as the planet he sought to gain

Starting with the surrender of Ukraine

And the easy annexation of Greenland.

The biggest island in the world, Greenland

Can lure a king in search of boundless coin

And conquest. Since a village in Ukraine

Contains more than the sum of all the souls

In vast Greenland, he first went after gain

From Denmark's island, despite its colder air.

He pretzel-twisted words, spat forth an air

Of constant twaddle, such as this: Greenland

Could be the most important land to gain

To protect the U.S. from attack, the coin

Of the realm in national defense. But our souls

Cried out: Rebuild the cities of Ukraine,

Forget the pelf of Greenland and Ukraine,

And keep your hands off Canada! Your air,

The gas of filthy lucre, transports souls

To hell. Recall how Erik sailed to Greenland,

Gave it that lovely name to lure the coin

Of settlement to an Eden of peaceful gain.

Souls continue hovering in Ukraine.

The tyrant's gain will metl into the air.

The green of Greenland can't be bought for coin.

David M. Katz

Alumnus

LINES AND THINGS

Talking on my mobile to my friend in Indiana,

I mention I'm on line, which is moving slowly,

perhaps because of covid spacing. He too is shopping

at the store that is so American that we

won't let them plant one in NYC. He is in

what he calls WallyWorld. He tells me everyone out there

calls it that, but I'm skeptical. What's more,

he tells me in that tone of his, that

I am not on line, I am in line.

Nope, I'm on line is my opening salvo.

In line is following orders. He says no, on line means

you're literally standing on a line. On it.

In line means in a queue.

Where did we meet? I ask him. AOL, he says.

Exactly: America On Line, not America In Line. We met

thirty years ago in an AOL chat room, not an AIL room

America In Line is what certain factions hope

to accomplish this election.

We both scowl, at least as much as one can tell on a telephone.

We agree to continue this later, and hanging up,

I roll away on my in-line skates.

Steve Koenig

DEATH OF ANTIQUATED FRAMEWORKS

A light rain permeates through the openings in the canopy, misty tepid drops

horizontally drip toward the neon cushion of moss covering the dirt and roots.

She's on her back, eyes closed, feeling as though she is sinking deeper into the earth

as she lulls between dreams and waking state.

She visualizes roots like fingers wrapping around her body gripping her, pulling her

deeper through the crust towards the source. She concedes, and doesn't fight the

urge to return, to hand her body over to the roots, to decompose into crunchy

minerals embedded in the soil.

She felt ready to learn through a felt somatic language, to engage her senses fully

and reintegrate, amalgamate and satiate her hunger for surrender, for experiencing

death in her lived-in skin. She wonders why the urge to die for her tends to exist in

tandem – not necessarily antithetically – with the desire to live a full embodied life.

Death of antiquated frameworks, shards of algorithms that she no longer needed.

She opens her eyes, water droplets pool on the leaves and on her body. The trunks

of the surrounding trees are a slick matte brown.

She feels like a baby, craving to suck up the wetness from the dirt, learn through

taste and touch, and discover through sensing, carving out new pathways,

regenerating and deepening into the dampness of the earth.

Nikki Kramer

AN EARLY EVENING IN BATH, ENGLAND

Angels are climbing ladders; up and down

The abbey’s tower façade linking

Heaven and earth to one another,

While a group of tourists gather

In front of the abbey, waiting to begin

A tour of the town, looking for

Haunted places.

Their tour guide counts heads,

While buried beneath

Their feet is a Roman temple,

An Anglo-Saxon graveyard

And a Norman church. I sit

At an outdoor café table, drinking

A second espresso,

Watching this group walking

On a thousand years of history

And taking iPhone photos of

Stone saints. Having nothing to do,

I watch my pretty waitress

Sitting at a table, folding

Paper napkins into triangles

That curiously resemble

Angels' wings.

Erik La Prade

DID NOT SEE HER COMING

When Hitler came to power,

they laughed at him.

They did not see him coming.

The leopards were circling,

though they had not

yet made their kills.

Prey was finally selected.

But when Cheeto Hitler

pivoted in heartbeats from

sending so called

gangsters to gulags

to trafficking

citizen babies with cancer,

somehow you did

not see that coming.

During the Revolution, the

Daughters of Liberty protested

with spinning bees,

weaving freedom cloth

so they didn’t have to

don the garments

of tyranny.

Tarriffs rising again

from the ashes

of the last idiot king

to try them and

now an Amazon bows,

inviting the leopards

just to lick

his face a little.

What's the harm?

It only tickles.

As I teach this textile rebellion

to my students, I wonder

what cloth I can spin

to wrap up these

bilingual babies and

swaddle them from

the ICE leopards

knocking down my

classroom door,

teeth bared for migrant blood.

We see the pictures

of the men stacked like

so much holocaust kindling.

A merry photo op

for deputized fascists.

Now do you see them coming?

Leopards tasting due process

as it dies on

their crimson lips.

When the leopards ate

your face in particular,

perhaps you could

not see it coming

because they

started with your eyes?

Then your ears

so you couldn't hear

the cries of the

Queer folks

Black folks

Brown folks

Native folks

Children folks

Women folks

Poor folks

Folks.

Then your mouth

so you couldn't

speak up for trans kids.

The trans babies

our trans babies

my trans baby.

Your dark fear of

their breathless

striving for self,

but who else will

stop them from peeing

in the wrong place?

You can take

Harriet Tubman off the

Underground Railroad website,

but you cannot erase

her jaw set to liberation,

eyes piercing you

across time and space

to say now now now

the leopards will

eat your face—

swallow your useless eyes

tear unlistening ears

rip into your

Make America Great Again mouth.

You will not see them coming.

Did you know that

the Statue of Liberty

first held broken

chains and shackles

in her left hand?

They now lay tucked

at her feet, her

copper clean feet,

almost hidden to

the untrained tourist eye

not yet leopard-tasted.

Deep in her bowels

a sketch of that Lady

Daughter of Liberty

still has chains in hand

spinning, spinning

to face the leopards.

Revolution—she will

step off the podium.

Lay down her lamp

beside the golden door—

the light is now

too low to see

and she needs

both her hands.

Revolution—she shifts

the chain in her

left hand and right,

strangling each leopard

in his turn.

Revolution—she breaks

the chains,

link by link

in her left hand, the right,

jingling with two-handed

promise until they

all lie trampled

beneath her

bloodstained iron feet.

They

will

not

see

her

coming.

Kelly Lemons

Alumna

KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE BALL*

A curveball, like a political lie,

depends on spin.

Spin spools and whirls the air

around a ball,

just as lies confuse a story's facts

and its two sides.

Standing air nudges the ball onto a path

of least resistance,

the way Tai Chi uses the force of an attacker

to throw them off.

The ball begins to curve, deceiving batters

who cannot see the spin,

like voters taken in by lies. Throwing curve

balls and telling lies

are seamy affairs. If you can’t see the seams,

you can’t see the spin,

so Keep your eye on the ball, is good advice in both

the batter's and ballot boxes.

And late season means election day is close as a pitch

that brushes you back,

before curving in to catch the corner of the plate.

If you're fooled then,

you'll stay fooled until next season.

Play Ball!

Richard Levine

Alumnus

WINTER SUN

when a winter sun breaks

thru layers of bluish clouds,

that crust in metallic gold, it's

mountains are birthing

the scalloped peaks, to hide

angels, and keep them warm…

so, walking from market, home

on this wintry afternoon,

there’s barely a notch

of blue, poking thru the gray sky

but the day becomes a time in the '50's

when this girl child visits her friend

on woodhaven boulevard, and

feels comfort from the eyelet curtains

trimmed w/orange rick-rack,

rustling in a breeze, near

nancy's slightly open window-

o, the pearly sky, the warm kitchen,

what an escape: a bus ride,

from fourth grade, while

the sun, a runny bolt of yellow

yoke, soon melts into icy ribbons

of slender purples & pink ...

ellen aug lytle

CITY BLOCKS OF TIME

On Second Avenue was a restaurant that served chocolate

in lava-like sauces, tiny dots or chunks. My son and I ate

salads and burgers, various states of chocolate for dessert

to celebrate an eighth-grade science project, a model train

with solar panel, now long derailed like the shop itself.

Afterwards, a Starbucks with comfy chairs moved in.

In 2016, I sat and looked for work with my laptop.

After 21 years, I'd been let go. Veiny hands betrayed age.

Latte after latte I drank as the resumes flew out by email

for all those jobs I'd have to take but would not love.

The furniture store supplied my rickety rolltop desk,

with drawers and shelves that are now cracked and creaking.

A bulky wooden object to populate the aging rooms.

It was replaced by a makeup shop, pretty but not practical.

Then, Taco Bell appeared with constant fluorescent lights.

The M2M market that sold sushi on the corner is gone too.

Today, all my fish is cooked, as are my job prospects.

Only contract work is offered. Eighteen months and out.

The building upstairs was demolished and rebuilt,

tenants evicted overnight. Now its bare rooms are all ablaze.

The used bookstores on Fourth Avenue have mostly shut down,

except the Strand, which is surrounded by doorman buildings.

Rent is too high. I don't run into other poets in the streets now.

Not on Fourth Avenue or even Avenue A. No more books.

Perhaps at a garden reading near Avenue C, by a lost bodega.

Yes, I could leave. But a trailer park in Jersey isn't desirable.

Taco Bells are everywhere. It's the terrain of McDonald's,

of lighted signs that jump out at night, blinding me to the road.

It’s just that the neighborhood of Ukrainian food and tiny shops,

the place I've lived so long, that I've loved, is leaving me.

Elizabeth Morse

12.1.24: 1:24 PM

you think

you're swimming distance

but you're really

swimming time

tho it sounds more

mellifluous if you say

you think

you're swimming time

but you’re really swimming

distance

from snow

to rain

diamonds mud

dust

Eve Packer

MICA SCHIST

We do not see what lies beneath

except in places where it anciently extrudes,

the crenelated crust, long slumbering tortoise shell,

gravel-grey, much gauged and grooved carapace,

cold under fingers as a lizard's skin and rough.

Unlovely, yes, until in morning light we see

the silver flecks of mica, the pinprick garnet blood.

Schist, they call it, a lowly sounding word.

But it’s our bedrock and our base

a rind so tough that skyscrapers could rise

upon it row on row. Each tower a ballerina

perfectly poised. Until, that is,

the lizard shuddered. And the world

of millions, for some moments,

slightly swayed.

Richard Schiffman

THE DEATH MOTHER

for Penny Arcade

In life's fecundity, a creative career

a vibrant beauty would not choose her path

to be shadowed with life's losses.

History creates contingencies.

An unexpected plague births heroines, soldiers,

heroes and saints.

At first, it was a weirdly misdiagnosed cancer.

Like a tsunami, people succumbed, sickened.

Grew literate about T cell counts, a litany of symptoms

From overpowering listlessness to disfiguring sarcomas

Blindness, dementia, incontinence.

The Death Mother learned hospital etiquette.

To hold hands and keep her tears in check.

Stoicism honed her theatrical chops

How does an artist… an actress, a scribe

Transmute to an archivist?

The Keeper of Tangible Memories.

Creative camaraderie sought radical love,

Guidance….. hope for posterity

An unwritten script unfurled into an abyss

A lineage demanded diligence

The Death Mother provided a promise of protection

For a devastated community that still lived

and worshipped Art.

The work that heralded their very existence.

She remains steadfastly present.

Honoring the past to preserve the future.

The tangible treasures left behind.

Ilka Scobie

CRIME PREVENTION

Vincenzo thinks

the man on the scaffold

outside our 7th story

window, fixing the façade,

might be up to no good.

The bedroom shades

are in the mail. We sleep

blindfolded, lie awake.

The man averts his gaze.

It's bad but he's seen

worse. No one wants

to rob a messy place,

Vincenzo says,

so we are safe.

Hilary Sideris

WRITING A PROSE-ISH POEM FOR THE POETRY FESTIVAL AT CCNY 2025

My first attempt:

I looked up and it was 6:70,

not am or pm.

That was no more.

Sometimes an hour could be 40 minutes, or 90.

Nothing like old fashioned hours anymore.

Uncertainty is good, they said,

kept us on our knees and knuckles.

No need to look up, they said,

darkness is good.

For you, we'll make the sacrifice and suffer the calculus of the sky,

for brother sun and sister moon, the tormented clouds, the piercing stars.

I was wrestling my way through my rage and fear,

that all is dark now,

apocalyptic, backwards, unpredictable.

But Anne said, You can't write a poem like that.

There will be young people there.

So I pulled up that time

when Harry drove me and Anne to the demonstration.

This was the big one in '67, and Harry was determined to levitate the Pentagon.

But as our furious changing and marching wore on,

and the October skies darkened,

and the Pentagon was still nowhere in sight,

we implored Harry,

Please don't levitate the Pentagon today!

We have to get home.

Harry, no match for two bossy feminists-in-training

grudgingly lead us back to the car,

driving in gloomy silence the entire way home.

Still, friends we remained.

Not long after, at the West End Bar,

the game was,

what animals do we resemble?

And for me, Harry said,

a gazelle,

so I figured

all was forgiven,

forgotten.

Except for this poem that Harry wrote,

I suspect, after that disappointing day:

nothing

rhymes

That was Harry all right,

a gentle, but dour soul,

who had read way too much Sartre,

and had watched too much Godot.

Would the levitation have changed his demeanor?

This we might never know.

Yet, look how that rhyme appeared out of the blue.

It just goes to show that something rhymes too.

So just in case, Har,

if you can make yourself available

there's a rally at Union Square

and we'll be getting levitational.

Karen Slotnick

Alumna

A SCATTERING OF SCALES

My friend my shadow reads to me; its chin bobs in time

to the voice emanating from my mouth;

I hold a standard above my head like a barbell

like a child in a flood;

I press care to me through the hail blowing through me

to remember the feel of it,

like the outcast wandering the tundra

warmed by the sight of a candle

in a far distant window;

I wait for the announcement ricocheting around the station like the voice of god

saying a train is coming. A weight is bearing down.

Look into that weight

that sodden cloud roiling—

look, a regime gutting language.

A bone porous enough to absorb it

the last thing

I expected the last thing

I thought would be comforting.

Navigating observing describing reporting

the tunnel

of light next door.

I hew to the figure in it

writing down his email,

to a train of thought I’m hanging by,

a thread,

turning to see what's tapping

my shoulder, it's dire news,

without knowing where it ends,

in a clearing a pit a dry well a dining room

a bedroom lit with a candle. What will dying alone

be like?

What would someone taking down

my story,

keeping fragments—former homes, Dad driving the Rambler—be like?

When a body is fettered what remains free

when a people is scooped up like detritus and deposited,

when it's one of the dead who speaks with me from the pages,

when I push the text back into him

and take his body instead?

A concert I shuffle to through snow in poverty's fetters is being given,

my trust in it as translucent

as a scattering of scales

Carolyn Steinhoff

MANDELA AND THE BOKS IN 1995

A man walks into a stadium and puts on a cap and jersey

and this is both actual and symbolic.

Like the ring you wear on your fourth finger, my love,

it does and does not mean something.

It is wholly itself but not only itself.

At Lascaux the drawings of stags, bulls, horses summon us.

They tell us what we were here too, at that time, in that moment.

They are more than their actual selves, more than art.

Or maybe they are all that art is.

They are the thing itself, of itself.

And this happens and does not happen

on a rock that we know moves but we feel is still,

through a space that is real but that we know only

as we know Heaven or Olympus, only

in the promise of a Garden that is a haven,

eventual if we believe so, real always

but always beyond us.

Linda Stern

From Why We Go by Twos (Barefoot Muse Press, 2015)

AWAKE BEHIND THE CLOUDS…

Awake in a dream, that's not a dream.

I have a broken head that’s been mended.

What?!!!

A shadowed dream? Now real.

But I've forgotten what happened.

Frustrating but I know my friends helped me

Be Here. Alive.

From Hospital to rehab, Gratitude is my word

to the present.

My mind is clear. I walk well and talk better.

And music…love it…

My hair hides the scar. And I am lucky.

A house bird shares her time between me

and her human friend, my friend.

Horses are a comfort, memories of stable days.

Friends reach out in care.

Bird song and Spring seep back into my soul.

And Gratitude, is my sun behind the clouds.

Mason Trent

FLOAT

to be able to put pen to paper,

to hold the book open on your lap

and feel lines scrawling out,

thoughts assembling into shapes

to hear quiet clicking of the clock on the mantel

and to know a second is a second

only because we all believe it to be

to be able to lift a memory from your shelf

and hold it, turn it in the light–

you are completely alone

breath by human breath

you meet immortality

one sacred thought at a time

it is only you

it is all you

you are alone in a field of moonlight,

you lie alone in the field under upturned sky

to hold open the night and let the shapes pour out,

to fill the book with lines and soft sounds

and to believe in time–

you remember your breadth,

you remember what it is to be sky

Laura Zaino

Alumna