Woman-Child

She combs yesterday through her locks.
Dislodging tangles of betrothals and fears.
Her hair once a birds nest that had never
been touched. Now, a fertile field.

A floor-length mirror stands in the corner,
observing the woman-child with curiosity.
There is a new yellow diamond on her left
hand, perched delicately like a canary

on the edge of a tree limb.  Maybe one day,
she will coax it to sing.  After her breasts
bloom from their buds.  After she’s played
with her dolls one last time.  Before she

forgets his name; the sound of her own voice.

Published in The Foundling Review, Sept ‘09

Magnolias & Mangoes

Magnolias bloom in the memory
of my past.  The heat of Selma’s
sun burns my fair skin but not
the eyes.  Here, where hope resides;

the quiet calm of a buddhist statue
situated where there is love.
Across town, blacks and whites
don’t mix.  Asian women scatter

themselves like flower seeds.
Each hoping to secure their roots.
Grow in a garden overflowing with
weeds.  I am their hybrid.  One of

many to appear.  Daddy returns from
the Vietnam War a weeping willow.
Shoulders slumped, eyes downcast
from some nightmare he feels lucky

to have escaped from.  Only to return
to more hatred.  Ignorance of borders.
Mama offers ripe mangoes to sweeten
the mood.  Serves them with sticky rice.

Worry tucked away with sour green
mangoes in a brown paper bag.

Published in Up the Staircase, Oct 09

Author’s Bio:

Sandy Benitez is the Founder & Editor of Cherry Blossom Review and Flutter Press.  Sandy’s poetry has appeared in over one hundred print and online poetry journals since 2006.  She currently resides in Wyoming with her husband, two children, and two chocolate labs.

“One ought, every  day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and  if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”

As a poet, a lover of music, art, and conversation, I wholly agree!

Learning to Be Free

He lifts small things–
a three dollar pen
in an art store, a t-shirt
at the discount mall,
a piece of candy.  Sometimes
he gets bold, overcharges
a job, keeps the cash
profits.  Finally free,
he’s awed by abundance,
excess.  Sly as a fox,
resourceful, what he had
to become in Cuba.  Hay
que sobrevivir—one has
to survive.  Meat, sugar,
soap—we buy at the super-
not black market, in broad

daylight, not under cover
of night from the back
of a truck in a nearby town.
Here, he doesn’t need
to pilfer.  He doesn’t yet
know how not to.  His fingers
itch, survival instinct
still acute, as if he might

wake up from a dream and
find himself back in the beauty
and terror of home.  No one
is after him, no cares
if he eats prime cut.
No one will rat or use
blackmail.  He takes small
things—cositas—without

guilt, with simple justification,
say, to make up for the sales
tax he can’t understand.
He does it in front of you,
who worry he’ll get caught,
who don’t get it, this response
to what you have always known—
what to do with your freedom.

School

The tap-tap comes from the closet.
I check behind the door, see nothing,
return to the sink.  Tap-tap, a little knock
into silence, like air in a bottle recently
capped, pushing the plastic, trying
to escape.  I enter the closet again, look
beneath dresses hanging like a crowd
of deflated bodies, see small limbs,
tangled, fetal.  My daughters jump out
laughing.  “We’re playing with you!”
They don’t know I’m dressing for a funeral
service, my mind on a colleague, forty
years old, who died in her sleep.  They
don’t know I’m grieving for another
colleague, an old friend at another school,
nearly sixty, cancer, who taught me about
teaching, poetry, friendship.  The day
before, I’d called my husband to tell him
about the two deaths.  He had news, his
voice exuberant—my cousin in New York
had given birth, twins, two baby girls wet
and wailing into the world—Rachel and
Rebecca, ancient names, our great aunts.
Tap-tap.  Two gone.  Tap-tap.  Two here,
and here, so fresh and new.  Tap-tap.

Author’s bio

Elisa Albo was born in Havana and grew up in Lakeland, Florida. Her poetry has appeared most recently in MiPoesias, Gulf Stream, and The Potomac Journal.  Her chapbook Passage to America was published by March Street Press. She has an MFA from Florida International University and teaches English, ESL, and creative writing at Broward College.  She lives with her husband and daughters in Ft. Lauderdale.

When my father prays silently,
he moves his lips.

The words form like bows and travel straight
as an angel’s arrow to God’s ear.

The words mimed quietly with murmuring
lips are fingertips skimming amber worry beads,

hesitating on pressed petal rosary beads,
buttoning silk beads the color of his tawny skin

on a glima, a flowing ancient Hebrew
tunic or a loose priest’s robe.

The unheard words, hushed and muted,
are music of a choir in a county church,

the sacristy windows open.  A spring breeze wafts
in and upon it the loamy scent of freshly upturned earth

of a cemetery plot under a canopy of poplars,
next to a crooked moss-covered stone.

A spring breeze carries the perfume of button gardenias,
mown grass, rosebuds about to burst open.

And in spring, my father’s thoughts are pure as calla lilies,
kind like he is, giving alms to the poor;

his prayer is humble, bent like him,
joyful with a small smile, and respectful

like the parish priest who doffs his biretta
to an old lady walking her dog.

His prayer, imbued with Faith in a resurrection and life
to come, is the strong tempered steel of the steeple bell.

When my father prays, when my father….
When my, when… Aba, Father.

ARRIVING IN GUILIN

My eyes cannot fathom
the majestic peaks,
the sea of waterlilies.

My heart skips a beat
as the townspeople sell
beans and vegetable roots
for the evening meal.

Can I be in Guilin,
forest of sweet osmathus?
When suddenly wreaths
of tissue-paper flowers alight
from a van and mourners walk,
weeping silently, to a gravesite
in the hot and muggy sun.

How can I write or read
with pain stabbing
my left eye.  Oh,
icicle of pain, let me be.

Return to the shape of a pillar,
an ear of corn.  Hang there
in Red Flute Cave.  Let
your beauty forever
be enshrined in Guilin.

Forgive this poet who blames
beauty for her woes.
Is it not the culprit vodka
that went down my throat
the first night
I arrived in Guilin?

(c) 1983 Nellie Wong

FLIGHT

At 4:30 in the afternoon, my legs turn cold.  My stomach
gurgles.  The sky pales.  A dragon-cloud outside my window
opens its mouth toward the east.  Beyond a cloud-city floats
a magic blanket beckoning me to journey to the past.

Where shall I go, I ask myself, delighted as a five-year-old.
My heart stops but only for a moment.  I know!  I will return
to the Han Dynasty, visit The Brilliant Light Palace built
by Emperor Wu.  I want to see if the walls indeed were inlaid
with pearls.  I want to see if the staircases were gilded,
if even on a dark night the palace shone, brighter than all
the stars in the heavens.

I tiptoe from my blanket to the upstairs chamber.  There is
Li Ch’ing-chao drinking wine and writing a poem!  Her long
fingers touch my beating heart as she gazes outside at the
cassia flowers.  She pays no attention to this intruder, noisy
as a newborn crow, who dreams that the poet’s brushstrokes
one spring day will reach her in the future world.

(c) 1982 Nellie Wong

Published in Bridge, Asian American Perspectives, 1981
Bio:

Nellie Wong has published three books of poetry.  Dreams in Harrison Raoiroad Park (Kelsey St. Press, Berkeley, CA., 1977 four printings) , The Death of Long Steam Lady (West End Press, 1986) and Stolen Moments(chapbook) (Chicory Blue Press, 1997) Wong was born and raised in Oakland, CA, two of her poems are installed in public sites in San Francisco.  She’s co-featured in the documentary film, “Mitsuye & Nellie Asian American Poets” and her work appears in numerous reviews and literary journals, and has been also translated into Chinese, Spanish, Italian and French. ]]> http://www.screwiowa.com/two-poems-by-nellie-wong/feed/ 0 http://www.screwiowa.com/if-you-think-youre-original-think-again/ http://www.screwiowa.com/if-you-think-youre-original-think-again/#comments Sat, 14 Aug 2010 00:17:31 +0000 Nina Romano http://www.screwiowa.com/?p=634 “We are nothing but echoes. We have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own, we are but a compost heap made up of the decayed heredities, moral and physical.”

From Mark Twain’s  Notebook

If you are a poet and have never read Larkin’s work, you owe it to yourself to start today!

Love’s dream begins to lift and pull
My body floats—a weave of dark and light.
Golden flashes dance close to the surface.
Undulating shadows
Forbidden, forgotten
Deep with promise
Flirt in brightness.
Caves and coves unfold as I swim
Liquid within and without me.
Oh lucky life filled with waves of pain and pleasure,
Dear life, what will you bring me this year?

Under My Skin

It’s not as simple as peeling away layers,
Undertones of onionskins to liberate tears.
I struggle to penetrate the shiny veneer
Inflamed with your tune, to encircle
The ache of your systemic movement
To pierce the lining and set myself free.

Heat

You are a fierce song, red like fire,
A maelstrom. How can I tame you?
How do I flay the heat to reach
Its staccato end? How can I release
Your discordant howl, trumpeting within me?

Bio:

Marianne Haycook is an award winning Book Artist with works in public and private collections, and numerous exhibitions in Florida. Her newest area of concentration is working in fiber, digital printing on fiber and exploring poetry in her art at her studio in Lighthouse Point, Florida. Haycook left a successful business career in the ‘90’s to pursue her dream of an art career. She earned a BS in Business Management from Nova University, and a BFA in Painting and BA in Art History from FAU, as well as graduate work in Creative Writing and Book Art at FIU.