The Gathering, poem by Karen Boissonneault-Gauthier (Half New Year Poetry Series)

THE GATHERING
by Karen Boissonneault-Gauthier

Family relations and food events,
with fabrics and colours, textiles or kindred mixtures of personalities overindulging with tactile, tangible clashes of characters,
kin set to become kindling with
any object of use or beauty and with any excuse,
Unbirthday. Very, very.

Heavily filtered through interests of the family,
on their finest behaviour,
to be prized in their own right by virtue of education and occasion,
today I’m a sojourner. Very, very.

Dressed simply and immaculately in something well-starched,
not outwardly coloured by the morning’s revels.
All my arrangements were in vain, treated with contempt,
no provisions from the small contingent of women,
though they did not talk about it.
The bond tied them together,
they attached themselves to their most-favoured adults,
I just knew I was the inspiration.

People began to turn away in pity and discomfort,
well-wishers left the bar to try and pacify unlikely miseries,
with a happy-go-lucky delicious skill they graced with a smile.

If I had let things go,
though I had no sympathy or help,
resolution helped put the incident out of their minds,
while the united grounds, familiar scents and acquainted people, reasserted itself and faded into my background.
A few members were having tea on the lawn,
balancing the social pinnacle of the members’ enclosure.
They witnessed my slight idiotic grin.
Would they have been happier,
had I been immaculately conceived? Very, very.

Should I sit here every half year of my life?
The closure of the conversation was implied,
still heavily filtered through curiosities of the family.
With ten minutes of daylight left,
admirers could soon be avoided,
though I pay little attention,
as one who is appreciative of the situation in the context of its time,
and the fact that I have not many years remaining.
It seems so unimaginable and impossible to circumvent.
Very, very.

IMAGE: “The Gathering,” photograph by Karen Boissonneault-Gauthier

AUTHOR’S NOTE:  In keeping with the theme of Half New Year, this poem is about the gathering of family and friends to celebrate the “Unbirthday,” which is the date exactly a half year from your actual birthday. I thought it might be an interesting twist on the Half-Year concept. The poem does have a dark undertone and plays with Alice in Wonderland’s “very, very unbirthday” phrase.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Karen Boissonneault-Gauthier is a photographer, writer, and poet who has often been told she has an eye for seeing what others miss and finding what the camera loves. It’s the oddity within the beautiful, the spark within the mundane, and capturing the nightmare as well as the dream that she strives to find. Published internationally, regionally, as well as in heritage and military museums, Karen likes to try a bit of everything. Why not? She’s writes and shoots cover art for Crack the Spine Literary Magazine, Zen Dixie Magazine, and has been featured in Artemis Journal, Sand Canyon Review, Scarborough Big Arts Book, Cactus Heart Press, Dactyl, Fine Flu Literary Journal, Shadows and Light and Vagabonds Anthology, to name but a few of the creative places she dwells. Follow Karen on Twitter.

May or May Not, poem by Tara Andrews

MAY OR MAY NOT
by Tara Andrews

I may or may not
know the answer to
the Jeopardy question
when I’m watching
the program with
my mother, who
likes to win, to be
right, to know facts.
 
Even if I may know
the answer, I will not
say the answer.
 
If I say the answer
I may ruin my mother’s
day. She looks forward
to the program from the
time she gets up. Sometimes
she stays awake all
night, waiting for
it to come on.
 
My biggest temptation
comes when I know
the answer to Final
Jeopardy. The answer
sticks in my throat
like a fishbone.
 
I think my mother
senses that I’m holding
back, that I know more
than I let on.
 
She’s smart that way.
Too smart to reveal
everything she knows.
At least to me.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Tara Andrews is a poet and author of children’s books. Visit her at taraandrewswriter.com.

Refugio’s Hair, poem by Alberto Rios

REFUGIO’S HAIR
by Alberto Rios

In the old days of our family,
My grandmother was a young woman
Whose hair was as long as the river.
She lived with her sisters on the ranch
La Calera–The Land of the Lime–
And her days were happy.
But her uncle Carlos lived there too,
Carlos whose soul had the edge of a knife.
One day, to teach her to ride a horse,
He made her climb on the fastest one,
Bareback, and sit there
As he held its long face in his arms.
And then he did the unspeakable deed
For which he would always be remembered:
He called for the handsome baby Pirrín
And he placed the child in her arms.
With that picture of a Madonna on horseback
He slapped the shank of the horse’s rear leg.
The horse did what a horse must,
Racing full toward the bright horizon.
But first he ran under the álamo trees
To rid his back of this unfair weight:
This woman full of tears
And this baby full of love.
When they reached the trees and went under,
Her hair, which had trailed her,
Equal in its magnificence to the tail of the horse,
That hair rose up and flew into the branches
As if it were a thousand arms,
All of them trying to save her.
The horse ran off and left her,
The baby still in her arms,
The two of them hanging from her hair.
The baby looked only at her
And did not cry, so steady was her cradle.
Her sisters came running to save them.
But the hair would not let go.
From its fear it held on and had to be cut,
All of it, from her head.
From that day on, my grandmother
Wore her hair short like a scream,
But it was long like a river in her sleep.

PAINTING: “Woman Combing Her Hair” by Edgar Degas (1894).

SOURCE: “Refugio’s Hair” appears in Alberto Rios‘s collection The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body (Copper Canyon Press, 2002), available at Amazon.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Alberto Alvaro Ríos was born in Nogales, Arizona, in 1952. He received a BA from the University of Arizona in 1974 and an MFA in Creative Writing from the same institution in 1979. His poetry collections include Dangerous Shirt (Copper Canyon Press, 2009); The Theater of Night (2007); The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body (2002), nominated for the National Book Award; Teodora Luna’s Two Kisses (1990); The Lime Orchard Woman (1988); Five Indiscretions (1985); and Whispering to Fool the Wind (1982), winner of the 1981 Walt Whitman Award. He has been honored with numerous awards, including six Pushcart Prizes, the Arizona Governor’s Arts Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Since 1994, he has served as Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University, where he has taught since 1982. In 2013, Ríos was named the inaugural state poet laureate of Arizona.

Butter, poem by Elizabeth Alexander

BUTTER
by Elizabeth Alexander

My mother loves butter more than I do,
more than anyone. She pulls chunks off
the stick and eats it plain, explaining
cream spun around into butter! Growing up
we ate turkey cutlets sauteed in lemon
and butter, butter and cheese on green noodles,
butter melting in small pools in the hearts
of Yorkshire puddings, butter better
than gravy staining white rice yellow,
butter glazing corn in slipping squares,
butter the lava in white volcanoes
of hominy grits, butter softening
in a white bowl to be creamed with white
sugar, butter disappearing into
whipped sweet potatoes, with pineapple,
butter melted and curdy to pour
over pancakes, butter licked off the plate
with warm Alaga syrup. When I picture
the good old days I am grinning greasy
with my brother, having watched the tiger
chase his tail and turn to butter. We are
Mumbo and Jumbo’s children despite
historical revision, despite
our parent’s efforts, glowing from the inside
out, one hundred megawatts of butter.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Elizabeth Alexander was born in Harlem, New York, but grew up in Washington, DC, the daughter of former United States Secretary of the Army and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission chairman, Clifford Alexander Jr. She holds degrees from Yale, Boston University, and the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned her PhD. Currently the chair of African American Studies at Yale, Alexander is a founding member of Cave Canem, an organization dedicated to promoting African American poets and poetry. Her accomplishments within academia include a Quantrelle Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching from the University of Chicago and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard and the Alphonse Fletcher Foundation. Alexander’s books include American Sublime (2005), shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, and recipient of the 2005 Jackson Poetry Prize. When Barack Obama asked her to compose and read a poem for his Presidential inauguration, her poem, “Praise Song for the Day,” became a bestseller after Graywolf Press published it as a chapbook.

Mother Doing Dishes, poem by Susan Meyers

MOTHER, WASHING DISHES
by Susan Meyers

She rarely made us do it—
we’d clear the table instead—so my sister and I teased
that some day we’d train our children right
and not end up like her, after every meal stuck
with red knuckles, a bleached rag to wipe and wring.
The one chore she spared us: gummy plates
in water greasy and swirling with sloughed peas,
globs of egg and gravy.

Or did she guard her place
at the window? Not wanting to give up the gloss
of the magnolia, the school traffic humming.
Sunset, finches at the feeder. First sightings
of the mail truck at the curb, just after noon,
delivering a note, a card, the least bit of news.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Susan Meyers is the inaugural winner of the Cider Press Review Editors Prize for her poetry collection My Dear, Dear Stagger Grass. The collection was also a finalist for the National Poetry Series, the Prairie Schooner Book Prize, and the Robert Dana Anhinga Poetry Prize. Her book Keep and Give Away (University of South Carolina Press, 2006) received the South Carolina Poetry Book Prize, the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) Book Award for Poetry, and the Brockman-Campbell Book Award. Her chapbook Lessons in Leaving received the 1998 Persephone Press Book Award. A long-time writing instructor with an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte, Meyers teaches poetry workshops and classes in community programs. She is a past president of the poetry societies of both North and South Carolina. She and her husband live in the rural community of Givhans, South Carolina.

Mother May I, poem by Paul Fericano (May Poetry Series)

MOTHER MAY I
by Paul Fericano 

Mother, may I
sit beside you
on the green mohair couch

late at night
like a wakeful dreamer
and watch old movies

on the black and white
television set
with bent rabbit ears

and rest awhile
near your soft and gentle heart
until I fall asleep?

Yes, you may
 
Mother, may I
light your menthol cigarettes
with the brushed chrome

cigarette lighter
that father gave you
on your first wedding anniversary

and marvel as the smoke rings
float like halos
just above your head?

Yes, you may
 
Mother, may I
tell the woeful stories
you tried to tell

of love gone bad
that left you alone
to live this stubborn life?

No, you may not
 
but you may
take three steps backward
and finish this poem

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Paul Fericano is a poet, satirist and social activist. In 1980 he co-founded (with Elio Ligi) the first parody news syndicate, Yossarian Universal News Service (www.yunews.com) which helped revive Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update.” Since then, his work has never appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Paris Review. He’s the author of several books of poetry including Commercial Break, Cancer Quiz, and Loading the Revolver with Real Bullets, and is the co-author (with Elio Ligi) of the political satire, The One Minute President. In 2009, he created the popular Mission Poetry Series in Santa Barbara, Callifornia, and currently writes a monthly column on clergy abuse and the healing process for the blog A Room With A Pew (www.roomwithapew.com).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: There’s never any drought of ideas with me. I usually have a notion of how a poem will end before I even start. Most ideas touch on topical subjects or family memories. I spent years and years reading the morning paper and scanning the news for bits of material to use as fodder for my satiric news service. I’ve learned that if you’re fearless anything can be the subject of a poem. The idea for “Mother May I” came about recently when I introduced the game to my granddaughters.

Numbers, poem by Jared Harel

NUMBERS
by Jared Harel

My grandmother never trusted calculators.
She would crunch numbers in a spiral notebook
at the kitchen table, watching her news.
Work harder and I’d have more to count,
she’d snap at my father. And so my father worked
harder, fixed more mufflers, gave her receipts

but the numbers seldom changed.
There were silky things my mother wanted,
glorious dinners we could not afford.

Grandma would lecture her: no more garbage,
and so our house was clean. The attic spotless.
In fact, it wasn’t until after she died

that my parents found out how much she had saved us.
What hidden riches had been kept in those notebooks,
invested in bonds, solid blue digits
etched on each page. She left them
in the kitchen by her black and white television
we tossed a week later, though it seemed to work fine.

SOURCE: “Numbers” appears in Jared Harel‘s collection The Body Double (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2012) available at Amazon.com.

SOURCE: Cold Mountain Review, Volume 39, no. 1, Fall 2010.

IMAGE: “Spiral Notebook” by Pam Kennedy. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jared Harel’s poems have appeared in Tin House, The American Poetry Review, The Threepenny Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, Ecotone and elsewhere. His poetry chapbook, The Body Double, was published by Brooklyn Arts Press (2012). He lives in Astoria with his wife and daughter, and plays drums for the NYC-based rock band, The Dust Engineers. Visit him at jaredharel.com.

Butter, poem by Elizabeth Alexander

BUTTER
by Elizabeth Alexander

My mother loves butter more than I do,
more than anyone. She pulls chunks off
the stick and eats it plain, explaining
cream spun around into butter! Growing up
we ate turkey cutlets sauteed in lemon
and butter, butter and cheese on green noodles,
butter melting in small pools in the hearts
of Yorkshire puddings, butter better
than gravy staining white rice yellow,
butter glazing corn in slipping squares,
butter the lava in white volcanoes
of hominy grits, butter softening
in a white bowl to be creamed with white
sugar, butter disappearing into
whipped sweet potatoes, with pineapple,
butter melted and curdy to pour
over pancakes, butter licked off the plate
with warm Alaga syrup. When I picture
the good old days I am grinning greasy
with my brother, having watched the tiger
chase his tail and turn to butter. We are
Mumbo and Jumbo’s children despite
historical revision, despite
our parent’s efforts, glowing from the inside
out, one hundred megawatts of butter.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Elizabeth Alexander was born in Harlem, New York, but grew up in Washington, DC, the daughter of former United States Secretary of the Army and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission chairman, Clifford Alexander Jr. She holds degrees from Yale, Boston University, and the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned her PhD. Currently the chair of African American Studies at Yale, Alexander is a founding member of Cave Canem, an organization dedicated to promoting African American poets and poetry. Her accomplishments within academia include a Quantrelle Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching from the University of Chicago and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard and the Alphonse Fletcher Foundation. Alexander’s books include American Sublime (2005), shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, and recipient of the 2005 Jackson Poetry Prize. When Barack Obama asked her to compose and read a poem for his Presidential inauguration, her poem, “Praise Song for the Day,” became a bestseller after Graywolf Press published it as a chapbook.

Corned Beef and Cabbage, poem by George Bilgere

CORNED BEEF AND CABBAGE
by George Bilgere

I can see her in the kitchen,
Cooking up, for the hundredth time,
A little something from her
Limited Midwestern repertoire.
Cigarette going in the ashtray,
The red wine pulsing in its glass,
A warning light meaning
Everything was simmering
Just below the steel lid
Of her smile, as she boiled
The beef into submission,
Chopped her way
Through the vegetable kingdom
With the broken-handled knife
I use tonight, feeling her
Anger rising from the dark
Chambers of the head
Of cabbage I slice through,
Missing her, wanting
To chew things over
With my mother again.

SOURCE: “Corned Beef and Cabbage” appears in George Bilgere’s collection The Good Kiss (The University of Akron Press, 2002), available at Amazon.com.

PHOTO: “Sliced cabbage” by Brian Boyle. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: George Bilgere has published five collections of poetry, most recently The White Museum, awarded the 2009 Autumn House Poetry Prize. His third book, The Good Kiss (2002), was selected by Billy Collins as recipient of the University of Akron Poetry Award. He has won numerous awards, including the Midland Authors Award, the May Swenson Poetry Award for his collection Haywire (2006), and a Pushcart Prize. Bilgere has received grants from the Witter Bynner Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fulbright Commission, and the Ohio Arts Council.
His poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Ploughshares, the Kenyon Review, Fulcrum, and the Best American Poetry series.
 Bilgere lives in Cleveland, Ohio, where he teaches creative writing at John Carroll University.

Locomotion, Poem by Philip Bryant

LOCOMOTION
by Philip Bryant

I heard the
locomotion behind
the album by Monk my father
was playing.
The finely tuned
machine humming like
a top, purring like a kitten.
 
The first time I
saw the Santa Fe “Super Chief”
at Union Station in Chicago,
gleaming as a silver bullet
carrying the blue uniformed
conductor who gave a low whistle
and “All Aboard” for places as far away as Kansas,
Laredo, Tucson, Las Vegas, Palm Springs.
 
At that point
I knew it all had
something to do with jazz music.
The slow hiss of
the engine, the steam
let out by the jowls of the locomotive,
and the massive, muscular wheels turning
slowly counterclockwise to the engine’s beat
 
Come on Baby Do the Locomotion
Come on Baby Do the Locomotion With Me
 
heading out onto the open tracks,
that smoke-blown phrase repeated
over and over in my head through the years,
as miles of the real American landscape
began, slowly, to unfold.

Photo: ”Santa Fe Super Chief at Chicago’s Dearborn Station”  (closed in 1971) by Harold A. Edmonson, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Music mentioned “Locomotive” by Philip Bryant: “Locomotive” byThelonius Monk – from his album Straight, No Chaster (1967) – listen to “Locomotive” here. “The Loco-Motion” (1962) written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King led to a dance craze of the same name — watch Little Eva perform “The Loco-Motion” at this link.