Author: cwpoetry

Eric Torgersen has published six books of poetry, two of fiction, and a study of Rainer Maria Rilke and Paula Modersohn-Becker. He translates Rilke and other German poets. Born on Long Island, NY, he was with the Peace Corps in Ethiopia, earned an MFA, and retired recently from Central Michigan University.

Glenn Sheldon is author of poetry collections The Bird Scare rand Angel of Anarchy, and of the critical monograph South of Our Selves: Mexico in the Poems of Williams, Kerouac, Corso, Ginsberg, Levertov, and Hayden.  He is Honors Professor of Humanities at U. of Toledo, teaching literature and cultural studies.

Madeline Strong-Diehl won the T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize while a student at the University of Kent (U.K.). A magazine journalist and editor, she has won recognition for her plays and fiction and has poetry published in Friends Journal, News and Views, and her recently released book, Wrestling with Angels.

Vietnam War Veterans Memorial

The black marble shimmers in the sun
the wall undulates like a python.
War, you swallow people whole.
even the ones who make it home
are never the same
after looking into your eyes.

My father’s name is not there.
He came home Missing Alive.

Secret Stars

Whenever I doubt the existence of God,
I plant tomatoes.
Here in the Midwest, we are filthy rich
with first-class dirt, and the kind of
earthworms and damsel bugs
that big city people
have to order by mail.

Once planted, the yellow stars bloom secretly
in the night.  The next day, they turn into green pods—
seeds containing seeds.
The curling vines can shoot up a foot overnight.
And some break right away, unprepared
to bear their own weight.

****
God, my arms reach out to you
in all directions.
Please.  Let me not be broken
by my need to grow.

Or maybe to be broken is
to be blessed?

I cannot control the direction
of this green curling life.
Better to free myself from the stakes
I tied myself to and
just follow the light.

Finally Belonging

“We are all distortions of the spacetime continuum,”
you proclaimed at dinner that night, while our two
young children were listening.

How will they ever turn out normal?

“Could we please just talk about sex,
religion, or politics?” I asked, but no—

it was too late, you had captured our daughter Amelia’s
curiosity.  Despite all my protestations, you invited
those trouble-makers:  Einstein, Friedmann, Hubble,
Cavendish, and Gauss, to sit down and join us

or spaghetti and meatballs.

I was so relieved when they all stopped arguing long enough
to let Amelia ask you:  “So are you saying
that we change the world,
and everything around us,
with the very fact
of our existence?”

And you said:  “Exactly.”

So that means:  maybe I better pay attention.
Because every word I say or write
exerts a pull on you.  And just your presence in my life
exerts a pull on me. And I don’t know the math to figure it out,
but it seems sometimes this force between us

is very heavy.

Have I ever told you how I never felt I belonged on this earth
before I found you?  How so many times, without you here
holding me, I might have just
floated away?

In fact you are the very reason
I am writing this poem, even though you seem to be
reading it long after the fact, and far away.
You are the person in the future I am writing this to;
And I am the person you will become after you read it.
And every word you have ever spoken in love to me
has made its home in my heart,
and rooted me deeper and deeper here on earth,
where I belong.

Katherine Edgren grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  She was first published at the age of seventeen under her maiden name:  Kathy Kool.  She began to write more seriously in 2004, was awarded first place in the Writer’s Digest non-rhyming poetry contest, and appeared in The Year’s Best Writing in 2005. She has been published in the Christian Science Monitor as well as various journals including the Birmingham Poetry Review, Barbaric Yawp, Main Channel Voices, Oracle, Bear Creek Haiku, the Coe Review, and the Evening Street Review.

Katherine served as a City Council member in Ann Arbor, Michigan, raised money for the ACLU, and worked as a project manager on research and intervention projects in Detroit addressing asthma and air quality. She has worked with adults with serious mental illnesses, with ex-offenders, and with college students.

Her chapbook, “Transports,” published by Finishing Line Press, charts impressions and observations arising in modes of transport, including bike, kayak, sailboat, fishing boat, car, and her feet.  Her latest book of poetry, “Long Division,” also published by Finishing Line Press, looks at life, aging, and death.

Three poems by Katherine Edgren

The Swan

Milky veined quartz
glides on winter’sback.

Tucked wings—
frozen carnations,
iceberg fragments,
jagged glass.

Beware
the swan that lures you,
that blurs your eyes with beauty,
then bites you.

Country Club

Ambrose arose in his knife-creased pants, clean white jacket,
a linen napkin draped on his arm, and led patrons
to flower-decked tables or the bar.
An elderly black man, ninety—they said.
Quiet, with the sweetest smile, the loveliest name.
Ambrose, immortal.

He was a friend to everyone:
from the Bookkeeper I assisted every day after school,
to the industrious ladies who diced and pounded and cooked the food,
and scrubbed pots and pans in the kitchen with their strong hands.

This community of larks sang as they flour-dusted the chickens
or mashed the potatoes—about their daughters,
their bus rides to work, their men. I chatted with them during breaks,
or on the way to the powder room. One had been a masseuse,
and a few times used her kneading skills on my back.
Ebullient Lucille, the Head Cook, used to shriek sometimes
and crow, “Ooh, I love to hear myself scream!”

Their muffled words and abandoned laughter
would drift under the door that separated their kitchen
from my dark cave of an office lit by one florescent bulb,
where I totaled up bar and food bills collected by Ambrose,
until the numbers matched—
watching signatures deteriorate with every drink.
I stapled the adding machine tapes onto the stacks of bills
where they dragged like sorry tails

and handed over these productions to my boss—the Bookkeeper.
Her white legs were encased in sheer white nylons.
She sported a tight round ball of hair high on the back of her head,
wore tailored suits and dresses—
and carried tight little buns at the base of her spine.

One day she told me if I liked my job,
I shouldn’t fraternize with “the help,”
as though we weren’t.

The Map Lover

He was crazy about maps.
He disappeared into them. (He could get really small.)
He drove his fingertip like a car, imagined places
he’d never been, or places to revisit.
He found towns he’d never heard of.
He could measure distances between thumb and finger,
choose alternate routes. He liked the sureness—
north forever up, east right, south down, west left:
a deck he could stand on.
He liked the way a map crackled when opened,
and the way it folded from large and unwieldy
to flat and pocket-sized.
A map was a familiar friend he could carry with him.
He was never lonely with a map.
He liked knowing the earth’s curvature is flattened,
and forgave any accompanying inaccuracies.
His map was like a hope chest, or a bottle with a genie inside.

Mary Minock’s most recently published book is a memoir of her childhood in Southwest Detroit entitled The Way-Back Room (Bottom Dog Press, 2011).  Her recent poetry appears in Driftwood Review, The MacGuffin, MARGIE, Mid-America, Patterson Literary Review, and in the Detroit anthologyAbandon Automobile. Recent awards include: a Ginsberg Poetry Award, and Finalist status in the Atlanta Review and Nimrod prizes.  She has twice won the Gwendolyn Brooks Award from the Society for the Study of Midwest Literature for her narrative poems.  She has just completed a new poetry book manuscript, entitled The Wildflowers of Detroit, which blends narrative and lyric poetry from the past and the present.

A special night of poetry.

“Peninsula Poets Night.”  The event features well published poets from southeast Michigan who published in “Peninsula Poets,“ the journal of the Poetry Society of Michigan.  Co-sponsoring the event is the PSM.

Just Look At This Line-up

Laurence Goldstein’s fourth book of poems, A Room in California, appeared from Northwestern University Press in 2005. He published this spring a book of literary criticism, Poetry Los Angeles: Reading the Essential Poems of the City, from University of Michigan Press.

David James has published two books and five chapbooks of poetry; more than thirty of his one-act plays have been produced as well. He teaches at Oakland Community College.

Cynthia Nankee has had poetry published in Blue Unicorn, Coal City Review, Harp-Strings Poetry Journal, Poem, St. Anthony Messenger, the Aurorean, The Deronda Review, The Lyric, The MacGuffin, Time of Singing  and elsewhere.  She is the Corresponding Secretary for the Poetry Society of Michigan, and enjoys immersing herself in all things poetry.

Michael Lauchlan  has lived in and around Detroit his entire life. His poems have appeared in many publications including New England Review, Coiurtalnd Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The North American Review, Apple Valley, Boxcar, Cider Press, Tampa Review, and Innisfree, and have been anthologized by Wayne State University Press (Abandon Automobile) and Oxford Press (A Mind Apart).

Saleem Peeradina is Emeritus Professor at Siena Heights U. He has published a memoir, The Ocean in My Yard, and four books of poetry, the most recent being,Slow Dance.His anthology, Contemporary Indian Poetry in English, is widely used as a classroom text.

Richard Solomon is a poet and developmental pediatrician whose writing has been shaped by Khrushchev’s shoe, the psychedelic Vietnam War era, spiritual demagoguery, and the resilient suffering of children. Poetry prizes include first prize in The 57th Street Bookstore Contest (Chicago), winning finalist in the national Wurgel Flomp comic poetry contest, 3rd Wednesday annual poetry contest and 2nd place in Ann Arbor Current Poetry contest. He has been published most recently in the Michigan Quarterly Review, 5am, 3rd Wednesday, and Krax.

Cody Walker is the author of Shuffle and Breakdown (Waywiser Press, 2008) and the co-editor of Alive at the Center: An Anthology of Poems from the Pacific Northwest (Ooligan Press, 2013). His second poetry collection, The Self-Styled No-Child, will be published by the Waywiser Press in 22016.

David Jibson is the author of Small Poems (Third Coast Press, 2013). His poetry has appeared in Third Wednesday, Peninsula Poets and Brasilia Review.

Bob Brill is a retired computer programmer and digital
artist. He is now devoting his energies to writing fiction and
poetry. His novellas, short stories and more than 125 poems have
appeared in over forty online magazines, print journals, and
anthologies.

Preview Poems

OUR BELOVED UNIVERSE

Our universe has stars galore,
more than can be counted.
There must be some life out there
besides bacteria and mosquitoes.
I’m sure there are other planets
that feature love, movies, and flush toilets.

Are there standup comics on far distant worlds?
Are they watching game shows
among the scattered star fields of the Milky Way?
Do they have theme parks in the Andromeda Galaxy?
Or is it all taxes, lawyers, prisons, and homework?

We’ll never know the Shakespeare
who lived a billion years ago
in a galaxy at the edge of the universe
that appears in our strongest telescopes
as a tiny speck of light.

I’ve heard it said
we live in a wondrous universe,
but who knows?
Maybe it’s only second rate.
There could be better ones
where peace and plenty prevail
and weekends last for months.

But maybe it’s the best universe of all,
especially if it’s the only one.
If so, it can’t get any better than this,
so there’s no point in bitching.
Let’s go out for some Chinese food
and celebrate our good fortune.

Robert Brill

“THE NEXT BEST THING USUALLY WINS”
(Edith Wharton, “The Daunt Diana”)

Why is that?  If it’s a race at Pimlico
the prime thoroughbred, fidgety as a bride,
pulls up lame, may have to be shot.
Second best is speedy enough for fame,
and the champion’s bountiful purse.

If it’s an auction, the supreme portrait,
first ever for sale by Alpha Artist
scorns mortal reach; a corporation
hides it in a secret vault, to appreciate.
Second best goes to a friendly museum.

Next-best thing is tangible, ready to hand,
fondly petted, made more humane.
Not the mansion on the high hill but the house
rubbing front and back with the neighborhood—
a crossways, and for three million less.

No matter.  We grasp for the best thing
or what’s a heaven for?  “You settled for X,”
“You settled for Y.”  How many insults
before the imperfect earns our love,
armless Venus, Apollo bereft of his foot?

Laurence Goldstein

FLOATING

“How can a girl get serious about Cajun
dancing when her man can’t even float?”

—Deb James

Turn on the music
he begins to drown,
Flailing with both arms and legs,
Gasping for air.  While others
Swim gracefully through the notes,
Dipping, turning in unison
Like a school of tuna on the dance floor,
He is panicking, taking in water,
Eyes bulging to touch
The surface of anything.
Within minutes, he sinks into silence,
His stubborn body held still in clear, watery cement,
A statue on the row of folding chairs
Along the wall.

The music floats above him, untouchable.
From the bottom, wallowing in muck,
He glances up every now and then
And sees light flashing,
Bodies curving and bending,
A pale blue sky
Dancing just to spite him.

David James

DETROIT MNEMONIC

Like refugees, we forget
by force. Whole cities vanish,
block by block; jobs go undone
that kept folks alive. Schoolkids
climb from rusted vans and wave

to bleary parents who may
never work again. A gaunt man
slips past in the 7-11,
unable to buy a slice with what
he got for scrounged bottles.

Churlish clerk, why not
just feed this mute?
I follow his gray shape
across a road, then lose him
behind a hedge, trailing smoke,

face twisted away, clutching
tiny sausages in a greasy bag.
Metaphor, this is not. Nor
opera, theatre, or even,
apparently, news. Yet a wind

raving young maples recalls
our old elms—those titans
that laced branches above
the streets of childhood
and, when I fell in chase

or flight, held me rapt,
gaping into the strung web
of all things. No more.
Our hungry discards don’t
mass at Ford’s gates

facing Bennett’s goons,
demanding work and bread.
Ours only tangle traffic,
clutter parks and seem
in the bright day quite mad.

Michael Lauchlan

ADDING SAFFRON
in memory of Mom

Into her stock of rolling celery,
fresh garlic,
and egg noodles cut by hand,

Into her stirrings of salt and pepper,
sweet paprika,
spare vegetable roots:

one crowning pinch of
dried herbal gold – threads
tweezed from an uncorked vial…

Mother, the alchemist, doctoring
our chicken soup.

Cynthia Weber Nankee

NEW AGE MEDICINE

“An apple a day keeps the doctor away.”
Add garlic each day; hold him further at bay.

Cynthia Weber Nankee

CLOSE CALL

It pays no attention to rules, nor does it follow
Any creed. Random, relentless, unsparing, it defeats
Those looking for the logic of its actions.
It can never be even-handed, so calling it perverse
Is pointless. It has no need to be contrite.
Eyes closed, it operates with complete disinterest
In outcomes. Lacking motive, it is free of judgement.
It has a capricious sense of humor.

It wipes out entire populations with the sweep of
A  broom. It haunts battlefields, epidemics, presides over
Natural disasters. An eruption registers high on the Richter
Scale – an island is swallowed up. In a final burst
Of light, a star is snuffed out. Seasoned runners
Entering the last lap never make it to the finish line.
It stalks the neighborhood to strike the house next door.
Or shuffles up the stairs, demanding  entry.

It makes light work of worldly honors. When it appears
To have laid aside its club, it boomerangs to knock down
Your best friend, missing you by a hair. Entire teams
Of relatives go down like wickets falling.
The losing of family elders lies within the realm
Of expectations. The passing of peers leaves you
Exposed to the search light in the tower sweeping
The ground for escapees. Dodging the beam

Or hiding in the dark is not going to save you.
It will corner you, then strike. It plays many parts
But stands out for its penchant for farce.
For it is not even remotely interested
In complying with those who desperately seek
Its embrace. They design, plan, suffer, and wait
To catch its eye, but it will not be forced to reveal
Its hand. Death was born to steal the show.

Saleem Peeradina

GENOGRAM

I diagram the family tree
watch as the apples fall down
the generations like a prophecy.
I see the rifts, the faults, the falls—
his father’s tendency to brawl
his mother’s sad obsessive thirst—
predict the child. I’ve seen them cursed:
One eye, one huge mouth rooted
In the dry earth of his brain—and loved.

Even when the body’s right,
thought’s genogram remains
like drawings in the cave.
Fear’s chapter, boredom’s verse.
Predestined to absorb the worst.
There’s only one way out:
A fallen apple rolling to a stop.
June air transcendent
with lilacs. The last descendant.

Richard Solomon

THE GAMES CHILDREN PLAY

Allow them guns and they’ll use them.
That’s what guns are for. As children,
we explored the attics of our minds,
the basements of inventions, finding  things
to do to fill our days. In empty lots,
our games evolved depending mostly on
whatever our equipment would allow.
If we could find a ball and bat, we played
a sort of baseball, basketball if we
could find a net, a post to hang it on.
On rainy days, we dressed ourselves for fun
in costumes from a trunk in our garage
pretending we were pirates, kings and queens,
such swash and posh beguiling us for hours.
Indoors, we played piano, Mozart, Bach
or records of Sinatra, Goodman, jazz
or crooning which, like sponges, we absorbed.
We did our homework, music turned up high.
In summer, beaches called with sailing boats
and swimming, campfires, hikes, and volleyball
as well as trips where we had never  been:
Toronto, mountains, Denver, places in between.
In all, we filled the gaps between demands
of school and jobs with gainful occupations
always having fun. Those games remain with us
today to pass along for others to enjoy.

Laurence W. Thomas

SUDDENLY

I’m forty-six; Ann Arbor slicks over
with ice. I’ve blocked the Internet.
You think winter, OK, I get it,
the trees are dead, the mice are dead,
David Foster Wallace is dead,
and you can head down this alleyway,
way, way down, but it’s almost morning,
Zia’s busy being born, Polly, too,
and you, you feel this electric hum, not bad,
coming from the fake fireplace,
and the schools are closed, which makes
everyone happy, and the birds (at this
moment, I swear) start up, blaring
their bird-talk, which makes me feel
not quite ready for assisted suicide
or a twisted cane or an aluminum walker.

Cody Walker

TWENTYSOMETHING POETS IN LOVE

You are not Sylvia Plath
and I am not Charles Bukowski.
Now please take your head out of the oven
so I can heat up this pizza
while you study for your biology final.

When I get home from my evening shift at Subway
I’d like to watch that Bergman film on Netflix
with my hand on your breast.
Then we’ll write disturbing eulogies for each other,
drink a pint of vodka and go to bed.

David Jibson

PROTECTIVE COLORATION

The walking stick is indistinguishable from his habitat,
as is the dead leaf butterfly, the pygmy seahorse,
the tawny frogmouth of Tasmania and the giant kelpfish.
So it is with the poet of a certain age, hidden in a corner booth
at the back of the cafe, as quiet as any snowshoe hare,
as still as the heron among the reeds.

David Jibson

THE OLD DICTATOR

The Old Dictator leans back in his chair,
Fatigued, with his boots on the desk,
And files his chin with a fingernail.
He worries about the revolution,
The arthritic fist of power, his infamy.
Through the window,
He notices the rain still Seems
not to have washed the dried blood
From the streets of the capital.
He glances over his shoulder
At his henchmen,
Lounging in obscure corners
Of the Presidential Palace
Like unemployed shadows
Awaiting his next move.
He sighs and shrugs—and worries
The hairs of his grizzled mustache.

The Old Dictator wipes his sweaty brow
And swills another tumbler-full of rum
While he mulls over the meaning of life.
He worries about God and the Devil,
In whom he no longer believes.
He worries even more about the people,
Who no longer believe in him.
He notices some rust, caked like dried blood,
On a nail in the wall from which his portrait hangs.
He fingers the pistol holstered on his hip
And gives it some consideration.

He worries about the sons and the daughters
Of those who were made to disappear
Before their time.
He worries about the artists and the literati—
What’s left of them.
He worries about Freedom,
Foreign and domestic.
He scratches that persistent itch
And notices the dried blood
Under his fingernail.

Joseph Kelty

BANK SWALLOWS

are black-winged acrobats
flitting over sage and juniper:
their white throats fill with gnats and flies
they catch all day above
the bright hot dunes of Lake Huron.

While siskins hide in cool pines
and preening kingbirds avoid the hunt,
two of these magnificent tricksters
squeak, flank, and sally like bats raiding
the beach where we tired fossil swimmers lie.

They take turns plunging scissor-trailed,
now you see me—now you don’t,” in under
the crest of a sand cliff, staying buried
just long enough to feed the young
without breathing much air inside,
then catapult out into blue sky.

Remember, love, our barefooted climb
in dry roots thin as hair, up the sliding,
steep sand hill?  The nest’s double doors
are two holes shaped like half closed eyes,
too small to get a hand through.

The mates flutter and scold above us,
flashing sharp wings in the burning sun,
throwing shadows the size of hawks.
Our talk is being heard in somebody
else’s home.  Everybody is scared.

Edward Morin

M. L. Liebler is author of 13 books including the award winning Wide Awake in Someone Else’s Dream (2008).  His groundbreaking working-class literary anthology Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams received The Michigan Library Notable Book Award (2011).  He has toured many countries with his Magic Poetry Band and other musical groups. The Detroit Free Press and The Metro Times recently selected him as Best Detroit Poet.

Melba Joyce Boyd has published 9 books of poems, including Death Dance of a Butterfly (2012, winner of Michigan Notable Book Award). Distinguished Professor and Chair of African Studies at Wayne State U., she wrote Wrestling with the Muse: Dudley Randall and the Broadside Press (2003) and edited Roses and Revolutions: The Selected Writings of Dudley Randall (2009). She is co-editor (with M. L. Liebler) ofAbandon Automobile: Detroit City Poetry (2001).

“It Could Have Been Me”

for Trayvon Martin
by Melba Joyce Boyd

“If I had a son,
he would look
like Trayvon.”

He is hand-
some. skin
the color

of coffee,  
cream and
cinnamon.

slight of build,
with a physique
yet to become,

he is shrouded
under hooded
myths and

shadows
of white guilt.

grasping
fists, armed
with a

package
of rainbow
colored candy,

he is stalked
while striding
across grounds

of a gated
compound;
targeted by

imaginary fears
enforcing  
Americanism.

How does Trayvon
stand his ground
when he steps

beyond borders
of the reservation?

How does youth
walk away from
death aimed
at his back?

What can a
black boy do
when the man
with a gun
comes?

“It could have
been me,”
the President
said.

“It could have
been me…”

Christine Rhein is author of Wild Flight, which won the Walt McDonald Prize in Poetry. Her poems have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Southern Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review, where her work won the Laurence Goldstein Poetry Prize. Her poems are featured on the Poetry Daily and Verse Daily websites,The Writer’s Almanacpublic radio program, and in Best New Poets and Poetry in Michigan/Michigan in Poetry. She lives in Brighton.  www.ChristineRhein.com.

Gloria House is Professor of Humanities and African American Studies at the U. of Michigan, Dearborn, and Associate Professor Emerita in Interdisciplinary Studies of Wayne State U.  During the 1960s, she was field secretary of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Alabama. Her three poetry collections—Blood River (1983), Rainrituals(1989), and Shrines (2004)—reflect her involvement in civil rights, community development, and Third World solidarity.