Tuesday, May 15, 2012

First Selection, May 2012





It's like
Standing on a mountain top
Under a clear blue sky
With cold clean air whipping around me
Naked
Under the gleaming sun
Skin twinkling
Eyes shut
Heart turned to the heavens
And a smile on my face
That's what it's like

--Larissa Dahroug

Second May Selection - - Youth



The Magical World of Harry Potter 

There is a curtain between
the magical world and my world.
Harry steps onto the train station
I feel the curtains open and I’m off to learn magic too.
In my world I play sports
no matter how hard I run
my feet always stay on the ground.
In the magical world
broomsticks fly through the air.
Harry chases the Snitch
his hand outstretched
trying to grasp the tiny golden ball.
When I read the books
 I chase Harry
my heart seeking to be filled
with magic.
But when the time finally comes to close the cover
that curtain closes
and I find myself
back
in
my
own
world.

--Sophia Hanley, 4th grade


Third and Fourth May Selections



red finches cluster
greedily at the feeder
crows raid their nestlings
the sun moves from east to west
rivers run down to the sea

--Patrick Mizelle


my body melts
spilling enslaved hearts
like burning wax golden Buddhas
kicked over
by black boots

--Morgan zo Callahan

with three bows to twenty-year-old high school student Ksering Kyi, the twenty-fourth Tibetan to die by self-immolation in 2011. This poem has also been selected to appear in Atlas Poetica 12.

Fifth May Selection, 2012



Ad Urbi et Orbi


The city lights
wipe out the polestar, fade out
all the ancient gods excepting Venus
and Latona’s twins.  

On Main Street
the usual apocalypse
fuels both boom box
and Salvation Army band.
The brewpub on the corner
offers another answer.
(What’s the question?)

A man with a laptop sips a foamy cappuccino
CNN’s silent kabuki lights up the laundromat.
Everywhere the smell of gasoline
the constant mechanical roar.
Pigeons coo on a cornice, watched by feral cats.
Pigweed grows in the gutters.

For the child swaddled tight in her carseat
it is all it is all as it is.

--Patrick Mizelle