| InterBoard Poetry Competition | |
A SILENT FILM SUBTITLED IN YIDDISH H. Novack (Yankeedog) Janelle L. Streed Robert D. Ortiz (Oren Stern)
Third Class from the Motherland,
The thing’s a blur, Liverpool steerage the Island
Then onto the streets of crisp Wilsonian America
Nickelodeon days
Cheap seats at the Grand Theater after her shift,
Socialists spar on the stoops,
Vorwarts
Work, kids, war,
The end of replies to letters to Europe
And now it’s a new century and her body’s in a wheelchair and her mind in the Pale,
She forgot our names today
HEARING OWL SCREECH
My harmony is sundered… I’ve had it!
I’ve had it. Do you hear me, my angry son?
I want to Walk in Beauty but I have no
Ant Medicine left; I have no more patience
for Coyote. I’m tired and drained.
No more tests then, I can learn no more today.
The Sacred Path lies shrouded in fog
and my spirit howls as Wolf of things yet to come.
Cardinal has flown too close to the flame
becoming one with rolling smoke clouds.
The Standing People stand rigid, bare
and unbending in this winter of the spirit.
Owl screams of danger as we enter waters,
once calm and clear, cutting through the peace
Shark’s fin rises in salute to the demise
of the tranquil waves now retreating.
And Porcupine lies curled with her quills
pointed outward, braced for more.
I’m done. I’m tired. I’ve had it.
Perhaps tomorrow I’ll find Ant Medicine
equal to your test and together we will
Walk in Beauty down the middle of the road
allowing both sides to exist in harmony.
AN ODE TO ACT
I sit quiet on my stool
and have not moved in a week.
I am as a stoppered bottle
of purposeful l'eau de toilette.
To behold my purpose I have come
to this my milk white room.
First, I imagine the odor released
to flow from my bottled brim.
Then I imagine an empty bottle,
empty and yet happy, gleaming
lighter with contents gone--
freer, lifted with purpose filled.
But then, of purpose, I despair,
while I sit upon my stool
red-faced with thought--
for still I have not moved.
When sudden next I imagine Plato.
With hoary beard and hoary laugh,
he stands in my milk white room,
where I sit quiet and unmoving.
To reveal an ancient presence,
he pulls his robe up to his waist
and urinates one red-yellow word
that drizzles cross the milk white wall.
He points to me and speaks the word,
“Evil”--You, he points, are “Evil.”
I nod to truth while sitting still
for I am evil, as Plato would say.
I am like a stoppered shithole--
I sit on my stool. And do not move.
And though red-faced with thoughts fluid,
No purpose-hoary laugh springs my release.
MORE ABOUT THE IBPC...
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Poems entered from About Poetry Forum, 2001
