<![CDATA[THE ROOSEVELT BOROUGH BULLETIN - Poetry Blog]]>Mon, 31 Jul 2023 22:50:04 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[EMPTY BOX, ROOSEVELT, NJ]]>Mon, 14 Sep 2020 14:30:55 GMThttp://rooseveltboroughbulletin.org/poetry-blog/empty-box-roosevelt-njMay, 2020

​We stop on our walk in time of plague
before a house hollowed out, look at
the gutted in future’s name. Windows
shattered, only frames left, like
eye-sockets emptied of eyeballs. Doors
disappeared, breath sucked out, house
become the unhouse. Concrete roof
declaring flat, dumb weight on block
walls, mouth-holes open. We look
through this hollow box, where even
bats refuse to hang themselves in sleep.
Nothing to hold our eyes, background
and foreground one, how to sort out,
blurred as are the days of our own
isolation in known rooms become
unknown. Innocent, utter emptiness
nothing rather than something, house
of subtraction like my land’s your land’s
houses. Thought we knew caves, knew
tunnels, but we stand looking at neither
in plague time, question our seeing
through, our looking at a box unto itself
like a sculpture, alone among houses,
lawns, scattered toys, cats, a house
hearing only the barks of a dog so
relentless it must possess three heads,
asking can we still see ourselves. From
this box of emptiness even the fox turns
away like UPS. How do we explain to
the children? What stories? How to live
so? For here it is to be without a body.
Ghost sound in the shellhouse of sirens
on distant roads, think absence, no
Facebook, Twitter, or Dow, think perfect
Zoom backdrop in the world inviting us
like neighbors. Open now to future
fullness? House confident as a patient,
waiting boxcar, certain as the plague
undoing place, embrace, and certainty. 
​

David Sten Herrstrom]]><![CDATA[Poem By David Herrstrom]]>Tue, 09 Jun 2020 13:28:10 GMThttp://rooseveltboroughbulletin.org/poetry-blog/poem-by-david-herrstrom​That in this plague year
                             spring
has given us forsythia
                                      flinging
in dervish dance its long-limbed
                                                yellow
brilliance into my exiled-in-shelter heart, gives a lie to
          uncertainty.
 
 
-David Sten Herrstrom
]]><![CDATA[​WHEN THE FORSYTHIA BLOOMS]]>Tue, 09 Jun 2020 13:26:10 GMThttp://rooseveltboroughbulletin.org/poetry-blog/when-the-forsythia-blooms
My father once told me the time
to put down grass seed
is when the forsythia blooms.
I noticed those scraggly yellow buds
on the roadside the other day,
the same week that my backyard
cherry tree began sprouting
soft sprays of pink.
And so it is time to tend
to the winter-trodden earth
of my garden, to kneel in
the damp soil to till it by hand,
prune out old growth and stones
that surfaced in cold upheavals,
and smooth the ground
in preparation for spring.
But I am still heaving
rocks myself and carrying
the cold weight of winter
that has held on tight and
long, as I gasp for air
and kick toward the surface
where yellow and pink flowers
have begun to blossom.
Ann Wallace]]><![CDATA[Traveling with the Dark]]>Sat, 29 Feb 2020 20:19:27 GMThttp://rooseveltboroughbulletin.org/poetry-blog/traveling-with-the-dark​A blind man boards the crowded bus
 touches his way toward the rear.
He sits dead center
the aisle stretched out before him like a road.
He sits, used to forcing himself on reality by posture alone.
Roots or bolts
hold him in place.
Leaning like one listening, his dark glasses cast a black,
gaze as strong
as the voids of tree trunks at dawn. Like black headlamps,
they aim up the sunny aisle
out through the glass face of the bus.
*
 
The vibrations radiating through my body
were not just the breathing
of the diesel engine beneath us.
The blind man beside me projected,
as if from a mineshaft
a charge of darkness through his black lenses
that traveled the full length of the bus
and out into the turnpike current.
I noticed too, as we accelerated
easily passing tractor-trailers,
and as passengers slept or continued their chatter
that the driver’s seat
had from the time the man carrying night boarded this bus
been empty.
*
 
One advantage of a blind driver is freedom.
The future is in the dark,
and the past a shadow.
Oblivious to nightfall, the blind driver spiraled
utterly into the tunnel under the river.
The array of heads,
however
maintaining places above the seat-backs like faceless clocks,
was reassuring, as if they expected him to join us.
For his night spooked
the speeding world alive
from a distance greater than darkness.
 
 
--David Sten Herrstrom
]]><![CDATA[In the Wake]]>Sat, 11 Jan 2020 16:04:09 GMThttp://rooseveltboroughbulletin.org/poetry-blog/in-the-wakeWe gas up the hearse before the hurricane
while other vehicles are turned away or stretch
in line for blocks, strange privilege of imminent
 
catastrophe, and when the day after darkens
with shadows, we slip quietly onto closed highway,
the state of emergency palpable in the silence,
 
empty road decoupaged with wet leaves, battered
branches strewn across blacktop. The rumbling
hum of the engine, the only sound as we crawl
 
up Route 17 like a tank crossing the wreckage
of a battlefield rife with buried land mines and
unsure dangers ahead. The hotel lies desolate
 
by cloverleaf. We bear right hard, then left
to cross lanes of highway, steer past orange
barricades, slow to a stop under the awning.
 
The manager, stranded with scant power
and scores of elderly patients turned refugees
as high winds knocked out electricity at nearby
 
group home, ushers us in. He offered beds, food,
small comforts as rain gusted at the deserted fortress
by barren road. The lobby dim from generators,
 
we push the stretcher to the lone working elevator
—passenger when we need freight—upend the padded
bed and squeeze in, rising to guest rooms. We exhale
 
as doors open, slide the stretcher onto four wheels,
and follow the manager down the hall to a closed door.
Inside lies a frail woman still by the window, shrouded
 
by plain white sheet, evacuated to pass quietly
in a strange bed, hours after the wind whirled
to a halt, churning out death and debris in its wake.
 
--Ann Wallace
 
Previously published in Eunoia Review
​]]><![CDATA[CUPS]]>Sat, 11 Jan 2020 16:03:10 GMThttp://rooseveltboroughbulletin.org/poetry-blog/cups​The rose offers its erotic cup.
On my desk a glazed bowl holds a tear
Of black volcanic glass, the abalone
 
Mother-of-pearl shell a quartz seed.
Our vivid memories of things never seen,
Just like cups recalling their former lives.
 
Shambling son of a stonemason, Socrates
Walks all the way through forgetting to find remembering.
Then a world where a god begs the cup be not his to take.
 
Closing its green wings on a barbed heart,
The artichoke regards the open rose.
Cups dream nests. Both wish
 
To be filled, both overflow, one gives birth.
Flying above the sky, the thoughts of birds
But trees are patient. They wait, their arms outspread.
 
It takes both hands to hold water.
There exist forms we want to walk into
As if the world were not an accident.
 
 
--David Sten Herrstrom
]]><![CDATA[Mei Mei]]>Fri, 30 Nov 2018 08:00:00 GMThttp://rooseveltboroughbulletin.org/poetry-blog/mei-meiThe lounging dog lay blackly,
Stretched across the worn gray sofa.
It could be a Sunday morning,
Or just day when a bit of truancy is in order.

Through the screen
The smell of maple leaves
fermenting on the rain soaked front lawn,
Sour and earthy,
Fresh like all get out.
You were going to sleep late.

I brewed the coffee and heard
The children stirring in their rooms
Like the rustling of leaves
Or the shuffling of reeds along the Nile
Where the Baby Moses drifted through the bullrushes
Mindful only of the sky passing overhead.

There are times
When it feels like we plucked them from
a river—these children of ours—with
barely a handhold to bring them fast,
To gather them from the current and onto our bank.

And then there are the ones who got away:
Who sailed beyond our reach,
Their delicate  limbs
And closed, bulbous eyes
Forever sightless and aloof.

The blue of their skin
Like the surface of the river,
Reflecting only the sky.

--Xiao-ping  Lieberman

]]><![CDATA[American Life in Poetry: Column 712]]>Fri, 30 Nov 2018 08:00:00 GMThttp://rooseveltboroughbulletin.org/poetry-blog/american-life-in-poetry-column-712BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
Until about a hundred years ago, the worth of a poem was measured by how noble and elevated was its subject and its manner of delivery, but with the appearance of modernism all hell broke loose and suddenly there were all sorts of subjects one had license to write about. Here's an example of a fine contemporary poem with a richly detailed subject that no doubt wouldn't have seen the light of day in the 1880s or '90s. It's by Sally Van Doren, who lives in New York, from her 2017 book from Louisiana State University Press, entitled Promise.
Housewife as Poet
I have scrawled audible lifelines along the edges
of the lint trap, dropping the ball of towel fuzz
in the blue bin lined with a thirteen-gallon bag.
My sons' wardrobes lounge on their bedroom floors,
then sidle down to the basement, where I look
forward to the warmth of their waistbands
when I pluck them from the dryer.
Sometimes I wonder why my husband
worries about debt and I wish he wouldn't.
Sometimes I wonder how high the alfalfa
will grow. Sometimes I wonder if the dog
will throw up in the night. Like my mother,
I'm learning not to tamper with anger.
It appears as reliably as the washing machine
thumps and threatens to lurch across the floor
away from the electrical outlet. Nothing's worth
getting worked up about, except for death.
And when I think of the people I have lost,
I wish them back into their button-down shirts,
their raspberry tights.

​]]><![CDATA[North Country Poems]]>Sat, 27 Oct 2018 22:10:02 GMThttp://rooseveltboroughbulletin.org/poetry-blog/north-country-poems

NORTH COUNTRY SOUND
 
The moonlight tonight
Lies on the skin of the lake
Whispering its world.

Raintalk among pines
Gathered in the night. At dawn
Wisps of fog whisper.
 
On one long loon note
The waterlilies open
Their white loneliness.
 
A bird’s three-note song.
Again, three notes for the lost.
Does the world not cry?
 
The lake is steel plate.
Cock-crow. Breathing the stillness--
Mist oblivious.
 
Deep in the green woods
The smell of paint—alien
Or allegretto.

Striving to rise, loon’s
Long take-off leaves a river
Of noise on the lake.
 ​

NORTH COUNTRY SILENCE
 
Red planet to right
Of the moon; Saturn on left
Take the silent way.
 
Puckering the lake,
The rain remains as quiet
As the cries of trout.
 
Moonlight on the lake.
The voice of a single frog
And firs listening.
 
Even the children
Fall silent when the moon lays
Its light on the lake.
 
Lilies walk the lake
In the summer-morning light
Saying only white.
 
Many worlds of dawn
Curving us into the worlds
Coiled in its mute light.
 
--David Sten Herrstrom
​
]]><![CDATA[​American Life in Poetry: Column 702]]>Fri, 28 Sep 2018 07:00:00 GMThttp://rooseveltboroughbulletin.org/poetry-blog/american-life-in-poetry-column-702
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

​David Mason is the former poet laureate of Colorado and a professor of literature and writing at Colorado College. His most recent book is “The Sound: New and Selected Poems,” from Red Hen press. I very much like the way in which the muddy boots both open and close this poem, in which not one but two biographies are offered to us in less than a hundred words.
The Mud Room
 
His muddy rubber boots
stood in the farmhouse mud room
while he sat in the kitchen,
unshaven, dealing solitaire.
 
His wife (we called her Auntie)
rolled out dough in the kitchen
for a pie, put up preserves
and tidied, clearing her throat.
 
They listened to the TV
at six, he with his fingers
fumbling the hearing aids,
she watching the kitchen clock.
 
Old age went on like that,
a vegetable patch, a horse
some neighbor kept in the barn,
the miles of grass and fences.
 
After he died his boots
stood muddy in the mud room
as if he'd gone in socks,
softly out to the meadow.
 
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2017 by David Mason, "The Mud Room." Poem reprinted by permission of David Mason. Introduction copyright ©2018 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.
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