Featured Poet

EVERY WHICH WAY

Imagine a globe spinning through space
You are standing in Canada    The stars are
singularly bright   You watch them in silence
You are standing in China   Bikers struggle  
through crowded streets   Pollution so dense
it obscures the light   You are standing in Spain  
It is summer   The sun burns your flesh 
as you reach toward your daughter's hand   
You are standing in Africa   The Serengeti is quiet   
Predators wait for night   You are standing in Antarctica   
The sky dimming in preparation for winter's long sleep   
You are standing at the North Pole   or in a big city   
Calcutta perhaps   or Moscow  Buenos Aires  New York 
You are standing in the suburbs   on the plains   
on an island   Do you ever think it curious 
no matter where you are   freed of gravity  
you will fall into space   Perhaps even now you 
slant at a ninety degree angle   or worse  
with your head hanging permanently down  
How athletic to be stretched out sideways  
rigid as a board   What determination to remain 
the wrong way round   the soles of your feet where
your head should be   Have you ever considered 
how distorted our perception of who we are 
how we are placed might be  When we are   all of us
standing   every which way but up

Susan Sherman__

_________________________

A FARE/WELL PRESENT

Well  good-bye
and all that means
if in fact it means
anything
                words sometimes
taking the place
of meaning
                  like last night
twisted in my own
syllables   trying
to explain

Or that summer
seven years old
first time away from home
A feeling of the heart
but literally that
                          The camp director
calling it "homesick"
or "missing"
Not only that something
was missing
                   that I was missing
someplace or someone
but that somehow
I was also missing
from something   somewhere
I wanted to be

A seven-year-old pride
denied it   denies it still
but now with how much more vehemence
command of language
skill with words
                          no longer only
(shoulders out   chest squared)
"homesick   not me"
but paragraphs of explanation
reams of words
                          to say only
somewhere something
has been left out
is out of place

And so   as a farewell present
I give you this poem
This  feeling of the heart
That when I think of you
leaving
             And when I think of you here
and can't be with you
Even when we are together
when I feel you growing distant
I experience that
                             "missing"
that something 
left out
as if I am discovering the word again
for the first time
What it really means

As with all things that move us
deeply
             the feeling comes
                                           first
the experience
As we perceive the meaning
The word
                  follows later
"missing"

that space which is not empty
but fills all space

Susan Sherman__

There are lines drawn in the sand that must never be crossed So say the pundits the arbiters of boundaries definitions of what should or should not be said or done There are lines drawn on maps around cities boroughs neighborhoods blocks houses The people who live in them There are lines drawn around nations Lines teeming with people waiting to get in or out There are lines drawn around individuals ethnic racial tribal lines Around genders he she you me A demarcation of countries cultures continents There are lines drawn around hemispheres North South East West Around the Earth itself There are longitude lines latitude lines The Tropic of Capricorn is a line The Tropic of Cancer The earth as it circles space As we delineate the seasons Spring Winter Summer Fall A child takes a crayon weighs it carefully It is yellow the color of the sun or of her dreams places she sees in the pictures she thumbs through at night her fingers scrolling color across paper purple then blue an ocean then fire blazing orange and subtle green trees flowers objects without set form Only she knows what they mean Lines of memory are like that vivid weightless ghost images without boundary Cezanne seeing a forest of trees come into being in the dawning sun paints them obsessively branches leaves undulating out of birthing light as they come alive in front of his discerning eyes All this is not to say we do not need to name things identify them ourselves but where exactly are these boundaries borders guarded so carefully with passports rules and laws? I can't see them Can you? These lines that label us define us separate us These lines that must never be crossed

Think of the lowly mouse No one to mourn her shed a tear Grey ugly tiny ears laid flat against her skull a smaller version of a rat No country mouse Disney cartoon with gleaming patent leather fur round megaphone ears she is a city dweller infested with germs wanting only a warm place to nest a drink of water a meal Think of her the common mouse murdered in an act of self-defense dumped unceremoniously into garbage covered by banana peels toilet paper bottle caps days old food Perhaps she is a mother her children waiting patiently for her return Think kindly of her the common mouse who had no say over who she was where she was born her position in life No obituaries will honor her No interviews TV panels Wikipedia entries Facebook or Twitter accounts Think of the lowly city mouse and how we treat each other Our own children Those who are old and alone

to the poets who die unknown who live their poems day by day bare the chaos of lost words Here's to the poems that never get published that lie fallow in someone's veins that burned in Hiroshima and Nagasaki Vietnam New York City Portland, Maine Here's to the poets in Nicaragua Mexico Cuba South Africa El Salvador in the southern countryside of all the Americas and the northern cities too Here's to the women and men who never even knew they were poets had no one to tell them didn't know how to tell themselves Here's to the millions of words buried in a million places all over the globe The mouths and hands silenced forever Here's to all that magic music beauty surprise that died unsung that dies everyday The blood that moves us forward that holds back the tide

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EVERY WHICH WAY

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