Peggy Barnett
M. L. Emmett
Sarah Frost
Ruth Goring
Carolyn Moretti
Peggy Barnett
.
.
Where Are You
Where are you when the deep hole
in the long vertical silver stripes is black
and smoking,
and burning,
and oh my God
there is another black hole
smoking and burning.
Where are you when the people,
little black spider arms and legs,
raisins thrown from a window
falling so slowly,
oh so slowly down,
down, down.
Everything down
down,
down.
As falling slivers of steel,
turning,
glinted like mirrors
reflecting the sun,
moving jewels in the blue sky,
the awesome beauty
of a kenetic sculpture
I thought
as I look up and then down,
standing there unmoving
amongst the other shadows
in the low yellow morning sun
on Fifth Ave..
Standing there unmoving
cars stopped with doors open,
radios on three different stations
telling us what we’re looking at
that morning.
Where are you when the first silver tower turns to dust
and falls,
down,
a cloud crumbling swiftly to earth
to not exist anymore.
Where are you when the tall slim white antenna piercing the
oh so blue sky
sways first to the left,
then to the right,
(just as your opinions appear left
then sway to the right)
then the antenna swaying to the left,
oh no its not possible,
then it riding down the center
piercing the heart of the second dust cloud
as it descends down,
down
to the ground and disappears.
Three thousand lives
gone
where they were there before.
Suddenly the blue sky
is there,
where it was not before.
Where are you when
the missiles fall down on the children night and day,
day and night,
a rain of hatred
that never stopps.
Could you have withstood it?
You who sit in your living room
night and day,
day and night,
in the cool mist of evergreen
deciding who is right and wrong
with only propaganda to guide you.
Where are you when buying a loaf of bread
is a political statement
with hatred in the eyes of the baker
as images of Gaza flash on Al Jazeera
from the TV on the counter.
I buy three eggs and scurry away
past the police guarding the Damascus Gate.
The mussein wakes me every morning
calling me to prayer.
Where are you when
you just can’t stand it anymore
just can’t stand it anymore
and you lose it.
you LOSE it
because you’re human,
and you love your children
just as they do.
And you lose your children
just as they do.
And now you both stand childless.
Who are you that you assign blame
to one side or the other?
There is no one side.
There is no side.
No side.
Only death that threatens all sides.
And where are you when death threatens all?
Just
thousands and thousands of miles away
expressing opinions.
(author retains copyright)
.
Where Are You
Where are you when the deep hole
in the long vertical silver stripes is black
and smoking,
and burning,
and oh my God
there is another black hole
smoking and burning.
Where are you when the people,
little black spider arms and legs,
raisins thrown from a window
falling so slowly,
oh so slowly down,
down, down.
Everything down
down,
down.
As falling slivers of steel,
turning,
glinted like mirrors
reflecting the sun,
moving jewels in the blue sky,
the awesome beauty
of a kenetic sculpture
I thought
as I look up and then down,
standing there unmoving
amongst the other shadows
in the low yellow morning sun
on Fifth Ave..
Standing there unmoving
cars stopped with doors open,
radios on three different stations
telling us what we’re looking at
that morning.
Where are you when the first silver tower turns to dust
and falls,
down,
a cloud crumbling swiftly to earth
to not exist anymore.
Where are you when the tall slim white antenna piercing the
oh so blue sky
sways first to the left,
then to the right,
(just as your opinions appear left
then sway to the right)
then the antenna swaying to the left,
oh no its not possible,
then it riding down the center
piercing the heart of the second dust cloud
as it descends down,
down
to the ground and disappears.
Three thousand lives
gone
where they were there before.
Suddenly the blue sky
is there,
where it was not before.
Where are you when
the missiles fall down on the children night and day,
day and night,
a rain of hatred
that never stopps.
Could you have withstood it?
You who sit in your living room
night and day,
day and night,
in the cool mist of evergreen
deciding who is right and wrong
with only propaganda to guide you.
Where are you when buying a loaf of bread
is a political statement
with hatred in the eyes of the baker
as images of Gaza flash on Al Jazeera
from the TV on the counter.
I buy three eggs and scurry away
past the police guarding the Damascus Gate.
The mussein wakes me every morning
calling me to prayer.
Where are you when
you just can’t stand it anymore
just can’t stand it anymore
and you lose it.
you LOSE it
because you’re human,
and you love your children
just as they do.
And you lose your children
just as they do.
And now you both stand childless.
Who are you that you assign blame
to one side or the other?
There is no one side.
There is no side.
No side.
Only death that threatens all sides.
And where are you when death threatens all?
Just
thousands and thousands of miles away
expressing opinions.
(author retains copyright)
Return
M. L. Emmett
.
.
THE MATHEMATICS OF POVERTY
The poor keep moving
as if relocation
could reframe the algebra.
They cannot see that repetition
traces patterns
in their life.
New beginnings become as hopeless
as stale finales
of debt and desperation.
Wishful thinking makes for certainties
gambling against the odds
of possibilities.
Whispered prayers and incantations
leaves no space
for reason’s compass to steady and settle.
If they stood still and mapped the moment
both sides of the equation
would simplify
and they might construct
a new geometry
of anger.
Bio:
Maggie Emmett is the current Convenor of Friendly Street Poets, the longest running poetry reading group in the southern hemisphere. There are in their 35th year of operation in Adelaide South Australia. Maggie is from Reading in Berkshire but now lives in Norwood SA. She has worked as a Registered Nurse for 15years mainly in ICU, Retrieval & Casualty services. Also, she has worked in India & Africa. Her second working life was in English & Media Studies, as a graduate, post grad & academic. Now she is an editor with Activator Communications. She has two daughters, three grandchildren and is a poodle tragic. Her main ambition is to protest against injustice, cruelty, poverty until she dies and to daily increase the empathy quotient in the world. Her personal dream is to become the official Poet Laureate of Norwood.
(author retains copyright)
.
THE MATHEMATICS OF POVERTY
The poor keep moving
as if relocation
could reframe the algebra.
They cannot see that repetition
traces patterns
in their life.
New beginnings become as hopeless
as stale finales
of debt and desperation.
Wishful thinking makes for certainties
gambling against the odds
of possibilities.
Whispered prayers and incantations
leaves no space
for reason’s compass to steady and settle.
If they stood still and mapped the moment
both sides of the equation
would simplify
and they might construct
a new geometry
of anger.
Bio:
Maggie Emmett is the current Convenor of Friendly Street Poets, the longest running poetry reading group in the southern hemisphere. There are in their 35th year of operation in Adelaide South Australia. Maggie is from Reading in Berkshire but now lives in Norwood SA. She has worked as a Registered Nurse for 15years mainly in ICU, Retrieval & Casualty services. Also, she has worked in India & Africa. Her second working life was in English & Media Studies, as a graduate, post grad & academic. Now she is an editor with Activator Communications. She has two daughters, three grandchildren and is a poodle tragic. Her main ambition is to protest against injustice, cruelty, poverty until she dies and to daily increase the empathy quotient in the world. Her personal dream is to become the official Poet Laureate of Norwood.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Sarah Frost
.
.
Mumbai
Grief ...
the bereaved
screams from the newspaper.
Two years old,
eyes shut,
he clutches a ball,
the neck of his carer.
His tender mouth
inconsolable,
stretched across his face
like a wound.
Mother shot, father shot,
saved by a nanny,
but seared, a poem of loss
blaring across his face.
Bio:
Sarah Frost is 36 years old and a single mother to a five year old boy. She works as an editor for Juta Legalbrief in Durban, South Africa. She has been writing poetry for the past fourteen years. She has completed an MA in English Literature, and also a module on Creative Writing, through UKZN.
.
Mumbai
Grief ...
the bereaved
screams from the newspaper.
Two years old,
eyes shut,
he clutches a ball,
the neck of his carer.
His tender mouth
inconsolable,
stretched across his face
like a wound.
Mother shot, father shot,
saved by a nanny,
but seared, a poem of loss
blaring across his face.
Bio:
Sarah Frost is 36 years old and a single mother to a five year old boy. She works as an editor for Juta Legalbrief in Durban, South Africa. She has been writing poetry for the past fourteen years. She has completed an MA in English Literature, and also a module on Creative Writing, through UKZN.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Ruth Goring
.
.
Under
I return to passion fruit, to patios,
bees hovering in geraniums,
muted voices, small girls tossing silky hair
over their shoulders like wind bending grasses.
To clouds, swimming strokes, water
pouring itself, pouring.
I write about death
and pull back: how to approach it
without saying dead, blood, body
or murderous intent, without saying Colombia,
paramilitary or gun. Only the sweat
on people’s lips, the bus’s lumbering trajectory,
the bags of beans and corn, the sleeping child,
the checkpoint, selection of passengers,
chainsaw’s sharp-toothed snarl.
The river passes, keeps passing, folding itself
around this bend, accepts and folds in
two long bags weighted with stones.
They slide to its muddy depths, the river
rises imperceptibly, returns to its pastime
of folding to catch sun fragments by the thousands:
Catch. Mirror. Flash. Fold.
Bio:
Ruth Goring grew up in Colombia, and many of her recent poems are set amid that country's decades-long civil war. She codirects Across the Americas (www.acrosstheamericas.org), which advocates for peace and just economic relations between North and South. Ruth's collection Yellow Doors was published in 2004 by WordFarm; her work has also appeared or is forthcoming in Conte, The Externalist, Avocet, Dos Passos Review, Raving Dove, Off the Coast, Chicago Quarterly Review, Out of Line, the Goodreads newsletter, and other journals. She lives in Chicago, and her bread-and-butter work is editing books at a university press.
(author retains copyright)
.
Under
I return to passion fruit, to patios,
bees hovering in geraniums,
muted voices, small girls tossing silky hair
over their shoulders like wind bending grasses.
To clouds, swimming strokes, water
pouring itself, pouring.
I write about death
and pull back: how to approach it
without saying dead, blood, body
or murderous intent, without saying Colombia,
paramilitary or gun. Only the sweat
on people’s lips, the bus’s lumbering trajectory,
the bags of beans and corn, the sleeping child,
the checkpoint, selection of passengers,
chainsaw’s sharp-toothed snarl.
The river passes, keeps passing, folding itself
around this bend, accepts and folds in
two long bags weighted with stones.
They slide to its muddy depths, the river
rises imperceptibly, returns to its pastime
of folding to catch sun fragments by the thousands:
Catch. Mirror. Flash. Fold.
Bio:
Ruth Goring grew up in Colombia, and many of her recent poems are set amid that country's decades-long civil war. She codirects Across the Americas (www.acrosstheamericas.org), which advocates for peace and just economic relations between North and South. Ruth's collection Yellow Doors was published in 2004 by WordFarm; her work has also appeared or is forthcoming in Conte, The Externalist, Avocet, Dos Passos Review, Raving Dove, Off the Coast, Chicago Quarterly Review, Out of Line, the Goodreads newsletter, and other journals. She lives in Chicago, and her bread-and-butter work is editing books at a university press.
(author retains copyright)
Return
Carolyn Moretti
.
.
Outcry
How lucky America is
to speak English—
a language with no gender—
otherwise we couldn’t
use the word 'marriage'
to describe the union
of two same-gendered words
like God and government.
Bio:
Carolyn Moretti received her B.A. in English from Hofstra University in December 2009. She has recently completed her first poetry chapbook and looks forward to working on her second. Carolyn was published in Newsday's 'Fresh Voices' section in July 2001 and won the Nassau County Young Authors Competition in 2004.
(author retains copyright)
.
Outcry
How lucky America is
to speak English—
a language with no gender—
otherwise we couldn’t
use the word 'marriage'
to describe the union
of two same-gendered words
like God and government.
Bio:
Carolyn Moretti received her B.A. in English from Hofstra University in December 2009. She has recently completed her first poetry chapbook and looks forward to working on her second. Carolyn was published in Newsday's 'Fresh Voices' section in July 2001 and won the Nassau County Young Authors Competition in 2004.
(author retains copyright)
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